Alison Lurie: Foreign Affairs

For nearly forty years Vinnie has suffered from the peculiar disadvantages of the woman born without physical charms. Even as a child she had a nondescript sort of face, which gave the impression of a small wild rodent: the nose sharp and narrow, the eyes round and rather too close-set, the mouth a nibbling slit. For the first eleven years of her life, however, her looks gave no one any concern. But as she approached puberty, first her suddenly anxious mother and then Vinnie herself attempted to improve upon her naturally meager endowments. Faithfully, they followed the changing recommendations of acquaintances and of the media, but never with any success. The ringlets and ruffles popular in Vinnie’s late childhood did not become her; the austerely cut, square-shouldered clothes of World War II emphasized her adolescent scrawniness; the New Look drowned her in excess yardage, and so on through every subsequent change of fashion. Indeed, it would be kinder to draw a veil over some of Vinnie’s later attempts at stylishness: her bony forty-year-old legs in an orange leather miniskirt; her narrow mouse’s face peering from behind teased hair and an oversized pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses.

When she reached fifty, however, Vinnie began to abandon these strenuous efforts. She ceased tinting her hair a juvenile and unnatural shade of auburn and let it grow out its natural piebald gray-beige; she gave away half her clothes and threw out most of her makeup. She might as well face facts, she told herself: she was a disadvantaged woman, doubly disadvantaged now by age; someone men would not charge at with bullish enthusiasm no matter how many brightly colored objects she waved to attract their attention. Well, at least she could avoid being a figure of fun. If she couldn’t look like an attractive woman, she could at least look like a lady.

But just as she was resigning herself to total defeat, the odds began to alter in Vinnie’s favor. Within the last couple of years she has in a sense caught up with, even passed, some of her better-equipped contemporaries. The comparison of her appearance to that of other women of her age is no longer a constant source of mortification. She is no better looking than she ever was, but they have lost more ground. Her slim, modestly proportioned figure has not been made bulgy and flabby by childbearing or by overeating and overdieting; her small but rather nice breasts (creamy, pink-tipped) have not fallen. Her features have not taken on the injured, strained expression of the former beauty, nor does she paint and decorate or simper and coo in a desperate attempt to arouse the male interest she feels to be her due. She is not consumed with rage and grief at the cessation of attentions that were in any case moderate, undependable, and intermittent.

As a result men-even men she has been intimate with-do not now gaze upon her with dismay, as upon a beloved landscape devastated by fire, flood, or urban development. They do not mind that Vinnie Miner, who was never much to look at, now looks old. After all, they hadn’t slept with her out of romantic passion, but out of comradeship and temporary mutual need-often almost absent-mindedly, to relieve the pressure of their desire for some more glamorous female. It wasn’t uncommon for a man who had just made love to Vinnie to sit up naked in bed, light a cigarette, and relate to her the vicissitudes of his current romance with some temperamental beauty-breaking off occasionally to say how great it was to have a pal like her.

Some may be surprised to learn that there is this side to Professor Miner’s life. But it is a mistake to believe that plain women are more or less celibate. The error is common, since in the popular mind-and especially in the media-the idea of sex is linked with the idea of beauty. Partly as a result, men are not eager to boast of their liaisons with unattractive women, or to display such liaisons in public. As for the women, painful experience and a natural sense of self-preservation often keep them from publicizing these relationships, in which they seldom have the status of a declared lover, though often that of a good friend.

As has sometimes been remarked, almost any woman can find a man to sleep with if she sets her standards low enough. But what must be lowered are not necessarily standards of character, intelligence, sexual energy, good looks, and worldly achievement. Rather, far more often, she must relax her requirements for commitment, constancy, and romantic passion; she must cease to hope for declarations of love, admiring stares, witty telegrams, eloquent letters, birthday cards, valentines, candy, and flowers. No; plain women often have a sex life. What they lack, rather, is a love life.

Vinnie has now reached an article in Vogue devoted to new ideas for children’s birthday parties, which arouses her professional dismay because of its emphasis on adult-directed commercial entertainment: the hiring of professional magicians and clowns, the organization of sightseeing trips, etc.-just the sort of thing that is tending more and more to replace the traditional rituals and games. Partly as a result of such articles, the ancient and precious folk culture of childhood is rapidly being destroyed. Meanwhile, those who hope to record and preserve this vanishing heritage are sneered at, denigrated, slandered in popular magazines. Woof, woof.

“Here’s your paper.” Vinnie’s seatmate holds out the London Times , clumsily refolded.

“Oh. Thank you.” To avoid further requests for it from other passengers, she places the newspaper in her lap beneath Vogue .

“Thank you. Not much in it.”

Since this is not phrased as a question, Vinnie is not obliged to respond, and does not. Not much of what? she wonders. Perhaps of American news, sports events, middlebrow comment, or even advertisements, in comparison to whatever paper he habitually reads. Or perhaps, being used to screaming headlines and exclamatory one-sentence paragraphs, he has been misled by the typographical and stylistic restraint of the Times into thinking that nothing of importance occurred in the world yesterday. And perhaps nothing has, though to her, to V. A. Miner, arf, arf, awooo! Stop that, Fido.

Setting aside Vogue , she unfolds the newspaper. Gradually, the leisurely Times style, with its air of measured consideration and its undertone of educated irony, begins to calm her, as the voice of an English nanny might quiet a hurt, overwrought child.

“You on your way to London?”

“What? Yes.” Caught as it were in the act, she admits her destination, and returns her glance to the story Nanny is telling her about Prince Charles.

“Glad to get out of that New York weather, I bet.”

Again Vinnie agrees, but in such a way as to make it clear that she does not choose to converse. She shifts her body and the tissuey sheets of the paper toward the window, though nothing can be seen there. The plane seems to stand still, shuddering with a monotonous regularity, while ragged gray billows of cloud churn past.

However long the flight, Vinnie always tries to avoid striking up acquaintance with anyone, especially on transatlantic journeys. According to her calculations, there is far more chance of having to listen to some bore for seven-and-a-half hours than of meeting someone interesting-and after all, whom even among her friends would she want to converse with for so long?

Besides, this man looks like someone Vinnie would hardly want to converse with for seven-and-a-half minutes. His dress and speech proclaim him to be, probably, a Southern Plains States businessman of no particular education or distinction; the sort of person who goes on package tours to Europe. And indeed the carry-on bag that rests between his oversize Western-style leather boots is pasted with the same SUN TOURS logo she had noticed earlier: fat comic-book letters enclosing a grinning Disney sun. Physically too he is of a type she has never cared for: big, ruddy, blunt-featured, with cropped coarse graying red hair. Some women would consider him attractive in a weather-beaten Western way; but Vinnie has always preferred in men an elegant slimness, fair fine hair and skin, small well-cut features-the sort of looks that are an idealized male version of her own.