Is confidence followed by talent and/or good looks or is it the other way around? It might seem odd to refer to good looks and talent as something that is gained. But it is not an alien or unconceivable thought.'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' is the cliched saying. So it is possible that if confidence was factored out of the equation, we would all be equally good looking. Hmm.
Once on the tube there were three girls. As usual, but foreign to me still, they were talking loud enough for the people on the opposite end of the carriage to hear. Occasionally they would say something startling or interesting and ten heads would turn, and faces would become animated. Micro-conversations would form for a second, some about topics these ladies brought up, others about their choice of dress.
They looked like halloween characters, witches to be precise. They wore heavy make up, one had a brimmed hat, and each one had at least one piece of clothing that was made of velvet. One lady wore a skirt that fell past her knees and flared out uncontrollably. She accompanied the skirt with black leather boots that were high enough to only leave a peep of her leg-skin showing when she stood up. Her friend had black fishnet stockings that formed diamonds about her pale, veiny legs.
Most people looking on would view them as charicatures, or odd, or delusioned. But they chatted there across the lane of seats with the broadest smiles, laughing at each other's jokes and not once giving any sign of insecurity--no quick glances left and right or sudden lowered voices during touchy parts of conversations. It made me think maybe I am delusioned, and their world is the real world. The beauty they feel in themselves and see in each other is perhaps what real beauty looks like. Maybe velvet is perpetually la mode.
In their case they believe they are beautiful, and are confident in their beauty, so even in their oddity do they make people question how they view them. I am sure there were more people that thought about the possibility of those three girls being the real representation of beauty. Some may have even touched their perfectly straight noses and wished it were curved a bit more like the 'witches'.
If confidence was factored out of this equation, they would be conventionally unpretty, and possibly shunned by the velvet haters of the fashion world. But ultimately it is a battle of confidence, not of looks or talent. Because even the most unconvincingly attractive or talented person could surface the greatest insecurities in another unanimously-agreed gorgeous or talented person.
It is the one that loves her nose, and positions it high in the air, that turns heads, and really makes a person consider the true meaning of beauty.
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