Authenticity

Perfect is hot. I don’t want to downplay perfection. We’ve given things and people that title for a reason. The filters, the plastic surgeons, the highlight reels of lives that make everything just so. We’re drawn to it. Something in our minds craves beauty. Perfect things are easy beauty. They just are and we like them. We kind of hate that we like them, but we do. Our feeds have tricked us into thinking that perfection is the only kind of beauty that counts. Somewhere inside of us, between the lining of our abdomen, we know that perfection is not the ultimate aesthetic. We crave something beyond copies of loveliness.

Scrolling through my feed on a random Tuesday: images of full-lipped women, caramelized dessert in spotless kitchens, perky tits, matching work out gear, a reading nook designed to the nines, I stumble straight past perfection into something more. Something that doesn’t just pacify my human craving for beauty, but leaves me satisfied and full-bellied without an actual bite to eat.

Authenticity.

If perfect is a crush, authenticity is a devotion. I find that devotion in the work of musician Renee Christine. Holding her cello with eyes closed, backwards baseball cap, screaming out her lyrics and turning the void into something full. Full of passion. Full of anger. Full of an honesty that can’t be argued. She is so fucking beautiful. Not the tiny nosed, big haired, sharp collarboned way of Instagram models. But in a laid too bare before a world too rough, way. In a we are not alone, way. In an artistry as a form of survival, kind of way. I can scroll from perfect image to perfect image and feel something, but when I stumble upon her I am caught up. There is no scrolling away, there is only getting lost in her creation. Consuming it and being consumed by it in turn. I think if I could sit next to her I would trace the shape of her smile in my mind. Notice the flex of her fingers. Touch the softness of her hair. Beautiful.

Being a girl is an interesting experience. We are so very reduced to our appearance. If we have any attractiveness about us we are assumed to only be the shell of ourselves, while if we are considered unattractive we are dismissed entirely. Judged or ignored, and often somehow both. It is easy to see ‘perfect’ women and think that is the only way to be beautiful. To be valid. To be allowed to take up space. All the media forms that use beauty to sell continually push similar versions of beauty at us, teaching our inner critic a dialogue wherein imperfection cannot equal beauty. Yet if we can peel ourselves away from the linear algorithms we will be reminded of all the different aesthetics and expressions that captivate.

I remember being 18 years old, snuck into a 21+ lounge by older friends. Lindsay was 23. At 18 I still felt more schoolgirl than anything, and these new friends in their early 20s were so very adult. Ordering something off the drink menu with ‘berry’ in it’s name. The drink was NOT whiskey-based. The only thing I knew of whiskey was the cheap stuff Kyle had brought to Kacey’s back porch in 10th grade that left us all puking our brains out the next day, so I said, “I don’t do whiskey.” as if I was experienced. I sat amongst the group in a series of black top tables. Soft jazz music played through the speakers. This was a very cool place. I was very cool for being here. Artsy and edgy with low-lighting. A sophisticated kind of bar to start our night.

Lindsay wore a red dress with red lipstick. She had a Grecian nose that was a bit too big for her face, a cowlick on the front right side of her head that pushed her blond hair up and back in a funny way, and a big smile with bright eyes. She was loud, and fun, and radiant. I watched her dance from conversation to conversation around our little group, laughing and swaying her hips. Her hair was down with her cowlick on full display and not once did I see her hand try to flatten it or tuck stray hair behind her ear to control it in any way. Eyes at every table continued to glance her way while we were there. She was captivating. My eyes found another girl at our table I didn’t know well, Sarah. She was by all traditional standards the most beautiful woman in that bar that night. But she wasn’t Lindsay.  Lindsay was who I wanted to talk to, who I wanted to impress, who I wanted to be at 23.

I can still remember connecting the dots of her imperfect nose to my own. The physical attributes about myself that I thought were worth being quiet over. How seeing her in all her vibrance while being imperfect but still beautiful taught me I was allowed to be imperfect and still feel beautiful too. That perfection isn’t what makes us worthy of taking up space, it is our authenticity that attracts.

Lindsay was the most interesting person at that bar. Renee Christine stole all of my attention on a platform made for speed engagement. Neither of them needed to be flawless to leave an impression. Both women who loudly and openly existed without space for shame. The truth is we like beauty in all of it’s honest forms. What we get so much of is dishonest beauty. All the surface level imitations of beauty that leave us hungry for something more. Because true beauty isn’t superficial. It is food for the soul.

I read an article recently by a forgotten journalist. The writing was clean and straightforward and easy to understand. The facts were laid out and the writing was good. It was arguably a perfectly written article. A few days later I was listening to an excerpt from The Anthony Bourdain Reader (a collection of his writings) about how eating decadent food was like fucking; it was graphic and crass and dripping wet in an almost viscerally seductive way. I’ll be damned I can remember a thing about that first article but I may never forget Bourdain’s. The ironic thing is many creators, artists, and craftsman in their trade could absolutely be defined as perfectionists. So many beautiful and moving pieces of art have been perfected. The difference is heart.

Perfect is hot, but without heart it is nothing more than a nice but forgettable moment. Authentic is messy or raw or dripping in lust or full of rage or laughing too loud or sticking up at odd angles or trying too hard or feeling too empty as a decoy to feeling so overwhelmingly full of sadness. Authentic is connection; to self, to each other, to who we have been and who we hope to be. Authentic is beautiful.

You can listen to artist Renee Christine on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1VGSv0y30R6THoFPMiccx2