I wondered what being beautiful had done for my mother other than give her no direction in which to gaze but into her own reflection. The state of being beautiful was indiscriminate; it was there for peasants and kings. You couldn't reclaim it for yourself. You could hide it under chador or veil, but it would be there still, more enticing for its secrecy.
The state of being unbeautiful was a more exacting affair. If a man found you attractive, you knew it must be so, that he must have looked hard and long to see something within you and was not just another wistful aesthete panting after loveliness.
I was suddenly glad I wasn't beautiful, that I didn't suffer my mother's misfortunes of vanity, her disappointment in how far beauty could get you, which was, in truth, not as far as one might imagine.
~Katherine Min, excerpt from Secondhand World
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