I was shopping at an antique gallery in Los Angeles when the owner, who I’d know from years previous, came up.
She complimented my hair and called the women surrounding her (clients? employees?) and said, “Look at her hair, it is sooooo cute, isn’t it?!”
Photo Credit: Nina Leen, 1947
I don’t like being called cute, and I don’t like being a spectacle.
She started talking about her new paintings, and what she could do for me and I barely could contain my annoyance.
This is one of the types of women I just don’t like. I don’t want to be around people who aren’t genuine good listeners. And I just wanted her to leave me alone.
I escaped and started browsing for things on my list, feeling vaguely disappointed in myself.
I needed my husband’s artistic ideas before purchasing a few items so I called him and settled down into a corner where the hopefully no one would find me.
I opened my book and read,
“Marriage partners (or friends) either call order and beauty out of chaos or intensify chaos.” (Intimate Allies by Dan Allendar, which I have not read, but which was quoted in: Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions: Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women by Dan Brennan, a book I’ve suggested all my friends buy).
Friends notice their friend’s beauty. They call out order; they see goodness.
What beauty was I missing in the antique dealer?
Why couldn’t I see any good in her?
Why didn’t I even want to try?
I was calling out chaos in her.
My husband and son arrived in a matter of minutes. We started looking around and the owner spotted my son, “Is that your son?” she wanted to know.
“Yes!” I couldn’t help smiling because of how she was smiling. “He is so beautiful.”
I paused.
She was willing to see beauty.
I tried again with her, smiling into her eyes and willing myself to notice order and goodness.
It doesn’t come naturally, but it’s beautiful when we try.
[...] as feminists, let’s recognize that women makes mistakes, too. Let’s call beauty and order out of men, not [...]