Existentialism In The Bedroom - Beauty Is As Beauty Does, Or The Transformation Of A Very Ordinary Woman

Martha Land was as ordinary a girl as you could find in New Brighton, or anywhere else for that matter.  Linguists and social scientists agree that such a normative term, so common in everyday parlance, cannot really be defined except as 'adherence to the norm' or sometimes '[neg] so adhering to the norm as to be undesirable'; but all these terms and linguistic caveats have no real grab - i.e., you know it when you see it, and Martha Land was so unremarkable and undistinguished as to be almost invisible. 

'Who?' was the usual response to questions about 'the girl in ____', the seventh grade, Catechism class, on Ellis Street.  This might have been a problem for a more ambitious family than the Lands who were also, and not surprisingly, ordinary.  

Arnold Land worked in the New Brighton Federal Bank as an accountant in a small office behind the rank of tellers and far from the vast open spaces of the great Victorian marble, high-ceilinged lobby. 'Who?' would have described him as well. 

Patricia Land was a bit more noticeable, only because she said, 'It wants a big of color', and so, irregularly and unusually placed, was a burgundy rose on her dress, a festive patriotic ribbon in her hair, or a multi-colored friendship bracelet on her wrist. In all other ways she was just as dull and invisible as her husband and daughter. 

'Beauty is as beauty does', Mrs. Land said to her perplexed daughter who, always dutifully listening and paying attention to her mother, tried hard to understand.

'What's it mean, Mummy?', Martha asked. 

'Why it's just as plain as the nose on your face', Mrs. Land replied, but unsure herself what the old saw meant, she left it at that. Given the astounding plainness of everyone and everything in the Land family, Martha thought it might be some reflection of some kind of inverse beauty, the inner beauty of plainness. 

Ordinariness is a state of being, no one thing that anyone could point to - just an ensemble of unremarkable features, gesture, posture, dress that made someone recede from view - and when Martha looked in the mirror, she saw her reflection fade in and out like a chimera, or some magic trick, or the weird tricks played on perception in the Hall of Mirrors at the circus.

This disassembly gave her hope, for as she approached adolescence, she became more aware of her appearance and her appeal to boys, and there might be after all some hidden gem of beauty that might soon sparkle. 

'What are you doing in there?', her mother shouted from the kitchen.  'I've got to go to work', but Martha’s ablutions and fixer-up toilette took forever, tying up the bathroom for what seemed hours in an attempt to 'do something with my hair' or 'add some color to my cheeks'.  

In fact, as plain and ordinary as the lot of the Land family was, each had some tic to give some note of individuality to the way they looked.  Mrs. Land had this thing about a want of color; Mr. Land wanted his hair parted just so; and Martha was not yet sure, but hoped that out of the Picasso disassembly at the Fun House some note of beauty might come. 

 

The problem was that external ordinariness was also internalized - or better said, ordinariness is a complete, all-defining, indissoluble and existential characteristic; so for all the Lands' fidgeting with their hair or blush, it would not change the rigging of the ship; so when Martha's features suddenly became remarkable - perfect facial symmetry, full lips, violet eyes, flaxen, golden hair and an alluring, irresistible smile - she hardly noticed.  The change was so gradual and unexpected, that the face looking back at her in the mirror was the same, dull, ordinary face that had stared at her since she was little. 

'My, oh my', said the neighbor, Mrs. Prentiss, an ugly old bat who hobbled around her rose garden spraying for aphids, then planted plastic flowers when the petals fell off. 'Aren't you something to behold', for she like everyone in the neighborhood was taken with the girl's beauty and couldn't keep it to yourself. 

'Don't get a swelled head', her mother warned her, the more she heard the gossip about the stunning transformation of the young girl which she took both as a left-handed slap at her own dowdy, frumpy, and inordinate plainness and a warning.  It would not be long before the girl fell into 'the tender trap', got pregnant, and moved away.  'Beauty is as beauty does' finally became clear.  This stunningly beautiful girl was not long for New Brighton. 

Since ordinariness is a state of being, Martha went about her business as usual, but found herself the center of attention everywhere she went.  Whether it was the horny boys always following her up the stairs, or the gossipy girls who had never before paid her any attention but now was her adversary, she sure to get the pick of the litter and they left with the runts, or the male teachers who arranged academic conferences with her in the library, or the bus driver, the crossing guard, the list was endless. 

As it happens, Martha Land was a very intelligent young woman.  Ordinariness in her case stopped at the cerebrum.  While her simple emotions, her ordinariness, might be innate, so was her strong, unbounded, irrepressible will. Beauty and will were an indissoluble combination and an existentially potent one. Beauty is destiny and will is its facilitator, and she sensed that she should take advantage of this truly remarkable genetic twist of fate. 

Easier said than done, of course and since ordinariness had been such a defining part of her being, it was not easy to shake.  No matter what beautiful face looked back at her in the mirror or how determined she was to emerge from the dismal plainness of her existence, in every other way she tended toward the norm, the unremarkable, and the uneventful. 

Here is where Nature-Nurture comes into play, and given the dynamic forces of the environment - her social milieu and the influences within it - wouldn't one expects some deviation from the norm? Some shift to the asymptotes of the bell curve?

 

And so it was that this felicitous social influence gave lie to what she had thought was an innate, hardwired nature. Beauty was transformative in and of itself, and the reactions it provoked only added to the potency of the phenomenon.  Heads turned her way before the observer knew what had hit him.  She was the fragrant flower.  Her scent was enough to lure a thousand bees from the hive. 

What to do with this extraordinary thing? That was the question.  Mathematics aside - after all what was that but calculating the number of angels on the head of a pin - it was beauty and only beauty that mattered. Modelling, Hollywood? Vain, temporal pursuits when the real essence of beauty was power, unmitigated sexual power, the power to influence without thinking, to produce instinctive response, effect willing complaisance, to effortlessly rule, to dominate, to use; and will assured the full extent of its influence. 

Sleep with the producer? Of course, but the other way around - Martha would be the seducer, the sexual master, the victor.

She was Woman - for what else describes essential female nature than the matrix of will and beauty of which intelligence is the by-product. Endowed with both beauty and will, plotting, calculating, parsing, and analyzing are unnecessary.  She was nature's end product. Hers was a micro-universe, all that anyone needed to know about the world. 

The world - the commonplace, pedestrian, predictable place of residence - was an easy target, a mark, a john; and her string of economic, financial, and political successes were expected; but it was the conquest, the victory that counted, the one verifiable accountability.  

Nietzsche famously remarked that the only validation of the individual in a meaningless worlds is the expression of pure will, and Martha Land sure fit the bill.