She Walks in Beauty_ A Woman's Journey Through Poems - Caroline Kennedy [30]
On my father’s side, none of my aunts took after their fashionable mother—they preferred to dress like their brothers. So my grandmother took an interest in what her granddaughters were wearing instead. She loved dressing up in the same Lilly Pulitzer shift as my cousin Kathleen, and she always told us how important it was to keep your figure no matter how many children you had. She was proud that she had worn the same dress to meet the King of England in 1939 and to my father’s Inaugural Ball in 1960. She taught us to stand sideways with our elbows out when we were being photographed, so as to show off our waists. She had her work cut out for her, as we spent most of our time in her kitchen, making fudge and eating her special sugar cookies, resulting in waists that no angled elbows could hide.
Grandma was always happy to see us, and told us how pretty we looked—except once. My cousin Maria and I went shopping one afternoon when we were visiting her in Florida. Maria convinced me that I looked incredibly glamorous in a hospital-green linen bomber jacket with puffy sleeves. I was excited about my new and daring look—until Grandma saw it. She had an unmatched ability to cut to the heart of the matter in the nicest possible way. Her reaction to the green fiasco was “That’s lovely, dear. But in my day, we tried to buy things that suited us.”
Those words echo through my mind whenever I stand in front of a mirror unsure if I am looking at the New Me or just a wildly unflattering experiment. As girls and young women, we all go through many phases, depending on how we feel about ourselves and our bodies. We try to dress like people we admire, the most popular girls in the class, or celebrities of the moment. It takes time to figure out our own conception of beauty—both outer and inner, and often we return to the images of beauty that we formed in our youth, transformed through our lifetime of experience. Thinking about my grandmothers now, I understand that it was their faith, bravery, curiosity, and humor, as well as their fashionable hats, that made them beautiful.
I thought this book should include poems that explore women’s complicated relationship with beauty, and our attachments to objects that help us feel and look more attractive. The way we present ourselves to the world, our changing sense of self, the pleasure of feeling pretty, the pain of feeling self-conscious, and the freedom that comes with accepting yourself are all important parts of being a woman.
Shakespeare’s description of Cleopatra is one of the most extravagant in all of literature. He makes an explicit connection between beauty and power, describing the elaborate pageantry of Cleopatra’s golden barge, her breathtaking loveliness, and the royal authority of her seductive voice. At a time when kings and pharaohs were believed to have divine attributes, and women were powerless and almost nonexistent in the historical record, Cleopatra was truly a wonder of the world.
In contrast, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “The Rhodora” contains the observation, “Beauty is its own excuse for being.” Writing about a flower hidden in the woods, Emerson ponders the mystery of nature and the existence of effortless beauty. Other poems examine the efforts women go to in order to be beautiful. In “What Do Women Want?” and “Cosmetics Do No Good,” the poets describe the irresistible appeal of clothes and makeup.
One of the most surprising poems is “Face Lift” by Sylvia Plath. Written in 1961, well before the explosion of cosmetic surgery, the poem describes the clinical aspects of the procedure. The level of detail is similar to poems in which Plath describes her own shock treatments and hospitalization for mental illness. Interestingly,