A few nights ago my photog friend Nathan Black, proprietor of knuckletattoos.com and all around good guy and I met at a local haunt where a bunch of girls were having what can only be described as a Mustache Party. Cute girls, all adorned with an astounding variety of penciled or pasted mustachios. Nathan, apparently, has a thing for hot girls with mustaches and, upon receiving a text from the bartender reading “dude, hots girls w mustaches” hightailed himself over to the ‘Stache Party with a quickness.
Personally, I am not a mustache enthusiast.
Seeing as I seem to spend quite a bit of time and money trying to rid myself of the damn things (I suspect I’ve sent at least one small Vietnamese village to college, seven dollars at a time) I do not see the allure of drawing or gluing them back on.
However, it does bring up an interesting question about unusual beauty. Were I not fundamentally lazy and against learning in any form, I would say something about all beautiful (not to be confused with cute or just pretty) people are beautiful in different ways and go all Anna “The Train” Karenina on your collective backsides. But I am, so I won’t and you’re just going to have to lump it.
That being said, I do believe that everyone has a weird little something that adds to their beauty. For me, it’s my slightly odd upper lip so for the second Big Question of the week
Francesca and Plumcake want to know:
What unusual characteristic makes you beautiful? Did you always love it or have you come to embracing it gradually?
I have amazing legs. I am short and fairly dumpy but I have these really muscular legs. I was not so happy with them when I was very young, but in college, I was complimented by a guy who said that he liked girls with muscles in their legs. Over the weekend, I was in an organized bike ride in Maryland and another rider came up next to me and said, “Awesome calves you’ve got there,” and silently rode on. Got to love them muscles.
Comment by Toby Wollin — April 29, 2008 @ 12:19 pm
For me, its my feet. I have size 10 feet. They’re somewhat narrow and curved slightly inward (thanks, Mom!), and adorned with bunions and a big scar (I ran into a baseboard heater when I was 7, and the corner of it caught on my foot and left a nice jagged scar across the top of it). However, as “ugly” as some people think my feet are, I take very good care of them, always making sure my toenails are polished and my heels are well-exfoliated. I love all shoes in general, but I especially enjoy wearing sandals in the summertime, to show off my gorgeous feet. :)
Comment by Jen — April 29, 2008 @ 1:14 pm
My freckles. From junior high through high school and beyond, I tried just about everything to get rid of them. Now I think they make me look spunky.
Comment by Despina — April 29, 2008 @ 1:26 pm
I have a mole on the back of my right hand, halfway between the knuckle of my ring finger and my wrist. When I was a child I thought it was sort of odd, but I’ve grown to love it. It’s such a little thing, but because it’s on my dominant hand I see it all the time, and I feel like I wouldn’t quite be me without it.
Comment by JaneC — April 29, 2008 @ 1:42 pm
My breasts. They are small for my size and sit high, but I didn’t always have two that were remotely the same size. When I started developing, my mother and I noticed that my right breast was growing much faster than my left and I got a falsie to even them out. It was foam. The next year we went back to the bra store and I got new bras and a bigger foam falsie. I was sure that the left would someday grow, but in the 10th grade my right was a C and my left was a AA. I had to get my first silicon form. Bathing suit shopping was a problem and I was afraid to date. I was also afraid of changing for gym class. I progressed to bigger and bigger forms until I was told that if I didn’t stop growing I would progress to mastectomy forms. I was 17 and shopping for college, knowing that I would never be normal if I didn’t have plastic surgery.
I entered college using two silicone forms together and determined than no one should know. That summer, we started looking for plastic surgeons knowing that nature had intended me to be an amazon. A very short, fat amazon. When I met my doctor I knew she understood my situation. She listened to what I had to say about my breasts knowing that no matter what artistry she could do to them, I had to live with them. So she asked me what I wanted and she was the first who listened when I said that I didn’t want them to be symetrical that I just wanted them to look nice in a bra and that most boys didn’t really care what the boobs looked like when they were playing with them. So we settled on one implant and letting the other be and when I went under the knife two months later, I woke up to natural looking boobs.
Even though I now look with in the realms of normal, I still haven’t regained all the sensitivity in my left breast. And they look very different, but as my boyfriend says, “symmetricality is boring”
Comment by sara a. — April 29, 2008 @ 2:02 pm
I have a very small pug nose. Which *sounds* cute, but I am not the cute, bubbly type; in fact, I have always wanted a nice, long aristocratic nose, preferably with a bump in it, so I could look down my nose at people.
I came by it naturally, since it was my grandmother’s nose also. But I didn’t really appreciate it until my beautiful daughter was born with the same nose. I can’t exactly hate a feature on myself that I find adorable on her…
Comment by snarkypants — April 29, 2008 @ 2:06 pm
My shoulder freckles! I think my shoulders are very attractive, and the freckles make them beautiful.
Comment by JRho — April 29, 2008 @ 2:42 pm
My hair started turning grey before I was 16 – just a streak at first. I wore it shoulder length at the time and both permed and colored it. Once my sons were born I no longer had time for the perm or color, so it got cut short and I started using a color enhancing shampoo. For the last 20+ years I’ve been stopped in the store, the mall, on the street, in restaurants, etc by people commenting on it. My new husband says it’s one of the things that stopped him in his tracks when he first met me.
I’ve been told I’m brave for letting it “go grey”. Honestly, I’m just too lazy and cheap to color it all the time. And really, once I style it in the morning (a handful of product and I’m done in about 30 seconds) I really never look at it again until bedtime. It does set me apart in a crowd, though.
Comment by Carol — April 29, 2008 @ 3:05 pm
I have a ski slope nose with a dimple in the middle (thanks Hungarian grandma!). I got teased about it as a teenager but even then I didn’t mind. I love my nose. Who else has a dimple in their nose?
Comment by Red Queen — April 29, 2008 @ 3:41 pm
2 things I like; when I smile, you can see my top and bottom teeth, and my gums. It’s a BIG smile! Also, I have two little moles, one exactly in the center of each collarbone. When I was younger I used to pretend they made me glamorous like a movie star. Now, when I dress up, I know they do!
Comment by Elaine — April 29, 2008 @ 3:52 pm
When I was a toddler, I was in a bit of an accident that left me with several small scars on my bottom lip. My features have always been nice, but not terribly distinctive, so I kind of like my lip scars. They aren’t big enough to be the first thing anyone notices, bit I think they add a little depth and character to my face. Besides, they’ve been there as long as I can remember and then some. I wouldn’t feel quite me without them.
That said, I’m also a huge fan of my dark grey-blue eyes. A lot of people don’t realize my eyes are blue because they’re so dark, but when they do realize, there always seems to be an ‘oh wow, cool’ moment.
Comment by Twistie — April 29, 2008 @ 4:20 pm
I have a scar on the back of my right hand that I used to hate but that now I’ve gotten rather fond of. It’s a perfect elongated “S,” with a short line through the middle. It looks like a conjuror’s monogram.
Alas, it does not have a suitable story behind it: I stuck my hand into one of those heavy narrow bar glasses to wash it, and the glass burst. One sloppy stitching job later, and I have an exotic mark on the back of my stubby and otherwise undistinguished hand.
Comment by Bridey — April 29, 2008 @ 4:31 pm
My eyebrows. They are Brooke Shields-esque in their boldness.
When I was in high school, I gave serious thought to getting them shaped into something smaller. I’m glad I resisted.
I am fastidious about keeping them neat, however. No one wants to look like Helga, the former East German women’s wrestling coach.
Comment by Liz B. — April 29, 2008 @ 4:32 pm
My wavy hair. I always hated it because it’s a little wild and always did it’s own thing, and because beauty is always presented as smooth tamed hair, whether straight or in orderly ringlets or in perfect smooth waves. But my fiance convinced me that my natural hair is beautiful, and now I believe it. He also thinks my unusual nose (it has a big bump in the middle) makes me beautiful, but he’s having trouble convincing me on that one :P
Comment by Becky — April 29, 2008 @ 4:32 pm
At 17 I had cancer. An immature terratoma of the ovary, they had to remove my left ovary and fellopian tube. I was left with a foot long scar on my stomach with little scars on either side of the scar from where they had to staple my stomach closed. When I was younger I was concerned that no man would ever want to be with me, I worried about how it would look to other people and went back and forth with the idea of having it “fixed.” However, I am glad that I never changed my body to conform to what magazines or society thinks is “normal.” I found that over the years I have embraced my different-ness, my scar is my badge of courage, it does not define me either as a survivor or as a victim. It is just another mark on my body that shows that I live, I have lived and I will live.
Comment by Ileana — April 29, 2008 @ 5:00 pm
I have small hands. Not freakishly small, but the kind of thing where people want to compare hands sometimes and squeee over my cute little hands. That and a couple of other traditionally hyper-feminine features used to make me feel like people thought I was weak or wouldn’t take me seriously.
Now, I just enjoy getting to feel dainty even though I’m not dainty of body. It’s a good buffer and balance for my lack of brain-to-mouth filtration system. Oh, and I get buy and wear vintage gloves when I can find good ones.
Comment by Sara — April 29, 2008 @ 5:27 pm
My big chin. I used to think I looked like Jay Leno, but my husband says I look more like Drew Barrymore, and I’ve started to come around to his way of thinking. And I think he’s beginning to believe that I think his unibrow is super hot. Down with manscaping!
Comment by Chiken — April 29, 2008 @ 5:40 pm
Three things.
First, my freckles. I have ten or eleven total on my upper arms–the ONLY place I have freckles. I hid them my whole life under sleeves until high school, when it was just TOO HOT (Nebraska has ridiculous summers) when I went home from school and changed into a spagetti-strap tank top. I walked into the living room, my mum looked at me and said, “When did you get freckles?”
Second, my eyebrows. They’re a little bushy towards the centre, so I do take tweezers to those stray hairs every six months or so, but they’re otherwise lovely, full, and naturally arched. My right one is bisected by a scar and looks a bit “broken” sometimes; my mum’s constantly urging me to fill it in or let my bangs cover it, but I think it adds a bit of character to my face.
Third, my skin tone, which I’ve come to absolutely ADORE. My siblings and I are a quarter Native American; my siblings both have a beautiful skin tone, they have a healthy-looking natural tan all year round. With sun exposure in the summertime, it can deepen to the point where they’d pass for full-blood Native Americans if not for their blonde hair and blue eyes.
Alas, even though I’m as much a quarter Native American as they are, I take after my father’s side of the family one hundred percent–pure British. My father’s family has been in the country since the founding of Jamestown and the bloodline was considered “pure” until my siblings and me came along. The only thing I inherited from being a quarter Native American were slight red tones to my skin. As a child I hated them because I couldn’t wear red at all (and truthfully, I still can’t wear true red), and because it’s painfully obvious when I blush. At nineteen, I love it. I don’t have the perfect pale ivory skin that most of my dad’s family has; I have pale peach healthy-looking skin. Even when I’m sick, I never really look ill. It’s lovely.
Comment by calixti — April 29, 2008 @ 6:06 pm
Big hair. I mean big. I have big, fluffy, thick, wild, curly hair. I have hated it my whole life and my whole life I’ve listened to everyone talk about big it is – and why don’t I relax it, etc. etc. And now I lovvvvvve it. I’m a big glamazon kind of gal and I think it just adds to my fabulosity. :) (That and the big jar of cholesterol that makes it less tangly – and a little less big, let’s be honest..)
Comment by Alyssa — April 29, 2008 @ 6:31 pm
I love freckles and big curly hair!! Whoohoo.
I have to admit. I am just boring in this regard. I got nothing.
Comment by Chaser — April 29, 2008 @ 7:01 pm
Besides my Dolly Parton-esque boobs, my legs were the bane of my existence when I was young. From about the age of 10 I’d hear comments about “why are your legs so fat?” I could not wear boots until recently (thank God for xtra wide calfs). Pant legs always fit tightly. Now that I am older I am complimented all the time on my great muscular and curvy legs! Now I hear comments like “those are what legs should look like!” I get asked what I do to acquire such great legs but truthfully I don’t have to do much at all. About a week or two of walking three days a week is all it takes for my leg muscles to fill out. Even now it floors me how this feature I hated all those years ago has turned out to be a real asset! Take heart, young ones with the thunder thighs! They may turn out to be your best feature later in life. Actually, enjoy them now. I know they rock!
Comment by AquaMarine — April 29, 2008 @ 7:02 pm
Two things for me. One I embraced immediately: that would be the silver that is starting to streak in at the upper corner of my forehead on the right side. It’s not a skunk streak, and I don’t think that it ever will be, but it’s much more noticeable there than elsewhere in my hair.
The other took me a number of years to accept– it’s the color of my eyes. They aren’t really any particular color. Sometimes they’re grey, sometimes they’re very green, sometimes there a sort of neutral grey-green. When I was younger I desperately wanted either green-green-green eyes or blue eyes. I hated that mine never seemed to be the same color twice.
Comment by rabrab — April 29, 2008 @ 7:57 pm
I guess it might be a little vain in thinking that everything I have is beautiful. I love my soft, squishy stomach and my weird neck (it slopes upward instead of having a regular double chin), and I really kind of think it suits me. In a good way, of course. :)
Comment by fantasmicalfrankie — April 29, 2008 @ 11:21 pm
I dig my feet. My big toenails point upwards and my mother always said this made my feet look ‘happy’. I always feel delicate and feminine when I look at my feet.
Comment by Kristen — April 30, 2008 @ 1:08 am
Mine is my feet. I have very wide feet with very round and short toes that really do look somewhat like little vienna sausages, and this is what they are always compared to when people comment on them. When I was a kid, I thought my feet were perfect, I would spend what seems like hours in the bath just admiring them. Then, at nineteen, I started dating my husband and he informed me that my feet were very odd and not in a good way. So, I spent some years thinking I must have been wrong my whole childhood about their unusual beauty. But now I’m back to my original belief. After consistently torturing my husband about his youthful insensitivity for many years, he spent quite a bit of time last night apologizing to my feet. I think they have forgiven him.
Comment by Marianne — April 30, 2008 @ 9:18 am
I’ve been greying since I was three, and its been my signature for years. Now that I’m older, its not as startling but it is still a conversation starter. Love my hair. My cleft chin is another – its quite pronounced and gives me character. Its a reminder of my father, who had the same cleft.
Comment by shiloh — April 30, 2008 @ 10:18 am
A couple things. A dog bite when I was 4 required my entire upper lip to be stitched back together, and the scar tissue has given me a beautiful set of full lips that nobody else in my family has, with only a tiny scar people never notice until I point it out.
My skin. I’m pale. Reallyreallyreally pale. And I freckle very easily. It took me longer to come to terms with being so ghostly, and turning into Pippi Longstocking after an hour in the sun, but while I can cover with spray tan and foundation if I want to (I don’t), other people can’t achieve on their own what I have naturally.
Comment by Sarah — April 30, 2008 @ 10:59 am
I love my calves. They’re shaped quite nicely… like creamy, feminine pillars of white chocolate.
That’s something I love about my skin generally. I’m very pale. I used to hate it because everyone I know tans nicely, including most of my family. But as time has gone on, I’ve started to love my skin…. I work hard to treat it really well, now, though I have a little but of sun damage left over from high school, when I thought being lobster red would be better than being ghostly white.
Comment by JadedKitten — April 30, 2008 @ 5:22 pm
Flaming curly red hair that, as I’ve aged, has dulled down to a beautiful chestnut color with red and blond highlights. I used to hate it and keep it as ASAP (as short as possible); then, three years ago, I decided to let it grow.
Unfortunately, due to a miscommunication with my Russian hairdresser, it’s a bit short at the moment. It’s Posh Spice rather than Big Huge. But it’ll grow.
Comment by Jo — April 30, 2008 @ 9:00 pm
I like my ankles. I’m on the petite side(although I do love blogs that promote a healthy body image!), so my ankle are very small and dainty and delicate. It’s kind of like the silver lining to having short stubby legs.
Usually the first thing people notice about me are my eyes, which are large and green(although they change colors to a watery grey or medium blue sometimes). I can’t quite see in the mirror what is so special about them, but I thought it was worth mentioning as it is definitely my defining feature.
Comment by Ida — April 30, 2008 @ 9:00 pm
My blue mole. I’ve always loved it. It’s small, just under the skin (so there’s no bump), and just below the corner of my right eye. People often think that I’ve poked myself with a pen… but it’s completely natural, and rare. My dermatologist nearly peed herself when she saw it after I showed her the other blue mole I had on my arm (that I sadly had to have removed because of a questionable mole that was growing below it).
Comment by supasam — April 30, 2008 @ 11:38 pm
When I was three I was spinning around our living room with wild abandon (as one does when one is three years old) and fell, splitting my lip on the leg of our settee. I had to have stitches (they used navy thread, possibly because I fought like a wildcat and it took two nurses to hold me down) and now there’s a small scar; not terribly noticeable unless you’re the person kissing me but I like it. I like to think it means I’m spunky ;o)
And, rabrab, my boyfriend has eyes like yours…sometimes they look blue with specks of hazel, sometimes light blue and sometimes a gorgeous sea-green colour. It depends on how the light hits them. They, too, never seem to be the same colour twice and I think that he has the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen :o)
Comment by Niamh — May 1, 2008 @ 11:49 am
I have wavy red hair that I always get compliments on. It can curly up easily or be straightened in a flash. With my blue eyes, round face and freckles, I have often been compared to the Campbell’s soup kid!
Comment by Lucy — May 1, 2008 @ 3:00 pm
Hey there! Yeah the girls were great that night! I got a few killer pictures that I haven’t had the time to put up yet…. Maybe tonight?
Anyways, here is the link to the flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/hotgirlmustache/
Comment by Nathan Black — May 1, 2008 @ 6:48 pm