Short Story: That's What Beautiful Is

I flipped through the magazine, and eye-shocking advertisements of models with intense makeup demanded me to look. Too fake, too phony. Do you really expect me to believe that that lipstick, that shampoo, that mascara, that dress will make me as gorgeous as the woman plus with my entire hair and face done with complete other products?

But one girl really caught my eye. She was a photo to commercialize Avon, but that wasn’t the point. She was my idea of beautiful. She had pale but smooth skin and messy dark blond hair with a careless fringe of this-way-and-that strands hanging in her eyes. And those eyes. They shimmered like a deep and haunting ocean and sparkled like the sea sparkles when the sun is directly ahead and makes it seem like there’s a thousand diamonds bobbing in and out of the waves. The irises glitter, making an impact on you. The faint eye shadow blends into the real blue fire. She had seemingly no makeup until you noticed the pale lipstick.

She has that ageless glamour: glanced at far away, she appears to be thirty or forty. Close, and she’s sixteen. Her personality seems shy and she doesn’t do much with her hair and makeup like she’s trying to draw no attention to herself. Like the woman doesn’t want anyone to notice her. Well, she’s got my attention. All that lipstick and blush of the other models is too loud, too artificial. Her looks are quiet and real. Like me.