Love Me Ugly. Love Me True.

By Amy Coward

 

If you believe everything you see on television, love is for the beautiful.

You’ve seen the commercial where the beautiful couple on a romantic getaway looks longingly at each other. Both people are model-gorgeous, she with long-flowing hair and he a pure specimen of fitness.

And then there’s the one where the beautiful woman has on the perfect perfume and as she walks mysteriously across the room, with every hair in place, men practically fall at her feet. I know she probably smells good, too, but honestly…

These scenarios are ridiculous.

My family loves to tell a funny story from years ago when we were tubing down the Ichetucknee River in Florida. There was a large family tubing along near us, a group of country folk, you might say. They looked a little rough, but they were friendly and having a good time. At one point, the mother of the family drifted into the weeds off to the side, getting tangled and causing her clan to worry. “Get mama out of them weeds!” shouted one of the brothers and several family members paddled over to free her. Obviously, they loved “mama” and did not want her stuck, unable to continue her cruise. No beauty here. Just love.

Quite simply, it’s easy to go “ga-ga” over someone beautiful with nary a flaw in sight. Even kids and puppies are more adorable when they’re small and cute. (Just wait til the kid is throwing a tantrum in Target or the puppy is chewing the door off its hinges. That’s when it gets real.)

True love, though, shows up when things are the ugliest.

Love is when someone holds your hair while you lose your lunch. When someone hugs you while you sob over a terrible day at work. When someone sets an alarm for the middle of the night to bring you more pain meds. When someone helps you to the bathroom because you can’t walk after surgery.

When these things happen, your hair is not flowing in the breeze.

Your makeup is not perfect.

No. Your hair is matted, your mascara is smeared and you may not even smell very good.

The guy about to give a rose to someone on “The Bachelorette” probably cannot even imagine such a situation. All he sees is a room of inhumanly beautiful women (honestly, are they all from Stepford?) from which he plans to choose a life partner. Ugh.

What will he do when his precious bride gets shingles? Or breaks out in hives all over her face?

Probably run.

We’ve been fed this message all our lives – that only the beautiful deserve love. Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White…”Mirror, Mirror on the Wall. Who’s the fairest of them all?” But unfortunately, beauty is short-lived if you get it at all. And Mother Nature has a way of taking it bit by bit as we age so there better be something more.

Otherwise, “Mama” could remain in “them weeds” for a very long time.

 

Amy Coward is a public relations professional in Columbia, SC. When she is not managing the madness of event planning at Palmetto Health Foundation, she is turning her empty nest upside down looking for fun and finding it.