2000-07-29 | 04:17:39

i'm not what you'd call pretty.

oh, sure. some would disagree. my mom for one. and my good friends, of course. and hopefully my who's.

oh, i clean up nice. sometimes i look at my reflection and think, "well, allllllright, girl!"

every once in awhile i start wishing i was more attractive. most of my girlfriends are prettier than me. i enjoy their pulchritude and am proud, if that's the right word, because they are beautiful on their interiors, as well. i've occasionally thought, "if i ever get married, i'm going to have the most beautiful bridesmaid line-up of females outside of the miss universe pageant." i mean, the guests are gonna be murmuring about it, for real.

tough thing about having beautiful friends...you can easily observe the contrast of how guys act towards them as opposed to their slightly-less-beautiful counterparts. as one men's magazine put it so sweetly, the hotties (i hate that word, by the way) and their nottie friends. my god! the notties.

case in point. my soon-to-be-a-new-yorker friend, stephanie, is simply exquisite. guys drop jaw and ask about her when i bring her around. ah, yeah, she's the one featured in my male co-workers' previously mentioned lesbian fantasies. she is sweet and smart, too. triple threat. i get a kick out it. again, i take friend pride. as opposed to gay pride. i'm mean, you're hot, stephanie, but i like boys.

anyway, we met this mini-donald trump on our trip to new york. he was nice, michael j. fox-esh looking, evidently wealthy and according to him, successfully wading into the .com world. she and i both talked to him, but i put in the most time. and at points, it felt like doing time. as polite and smart as he was, i found him to be a bit too cocky for my taste. dropping words like "my driver," "business trip to the west indies." well, i guess if you've got it, flaunt it. he asked for both of our e-mails when we left. he only e-mailed stephanie. now this is the height of ridiculousness for me to even be talking about this. it's not like i was interested in the guy, quite the opposite, and same with her. it is just a recent example of how the politics of looks work.

marilyn monroe in "gentlemen prefer blondes" tries to convince her true love's rich father that it's ok that she is partially after his son for his money: "but don't you see," she breathlessly pouts to the dad, "that a girl being pretty is like a man being rich?"

so true. so true. ah, i'm no quasimodo. i get by. i gots my charm. especially if they hang around long enough for me to get my talk on, but survival of the prettiest is alive and well, my friends. alive and well. ain't nothing to be done.

ah, well. bottom line is, thank god for the beautiful things in this world. i know i love them. and once in awhile, on a good hair day, count myself among them.

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