Girl on the Brink: Surviving Desperate Times with Desperate Measures

They say you can’t be too rich or too thin, but can you be too beautiful?

A recent news story reported that Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm’s handlers found in their tests that people resisted saying they’d vote for her.

They said she was too beautiful to be a governor. Maybe they could picture her as a pop star or fashion model but not a woman of power.

This could mean that frumpy is reassuring, I don’t know. It surely is a problem that is unique to women, both in the workplace and beyond. Does anyone ever reject a man for projecting an image that is too virile, too attractive, too much in command?

I can’t claim to be beautiful, but I do have a face that, for both better and worse, attracts men’s attention. Through the careful application of modern scientific techniques, it is remarkably well preserved.

I’m generally pleased with the rest of me, too, but let’s just focus on the territory from the chin on up. In most cases in the workplace, this attribute is entirely neutral. No one cares one way or another. It is not like I stand out.

Still, work environments are caldrons of jealousies and desires, just like any place where human animals gather. More than once I’ve felt a coolness from women in the office from whom I may have taken away the attention of a man they had their eye on.

Men visit my office just to chat. They’re hitting on me in the most lighthanded way, but we both understand what it’s about. Occasionally, a supervisor or the big cheese will give me more attention than a lowly temp would normally merit. But I dress strictly professionally and if a man even comes close to asking me out, I can give him a reception that chills to the bone, sending him on his way.

There are many things I need, but an office affair is surely not among them. It does give me pause when the higher ups flirt with me, but so far I haven’t gotten any offers I couldn’t refuse. My point is only that the arrival of a beautiful face into the sea of other faces causes some adjustment in the general ecology of emotion and allegiances. If the face is attached to your head, you are the disruptive influence. This is not the best way to ingratiate yourself.

Outside of work having a face that men enjoy looking at is close to being an unalloyed benefit. I almost always get to decide if a nascent relationship goes anywhere because he almost always wants to see me again. Still, I find that the roles being offered to me in men’s lives are based on how they view me in very subtle ways.

Since we’re past the breeding phase, men are not shopping for a mother for their children. The men near my age are confirmed bachelors, divorced or widowed. If they have children the kids have long since flown the coop. They’ve have free time, money to spend and expensive toys and hobbies.

I, of course, have none of these things.

They do want to share them with me, but there is also an element of my being brought on as yet another (expensive) toy and hobby. That party requires a good-looking date on their arm. Men celebrate their success by having a beautiful woman to show off, an ornament, a trophy significant other even if she’s not a wife.

I don’t mind being able to exploit having a face that turns men on. I like it. It has brought me fun and adventure, not to mention husbands and children. I can’t help but think, however, that if I had my own professional success, my own money, my own standing and independence that I’d be invited to join the lives of the men I date as the woman, not the girl.