Beauty is only skin deep,

"but ugly goes straight to the bone," quipped Flip Wilson.  How about "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"?  I've given this beauty, or rather ugly, business a good bit of thought lately.  It all started after watching the Beatles Grammy special a few weeks ago.  Ringo and Paul still looked good, fifty years after it all started.  I once heard my step-mother call someone's baby ugly, as in "That sure is an ugly baby."  I was horrified.  Let me say right now that NO BABY is EVER ugly.  EVER.  After that, I had, and still have, a hard time calling any living thing ugly.  I prefer "physically unattractive", or "the face only a mother could love."  Buzzards come close, but still, they are just really physically unattractive.  And, of course, being a southerner, I try to make it all better by saying "Bless his/her/its heart"   when talking about beauty or lack of it.  Ugly is an adjective I reserve for describing God-awful football team uniforms, like those of the Oregon Ducks or the Pittsburgh Steelers.

 My mother and I had an interesting conversation this weekend.  We were discussing stars who are aging nicely, the ones who still can cause my heart to race despite the graying hair and the increased wrinkles.  Me, I think Paul McCartney is still really cute.  Not so much handsome, but cute.  Then, there's Robert Redford, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, all of whom are LOOKING GOOD.

We had some disagreement when we began to discuss those that might be considered physically unattractive, you know, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.   I could not convince Mother that despite the thin, gaunt face with continuous wrinkles, Mick Jagger was not ugly.  I never thought he was good-looking.  I didn't have his pictures on my walls as a teenager with those of Davy Jones or Bobby Sherman.  I  couldn't convince her that his eyes twinkled and that in most of the images I googled for her, he just looked very happy and content.  She said he was still ugly.  When I mentioned the physical unattractiveness of Steven Tyler, she was quick to disagree!!!  If only he'd cut his hair and wear better clothes, he'd be nice-looking, she declared. (Never in a million years did I think I would ever hear my mother say Steven Tyler was good-looking!)

So, she didn't agree with me about Mick, and I didn't agree with her about Steven.  But, we did agree on the physical unattractiveness of one old star, Keith Richards.  Bless his heart.  I wonder if his pictures were on anyone's walls.