with her horses supplied her with the understanding that the characteristics that make people beautiful are not
always visible. There was a complete trust that aided in the binding of their personalities. Her days spent with the
horses were filled with smiles, laughter, and happiness. Performing well with the horses gave her a sense of
self-pride and accomplishment to center her life around. Society made her feel too ugly for love or acceptance.
The animals were not influenced by her outward appearance, but instead by her actions, personality, and spirit:
“Horses neither disapproved or approved of what I looked like. All that counted was how I treated them, how my
actions weighted themselves in the world” (152). These ideal relationships not only allowed her to experience the
valiant, true, intense love she longed for in human companions, but also gave her a way of coping with her
loneliness. She also came to understand the real beauty of the world, the beauty that swells beneath the surface
of every being.
The harshness of her peers did not end when she became older. Groups of drunken men would hoot at
her from a distance, but taunt her once they saw her face. The boys in High School had done the same thing, but
instead would become silent with rejection when they saw her face. Another incident that smothered her
self-esteem happened when a homeless man, begging for money, approached her from behind. When she
turned around and revealed her face, he apologized and gave her a dollar bill. These occurrences demonstrate
the intricate relationship between beauty and self-respect in our society. The improper, crude, drunken men were
only trying to come across as tough and cool to their friends. The homeless man evidently illustrates that even
though he probably doesn’t have a job, education, or economic status, he considers her ugliness to make her
worse off than him. Her feelings of inadequacy were confirmed by society’s relentless treatment toward her
appearance.
During one of her recessions in self-esteem, her friend form college, Greg, pulled her up by taking her
dancing at gay clubs. Being encompassed by homosexual males gave her a blanket of security: “No one took
notice of me – I was without value in this world. It was easy to sublimate my own desire and sustain my feelings
of physical worthlessness” (201). She knew that none of the men there cared about her attractiveness because in
their minds she was no less desirable than any other female. As each beat of the music moved through her body,
she was able to let her emotions escape. During her senior year of college she met a group of transvestites that
experimented with her femininity by spreading on loads of makeup. These experiences helped begin to define
her feminine appearance and acceptance from males.
Lucy believed that not having a lover meant she was ultimately unlovable, and too ugly to ever get a
lover. Sex was her salvation. “If only I could get someone to have sex with me, it would mean I was attractive,
that someone could love me” (206). Miniskirts, garter belts, high heels and her dedication to her healthy, fit body
allowed her to be more feminine as she added to her list of sexual encounters. Her certainty that only love from
another person could prove her value left her looking for love in all the wrong places. How she, as a woman,
would find her place in society would not be truly revealed to her until later. Sex and fashion did not fill her void,
but did play an important role in her self-definition and insight for need of something more definite.
In our society, women are especially pressured to wear their beauty on the surface. Lucy found hers
within as she accepted her obvious disfigurement. After this revelation she experienced a moment of freedom:
“I’d had [freedom] behind my Halloween mask all those years. As a child I expected my liberation to come from
getting a new face put on, but now I saw it came from shedding my image” (222). Throughout her life she tried to
overcome the teasing, the stares, the whispers, the absence of love, and the overall harshness of her peers by
finding outlets for her oppressed emotions of loneliness. Although Halloween, animals, dancing, fashion
expression, and sex gave her some compensation, none of these could give her complete self-assurance. She
had longed to be accepted by society’s standards, but came to terms with her feelings and acknowledged her true
self. As her soul unfolded, her personality was no longer restrained by feelings of insecurity and need to conform
to feminine standards.
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