Joani Baloney. As a kid, it was not for nothing that I was called “Joani Baloney”. You see, I “carried a bit of “baby fat” long after I was a baby. Though my mom called me the “prettiest baby” of her six, pretty apparently did not survive the cradle.
Or at least so I was told.
Dressed in my brother Tim’s hand-me-downs, in grade school, it was virtually impossible not to look like a boy. I did my best to deny it. I curled my hair in pink plastic rollers, rolled up with Dippity-Do. I would tie it back in a velvet bow — a little femininity in my denim and dungarees.
My high school days were hippie-dippy days and we hippies did not care, of course, how we looked. Though we worked very hard to get it right.
I parted my hair down the middle and wore it down to my waist. The hems of my bellbottoms were properly fringed and barely held up with a macramé belt. I wore tie-died t-shirts and patchwork skirts. On my feet I only wore flats – little canvas Mary Jane’s – from the Chinese grocery. And when it was cold – an army jacket or a Navy pea coat from Sunny’s Surplus Store.
And no makeup, of course. Natural. You had to look natural.
No problem. My mom never taught me and I never asked. In high school, makeup was very uncool. Oddly though in college, my mom more than hinted that I could use a little. She set me up with the complete line of Mary Kay cosmetics. I didn’t have a clue what to do with it. All pinked out in its display case, it gathered dust in my bathroom for years.
Joani Baloney was a pretty plain Jane and she worked very hard to keep it that way.
I grew up camera shy. There are very few photos of me in my youth. It seemed safer to hide. Invisible to the lens.
I wore pants and rarely a dress.
I wore turtlenecks – no decolletage.
Dark colors not bright.
Nothing revealing — because there was nothing to reveal.
Until I had therapy. Lots of therapy.
In therapy I discovered that this bipolar soul is a beautiful soul — lovely on the inside. But it took a lover to convince me that I am also beautiful to behold.
Beautiful on the outside.
Beautiful from head to toe.
Beauty is in the eye of the Beloved.
So beloved of myself and beloved of my God
— I have shed my cocoon and emerged as a passable butterfly.
Four sizes down, my wardrobe has gotten all dressed up – a bit of frills and frippery from Anthropologie and designer duds from consignment shops.
My nails are polished. My lips are glossed. My hair is fluffed. My ass is buffed:)
Cinderella I am not – but I do have a Rent-the-Runway account – for that occasional gown.
Mirror, mirror in my purse,
This beauty thing for me’s a first.
An ugly duckling I thought I was
Or just average just because.
But looking deeper in my soul
And reaching deeper in my gut,
Something lovely there I touched,
Someone lovely all along.
Once a duckling,
Now a swan.
Beauty is in the eye of the Beloved.
Unorthodox and Unhinged 