There are usually two kinds of reaction men have when they first meet a really beautiful woman. The first kind is the one where they are temporarily reduced to idiots and/or zombies in a stupor not unlike the one which soon envelopes the proverbial rat with access to a magic lever that doles out perpetual orgasms like a treat. The second reaction is hate and/or slut-shaming and is mostly from the men who know she is way out of their league and have resigned themselves to this fact or the ones who expressed interest but were shut down. Recently at work, we had a very beautiful woman around for a period of time and once, she and I were having a work-related discussion that soon began to get very interesting as we delved into pop culture. Suddenly a nerdy colleague clearly besotted with her rudely interrupted and managed to get her attention. He must have felt like a superstar, and the way he fawned over her, if she had thrown a piece of leftover chicken (she was having lunch) to the side and said, “Go fetch,” I swear he would have done so. I felt like swatting him on the head with my clipboard but I got up and left.
Now, I too was blown away by this beautiful woman as I often am by really beautiful women and many times beside her, I felt like ugly Betty. And while I may not have obliged a “go fetch” command, I found I was eager to please her a la help her down the stage now and then when we were working, fan her, etc. And whenever she was fashionably turned-out and on the outside, I would be all stoic with my, we-are-all-God’s-creation-hence-we-are-all-beautiful mien, on the inside, I would be more than thoroughly impressed. Now I think I’m allowed to fawn over my fellow female without too much censure except risking the homosexual tag but too much fawning from the opposite sex should be considered unmanly. That being said, we love to hate beautiful women, don’t we?
For instance Halle Berry who clocked 50 in August, honestly doesn’t look a day over 30 and could easily fool any man out there but that’s probably impossible for who doesn’t know Halle Berry, one of the most beautiful women in the world who we can never get tired of seeing in a pixie cut? I mean when this woman was being formed in secret in the dark recesses of the earth the creator probably said, “Go be the poster child of the pixie haircut movement.”
As a retired member of the Halle Berry cult following; from the movie Boomerang to the unfortunate and now cancelled series Extant, to her marriage to former American baseball player David Justice and even the words she used to describe her love for him in an interview in Ebony magazine in the 90s: “…he’s my prince on a white horse,” I was a steadfast fan and admirer of this gorgeous and brilliant actress and her oeuvre.
So I was privy to her often talked about bad luck with men and even remember the GQ interview where she disclosed how an ex slapped her so hard she went partially deaf in one ear. Yes, I was horrified and instantly damned David Justice (whom she had already divorced by then) to hell in my mind only to find out years later that he wasn’t the culprit and the unnamed ex was allegedly actor Wesley Snipes.
Anyway, the point was and still is what right thinking man would raise his voice at such a beauty much less hit her? And for goodness sake who cheats on Halle Berry?! What about Aishwarya Rai former Miss World and Bollywood actress (whose astounding beauty always has my stomach doing back flips. I mean those eyes!) who allegedly accused her ex, actor Salman Khan, of abusing her physically and emotionally? Or the countless women we hear of and know of whose beauty have us all green with envy but who still go through the same troubles we have with the opposite sex? You’d think their beauty should make them immune to heartache after all men ogle them, wish they were theirs and will die for a chance to be with them. They should just stroll through life with minimal distress and let the rest of us average-looking population share the weight of life’s burdens including theirs among ourselves. But life is a great leveler isn’t it? And I must admit quite shamefully that this paradox gives me just the tiniest bit of devilish satisfaction. And it still doesn’t mean if they wanted to swap looks I wouldn’t consider it in a heartbeat because the ability to fog up every place one enters with smoldering sex appeal must surely be a huge consolation for the inconvenience of partial deafness. So you must understand that the thought of looking like a Halle Berry or Aishwarya Rai is both deliciously potent as it is destructive to my self-esteem.
