aye, different

Just read a piece by someone I love dearly that detailed her struggles with body image. From my point of view, it's an unnecessary concern for her, although she seems to be staying on top of it rather well. Of course, my point of view is heavily biased in her favour and incorrigibly slanted towards her benefit as a whole person. There are no forthcoming apologies for that, but it will of course make it harder for me to understand how said concern affects her.
I don't worry about her; it just made me realise how infuriating this issue is to me. Can there be a more useless facet of a human's existence to wield so much power over them, to thwart them and berate them at every turn, to force them to alter and amputate pieces of themselves inside and out to chase this impossible and ever-changing mirage of perfection?
Why do I give a flying fuck what people think of how I look? Why have I ever once changed the way I did anything to appease their judgments? I'm ugly by most standards. Overweight, oddly shaped, impenetrably strange fashion sense. Deal with it. I'm done trying to impress anyone. I have a wife who's happy with what she's got here, even if no one envies her. She told all of Facebook today that she married me for my weapons. I love this woman.
She dealt with the same body-image bullshit growing up. It still bogs her down sometimes. I'm as happy with her as I'd be with any other woman on this planet, but you don't turn off three decades of taunts and derision and objectification in a blink. I don't try to turn it off; I work my ass off to prove it all wrong. Because it is.
Has anyone but me rationally considered that there had best be more going for a person than looks if they're a potential friend, let alone life partner? It is infuriating to see and hear and breathe this mania at every turn. I can't do, say, or think anything without some nattering voice trying to turn it into an obsession.
I looked up Virginia Hey recently. She played Warrior Woman in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, the movie that formed the backdrop for much of my misspent youth, and Zhaan on the Farscape series. She accepted me as a friend on her Facebook page, and I looked at the photos she had posted, not only from her films and television work, but also of her hanging out with dear friends in London, just being another pretty 50-something out and about in a nifty city with people she loves.
She happens to be a strikingly beautiful female celebrity who had a fairly major role in a film dear to my heart. Her beauty does not intoxicate me or addle me with lust. I am interested in the person that she is, not the image she projects. I refuse to be obsessed with or overawed by her. Or anyone else. If I could have any relationship at all with Ms. Hey, it would be the same kind of friendship my wife and I have with Angela or Jenn or K or Niko. Real people sharing real life and bearing each other's burdens through love and faith.
I very much doubt it'll ever happen, unless New London explodes as the new East Coast film capital, and that's okay. Because I know, no matter what anyone wants to think, that there are other ways to respond to a famous beauty besides stalking or worship. I've been on the losing side of the body-image game since birth. It holds no promise or illusions for me. I care about my own much more than I should, but that's just one of a long list of bugs that God's fixing in me a day at a time. The people who matter most to me like who they see when I show up no matter what the outside looks like.
There are those who doubt or deride what I wrote here, because they are likely so given to this sickness that they can't help but see it in others. They'd rather infect everyone else than get healthy. Stuff every one of them. Let them prove me wrong about them or keep it to themselves. I'm armed and insecure and about to hit my wall with this noise. It never has been a good idea to fuck with me, and it gets to be a worse idea every day.