“And what about her?”
“Oh my god, she’s hilarious!”
“I know! And her face! It’s like a dog’s face!”
“Hahaha, and her hair! And it’s not even her own. That wig’s horrific!”
“Is it a woman anyway? It could just as well be a man with that nose.”
“HAHAHAHARFfff ugh ugh ugh snort”
“Ssh, we’re in a museum….”

To let some of the stress of moving in together and the exhaustion of all the taking care of everything out of our system Matt and I went to one of the art museums in town. One of the exhibitions was of paintings of portraits made in the 18th century. I’m sure you know them, portraits made on assignment for the richer part of society. They usually represent those rich people with unnatural pinkish skin and white wigs. Funnily, these portrayed men and women must have felt pretty beautiful and important. Now all I can appreciate them for is their choking-with-laughter effect in the Sunday afternoon.

In their days these people were perceived as beautiful people. But nowadays they would both be laughing stock and plain dead ugly. This made me think: Physical appearance is so relative. What is pretty today may well be unattractive tomorrow. As a result looking good on the outside felt a lot less important to me than magazines and television had made me feel for the past fifteen or so years.

In fact these paintings made me feel pretty good about myself. I may not be a supermodel and if I could I’d change a lot of my body. But for me it’s a hundred percent clear I’m more attractive than these women. Hurrah!

I decided to celebrate this fact by feasting on an extra large cappuccino and a monstrous piece of chocolate cake in the museum cafe. During my third bite of cake I came to realize this may be the ultimate solution for all those girls with low self-esteem about their body. Those girls that are constantly nagging about their appearance, about the fact that they are too fat, too thin, too ugly. They should be sent on a trip to a museum with art like this! Satisfied with me solely solving one of the biggest problems in western modern society I granted myself another big bite of my chocolate cake.

In between the last sip of cappuccino and spooning out the remainder of milk foam I realized something else. An intriguing aspect of the paintings was the fact that they portray children like little grown-ups instead of real children. I remember learning in primary school that this was typical for paintings of this era. Meanwhile we were sitting in that classroom, all wearing sweatshirts, jogging pants, pink denim trousers, and ugly too big t-shirts. Nothing my mum or any other reasonable grown up would wear. But then again: my mum had stopped climbing trees and mud fighting quite a while ago.

When I thought it over, children’s clothing had changed soon after my generation. Nowadays little girls wear women’s clothing: high heels, tight jeans, g-strings, shirts that show their non-existent decolletes and make-up. I blame the immense popularity of the Spice Girls at the time. And I know I’m right. Apparently dressing up like grown-ups is of all ages. Maybe it’s a wave-like movement that every once in a while children dress like children, grown-ups or children again?

Despite the educational attempts of the museum, it had failed in every way to teach me anything about the who and how of 18th portrait painting. Still it had definitely been a well spent afternoon, with a lot of the prior stress flowing away, some true bursts into laughter and a few new insights on image building and physical appearance. And the chocolate cake does ensure another visit in the nearby future.

One thing keeps spinning around in my head: I see this image of a girl carrying an art book with her to a beauty salon appointment. The hairdresser and beautician ask her what she wants to be done with her hair and skin. The girl opens the book on a page about 18th century portraits, a full colour picture fills the entire page. “I want to look just like the pretty girl in the picture”.

Column published by Cecile on Monday, February 5th, 2007.

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