A girl I know one time told me about the golden ratio. To demonstrate she lined up her face at a side angle, approximated measurements in the air. See? she said. I didn’t see but I also didn’t know what to say. To deny her her scientific beauty seemed petty and spiteful, a clear indication of jealousy and arrogance about my lopsided face. To go along with it seemed wrong, a kind of empty deferral to social hierarchy, to the presumption that it’s really possible, anatomically speaking, to be the most beautiful.
There’s an essay in The Point that was going around a little while ago about having a beautiful friend. The author, Grazie Sophia Christie, writes about a lifelong friendship of hers with another woman who is more beautiful than she is. In her retelling of their friendship, it was through this constant comparison that she learned she was the less pretty one, or entirely average-looking. “I pursue beautiful friends like some women do men who will strike them in bed at night,” she…