The word 'beautiful' gets bandied about quite a lot. Now, people who know me fairly well might hear the warning bells implicit in that word being spoken in any close proximity to me. We don't have a good relationship. Of course, I'm quite happy to use it. Many is the time that word has passed my lips in a breathy exclamation of delight about any number of things - humans, animals, objects, songs, buildings, landscapes, ideas. I am perfectly happy to label these things as beautiful and it generally is something that has a fair emotional whack along with it. I have a real love of beauty, which occasionally hits me like a ton of bricks (oof, beauty) and it encompasses many forms. Which is why I struggle with it being applied to me.
Now, this isn't modesty, false or otherwise. I don't say things like this in order to get compliments. I am not fishing. Full disclosure time: I am fairly vain. I love looking at my face. It genuinely fascinates me. Actually, I am obsessive about faces in general. The photography books I own are all portraits. Part of the reason I love films so much is because of the film books my parents had and I used to gaze at the stills because of the frozen extremes of expression. "I Walked With a Zombie" was responsible for several nightmares growing up. I mean, this:
It's the eyes. Nothing else about this photo is that creepy. The woman on the left even looks slightly bored: "Blah blah voodoo zombies. I want a manicure..."
So don't get me wrong, I love my face. It is expressive and interesting and an absolutely brilliant storytelling tool. The problem is more that I am not beautiful. I have high standards when it comes to beauty and I do not meet them. The emotional whack that is my appreciation of beauty in other things is, when it comes to me, something far more punishing. It hurts me that I am not beautiful. Every time during the readthrough that someone mentions Imogen's beauty, I squirm. And it is A LOT. Seriously. She is so pretty that even when dressed as a boy, when she meets her separated-at-birth brothers for the first time, one of them chats her up: "Were you a woman, youth/I should woo hard". Also, yes, I concede that the plot is completely mental.
Therefore, I am in paroxysms of horror about people watching the play and assuming that because I play the part, that is who I believe myself to be. Much like when I had a hilarious part in a short play where my character thinks she's a 9 out of 10. I enjoyed the part a lot but when I sat in the audience to watch the rest of the plays, a fellow audience member turned to me and said "I'd say you were a four. After a pint". For some reason, perhaps because he'd had a few more than a pint or because my character was kind of a bitch or because we'd been having a conversation in his head prior to that, he felt that was an entirely appropriate thing to say to a complete stranger (if you're interested, my cutting response was to look shocked, say nothing, obsess about it through the rest of the evening, cry in the car on the way back home and then fail to sleep for a few nights. I know, I know. I am the coolest woman who ever lived. The best bit is that my Mum, who had been sitting next to me but had missed the vital exchange, saw him a couple of days later and told him the heck off (she's very polite). Again, I am not in the least bit cool but my Mum is awesome).
However, the upside is the determination that all of this gives me. I may not be beautiful but I am going to try as hard as humanly possible to give the impression that I am. The last time I felt like this because of a play (Closer, 2009), I lost two stone. I hate feeling perpetually hungry. I hate aching constantly because of exercise. But I love the thought of being onstage and doing this part well. And the thought that sustains me when I'm running against the wind on Southsea seafront or when I'm passing up on a meal of Waitrose's Macaroni Cheese followed by their Tarte au Chocolat?
I am a motherfucking princess.
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