Suzanne's Journal

11.08.01
I think I've narrowed it down. I've been trying to answer the hypothetical question of which famous beautiful woman I'd look like if I could choose anybody. This is not the time to launch into a sermon about beauty being on the inside, because I know beauty is on the inside, and I don't want to be anybody besides me. But the "who would you look like" game is fun, and I like having these kinds of questions answered definitively inside my head, just in case I'm under duress some time and am forced to answer on a moment's notice.

So I've decided on either Louise Brooks, Isabelle Adjani, Juliette Binoche, or Julia Ormond. Astute observers will note that all these women bear a striking resemblance to Snow White.

And Snow White bears a striking resemblance to my mom. I definitely like the pale skin/dark hair combination. When I watch my new nephew looking at my sister's face, I wonder what he thinks. I wonder if he'll always have a soft spot in his heart for brown-eyed blondes, because of his early happy memories of Christy's coloring. I can't remember looking at my mom's face when I was a baby (or much else of babyhood, for that matter), which I must have done a million times, but I don't ever remember being without it.

I've watched a bit of the BBC series "The Human Face," and was fascinated by the Golden Ratio concept.

Dr. Stephen Marquardt has discovered a "Universal Beauty Mask" mathematically created from the Golden Ratio. He can demonstrate that the grid-like mask "fits" beautiful faces of all races. Dr Marquardt claims that most people (including babies) are naturally and instinctively drawn to faces which conform to the 1:1.618 Golden Ratio, and that we instinctively find them beautiful.

I have said this is no place to give the "beauty is on the inside" lecture, but in fact, it is. And even the doctor concedes that although the Golden Ratio does seem to hold some key to a universal standard of beauty, beauty is still in the eye of the beholder:

. . . because through our experience we may "fine tune" our preferences. For example we may adore the faces of our loved ones, as well as those who we admire, and they may become more beautiful to us over time because of who they are.

So I guess what I'm really wanting is to look like my mom, my first favorite pale-skinned brunette. And I do.