The Currency of Beauty

"She ain't pretty,
She's my sister"

No one - just made it up

A few hundred years ago I had a sort-of-friend in New York. Like many New York friends she came and went in the flick of a New York minute. But we did spend a few evenings in each other's company, and discussed things "New York". She was an aussie. Like me. And a New Yorker, like me.

My friend, let's call her 'D', used to talk of "the currency of beauty" - a unit of exchange, a measurable, a transferable - in New York. Something whose units could be exchanged - for a job, a lover, a whatever. An asset and a measurable. "D" didn't have much capital in the currency, and perhaps that is why she came to define it. Whatever ...

I liked the expression but I didn't take to much notice of it. After all, it didn't concern me, being beautiful ...

But as the years go by, I've started to see its sense. Did 'D' make it up - "the currency of beauty"? If so, she should have trade-marked it.

Have you got change? Can you cash a dollar of 'beauty'?

Je ne sais. But in any case she was correct.

And I don't think it is particularly a New York thing. I think life is easier for the beautiful ... anywhere.

The physically beautiful, that is.

As to the spititually, non-tangibly beautiful, I'm not so sure.

But one thing I do know, and that is that is - as the years go by, beauty and youth become more and not less important.

So unfair!

Who asks to be born ugly?

There's only so much that make-up can do.

And so here is to those un-beautiful people. Those people sans currency.

Here's looking at you kids. And in the mirror. You too!

Stay tuned.