Carol’s Column

Beauty is only skin deep — so who needs skin?

IT REALLY is ridiculous this preoccupation we all have with beauty.

I only realised it the other morning when Nicky attacked me.

“Oh, Mummy, you really made a muck up of things, didn’t you?” said my sweet little daughter of the saucer eyes.

I stopped watering the goldfish and looked at her.

“Huh?” I replied. “Whaddya mean?”

“Well, look what a mess you made of me,” she complained bitterly.

“I beg your pardon?” I retorted, looking at her closely.

“Look, I’m left handed and so my writing’s always untidy. Why couldn’t you have made me better?”

For a moment I was nonplussed.

“But I think you’re perfect,” I said gaily. “All of you. In fact, I think I did rather well producing the four of you so smartly.”

Nicky wasn’t appeased.

“You know what, Mummy,” she observed, “you’re prejudiced. But then, what can you expect?” She added. “I guess you’re not too perfect either.”

“I’m not?”

“No, look at your ears, they stick out at right angles. You’ve got flat feet and knock knees and your teeth are crooked — not that it matters,” she added quickly, lest I should be hurt. “I think you’re a lovely Mummy.”

She made me think. In fact, while sitting down for my early-morning cup of lemon juice and gin — so good for regulating the body — I rethought my offspring. I tried to look at them objectively, which believe me, wasn’t easy.

After two glasses of lemon juice and gin, I’d come round to her way of thinking.

She’s right, I thought to myself.

We are an imperfect family and what have I produced? Four imperfect children.

In fact, thinking about it, my children’s imperfections are keeping this town’s medical and dental fraternity in overseas trips, yachts and sports cars.

Take their teeth for example. No doubt after what we’ve paid for them, nobody’s allowed to touch their teeth.

Ralph’s orthodontic work alone must have been worth a trip to the French Riviera — and his was a quick, two-year job. Jamie’s, we’ve been warned, is a slow affair. He’s what is euphemistically called a slow-grower.

“Look, don’t worry, by the time he’s 21, he’ll be out of a headgear and braces,” said the orthodontist on our last visit.

“Can you guarantee that in writing,” I asked him quickly.

He laughed.

Barry, has perfect teeth. Straight, white, unholed — they are a mother’s pride and joy. Or they were until a rugby ball connected with them blasting the two front uppers to shattered eternity and necessitating considerable bridge, dental and cosmetic work to restore him to his former glory.

My husband was appalled when he saw the account. “Good heavens, I didn’t realise you’d bought an entire new mouth for Barry,” he’d remarked in horror.

He wasn’t joking.

Between Ralph’s knock knees and Nicky’s pigeon toes, we have kept an army of orthopaedic surgeons in a lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.

And those are the built-in deformities. The hereditary ones, the family ones, the ones we’re all accustomed to.

The other day I caught my 10-year-old reading an article on cosmetic surgery for imperfect breasts.

“Isn’t that a little premature?” I asked tartly.

“Ma, you’ve got to be prepared,” she answered. “I thought I’d start saving just in case.”

Only yesterday morning, Liquorice-the-labrador asked me how much a nose job cost.

Yes, it’s too terrible this obsession we all have with beauty.

I tried to explain things to the kids at supper last night.

“Listen, it doesn’t matter what you look like. What matters is the inner you,” I said dishing up the cottage pie with a frilly cheese covering.

“Look at Woody Allen, at Marty Feldman, at Piet Koornhof — you don’t have to look like Paul Newman to make good.”

Nicky nodded her little head sagely. “Ah, but Ma, if you went to a party and saw Woody Allen, Marty Feldman, Piet Koornhof and Paul Newman, which one would you ask to dance?

She has a point.

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