Pretty

Family photo 1973

Before the age of 9, I was not often called pretty. Badly abused, I would ply my psyche and body to meet perpetrators' or my mother's needs. Not having received the nurturing a child receives through unconditional love, especially in the early years, I remained very open to meet adults' expectations, which alone shape a child's mind, and by extension, the body, and the face. Yes, we have our bone structure, but I found myself transforming however needed, for the abusers in the network, or for my mother at home - for whom I needed to be ugly. The change of hands often involved my rather drastic physical changes. Of course I couldn't consciously control this - it was always depending on the adult. 

When I was nine years old I gave one perpetrator a taste of nurturing by telling him he was handsome, and I saw him physically transform, and actually become more handsome. He returned the projection, and suddenly I too started to look pretty. My features had never before fallen so effortlessly into a beautiful mask, the whole of which was appealing and attractive to this man, obsessed with looks. In the weeks I spent in his presence I first tasted this limited power afforded to girls and women in this dark patriarchy - the power of beauty that would forever affect almost every human interaction I would have from then on out. 

This nine year old girl, who received that power through this initial interaction, abusive in nature, could live with the abuse thanks to the pleasure of being beautiful, and the positive reactions this power would elicit everywhere she went. These positive reactions became the replacement for the nurturing she never received, and this one power became her strongest addiction. From then on, my attempts to be ugly for my mother weren't as successful - she felt it too - and while at times she would praise me, it increased her envy. 

The side effect of becoming a beautiful girl and woman, was that from that day forward, I never believed I could be loved unconditionally. Beauty had become the essential condition, and in my secret soul, I felt infinitely unlovable. 

When I moved to Paris as a young woman, I was naturally drawn into a circle of models and received countless offers for photoshoots and even movie roles, but I was horribly self-conscious in front of the camera because of photos taken in the network, and avoided the spotlight. Privately, both good and not-so-good men responded to me for my looks alone, while I believed that they were drawn to my essence. In reality that essence was withering beneath my magnetic mask, and the mask indelibly linked to sexuality - I was thought beautiful in direct correlation to the degree my features and body were sensualized. 

As with any power, I could easily guess the degree of men's attraction, and used it to survive in the world, measuring how much they would do for me without demanding sex. For many years, this is how I landed jobs and apartments. 

Of course this female power is limited, because society's pedophile leaders have used the propaganda machine to create a generalized taste for teen girls as the ideal sexual object. This brainwashing has reached so deep into Western Culture that many men and women have no idea of their own addiction. Turn on the TV and the problem is on display in spades, seeded in every possible program you can tune into. 

As I aged I noticed how the same kind of men I would have attracted previously paid me no mind, and noticed my own attempts to regain what had once been second nature through increased attention to my looks. Admitting the dichotomy between those attempts and the former attractiveness I had believed to be straight from my beautiful soul, eventually led me to the deep-buried truth, resting with the nine year old girl inside of me. She wonders why she should give up something that worked so incredibly well for her in the world, only to feel the pain of the abuse. She feels ashamed for having this power, and is yet scared to give it up, certain there is no love for her on the other side of this.

Empowerment means you are lovable just as you are, and it is gender neutral just like the soul. Needing power means that you feel unloved and unlovable, and covers the fear that your essence is flawed. 

It's not sufficient to tell yourself you are essentially perfect to get to the truth, you need the experience of unconditional love. If you see a woman addicted to this power of beauty, to whatever degree, however desperately or strongly as we see in so many celebrities, we can silently offer understanding in the knowledge that this power helped her to cope with sexual abuse - even if the power itself often buries her own memory of the abuse. The more we understand, the more our awareness increases of the pedophilistic brainwashing to which we've all been subject, the more we understand about sexual trauma and its effects, the more we will be able to offer understanding and unconditional love for all.

Working on a chapter on sexual objectification for my book: "Seeds Beneath the Snow."

Photo: family picture aged 10.