keeping up appearances

I don't look like anyone. Some people say I look like my mom, and occasionally I'll catch my reflection and briefly think she's standing beside me before I realize it's me. But you'd wouldn't guess it if you saw us together. I don't look like my dad at all-- I am my dad in too many ways, but I don't look like him. Or any of my grandparents. I am a conglomeration of all of them to the point where there are no distinguishably inherited characteristics. I just look vaguely related to them, like perhaps a distant cousin.

I don't look like anyone famous either. I've heard Geena Davis before, but her jaw is too square and her mouth too wide. I've heard Angelina Jolie, but that's solely for my lips and nothing else. Yes, I'm "blessed" with full lips, lips that make other women jealous, until I tell them how many men have made crude comments to me because of them. Men. I won't go into particulars there. I've also gotten Jessica Biel (in her 7th Heaven days, not as she is now as a Maxim and GQ pin-up) and Scarlet Johansson. As you can see, none of these women look alike themselves, but, like with my family, I vaguely resemble parts of them yet none as a whole. I will say it's nice to be compared to such beautiful women.

A few years ago, an old friend told me he was watching Law and Order SVU-- the seasons they play on USA, not the new ones-- and that I look exactly like the DA. I don't watch that show and so didn't know if it was true, but I didn't think anything of it, believing looking her up would probably lead me to another Davis, Jolie, Biel, etc. and nothing closer. This weekend, out of the blue a different friend, who doesn't know the first friend, told me the same thing, and I became curious.

So I looked her up. Her name is Diane Neal.

I look nothing like her. 

At least, I don't think I do. We all have different interpretations of the way we look, we all see ourselves as more beautiful or more ugly, more angular or more pudgy, more imperfect than we really are. We see ourselves in pictures in 2-D or in the mirror, and our first thought is what's wrong or what's out of place. We're so used to seeing ourselves we can't see anymore. We've grown up and old with our faces and our features, unable to see them the way other people see us, especially people new to our lives. Even seeing myself on video, all I focus on is my weak chin line or my messed up hair or the idiotic things I'm saying, and I never actually see myself. I don't think it's possible to see oneself, not completely-- there's too much of us in the way. 

But I asked my husband, and he didn't see me in her either. Maybe in video, I thought, something about the way she moves or talks makes her like me. I still didn't see it. It makes me wonder, how do people really see me? What do people truly think of me? But getting the truth out of people is impossible. Not next to impossible, but impossible. 

I do wish I had her red hair. I've always wanted red hair.