The One Where I'm a Super Model

Let's just get one thing straight, I am not, nor have I ever been a model. That short stint at the Wendy Ward Fashion School in Junior High does not count. Nor does the time I wore a form fitting, sequined gown with a slit clear up to there as I stood in the spot light at Ball University handing out theatrical awards. 

Besides, I've always been too low for a high praise, too brown for a fair praise, and too little for a great praise (name that movie).

The entire thought process behind today's blog post comes courtesy of Sport Illustrated. That rag that posts indecent pictures of ridiculously beautiful young girls garbed (snort) in mere scraps of fabric and string once every year. 

I do not care about SI or the silly girls who undress for it. Nor do I give a whit about the drooling fools who pay good money for such eye candy. 

This is, in fact, a blog about a man who is so silly as to think that I am beautiful. He says that I am beautiful in the early morning light, with my hair askew and dark circles lying beneath my eyes. 

He says that I am beautiful when I'm yellow gloved, smelling of cleaner as I scrub the toilet. 

He even thinks I'm beautiful knowing that only the hair dresser knows my "true" hair color. 

When I return from a long day at the office, he tells me I'm beautiful.

When I've ranted and raved and thrown a fit because of some real or imagined injustice...Yep, still his pretty girl.

At nearly forty-five years old...you got it, I'm still the one who sets his heart to beating.

The other night, as I lay in bed reflecting on the day, the cover of SI slithered into my mind. I thought about that very pretty, nineteen-year-old girl who is plastered on the cover. I sighed in my heart that I was never, nor will I ever be THAT kind of pretty. 

My eyes will always be brown. I will always be short. My weight and I will battle until the day I finally admit defeat and they lay me in my grave. 

No, I will never, ever be the head turner that pretty, young girl is today. 

Sigh.

And then that silly man who has lain in bed beside me these twenty-four years rolled over and whispered, "You're beautiful".

Did he somehow know that I was fretting the wrinkles that are multiplying or the fat that refuses to budge? Could he have somehow read my mind? Or could it be that he just finds me - the silly, vain, middle aged woman that I am beautiful?

He is not a liar.

He is not a flatterer. 

He is a good man.

And I am his pretty girl.

Take that SI Girl!