Beautiful

Over the weekend my friends Chuck and Steve were talking about how they perceive their longtime partners (one girlfriend, one wife). Chuck and Steve are two of my beer-drinking, sports-watching, smack-talking friends; in other words, not a touchy-feely pair. But both have ended up in committed relationships, and once they got going about their chosen ladies, they had a lot to say. The conversation turned to looks, and suddenly we were having an unlikely discussion about beauty.

I've heard that science confirms guys are more visual creatures, and it makes sense: words like hot, sexy, cute, smokin', pretty, honey and babe are regular parts of our vocabulary. These words describe visual qualities we find attractive, tempting, desirable -- but in a distracting, immediate way. Even guys reserve the word "beautiful" for something else. And the other day, when Chuck and Steve got all excited talking about how beautiful their partners were, I remembered again what beautiful really means to us as guys.

Beautiful is something different, something untouchable by makeup, manicures, wax jobs, surgery: it cuts through all the crap society throws at us in magazines, movies, TV, porn. For a guy, beauty is still inextricably connected to a woman's character, her mystery: to what she means -- or might mean -- to us. Beauty can happen in something as simple as the wide roundness of a thigh, the slimness of an arm, the poke of a belly, the angle of a chin. We can find it in eyes, ears, hair, hips; and it doesn't follow any of the rules laid down in diet ads and spring break videos. It's the product of our early memories and experiences, our first crushes, our heartbreaks, our hopes, and most of all it's a sign of what we're really looking for.

So do yourself a favor and take a day off from worrying about your diet, your eyebrows, your skin. It's possible all that effort could end up distracting an extra one or two of us, but your real beauty, the shit that matters, is already there, ready to be recognized in the same grade-school dance of love that guys get caught up in, too. When you feel happy and content, when you feel good about yourself, you're putting your beauty up front where the guy who deserves you is going to see it. And beautiful -- that intersection of appearance and character and something else, something you have, have always had, that thing about you -- is irresistible.