Beauty Expectations

[Martin Hash]

I think most people have an expectation of female beauty formed by the actresses in the shows they watched as a child; I know I did. Unfortunately, this leads to unrealistic expectations of how most women look. Because I grew up Mormon, and saw the mothers of my friends every week at church, I thought the lack of beauty there was a Mormon thing. Yeah, I still had crushes on girls, especially my third grade teacher, but by-and-large, none were as beautiful as my preconceptions would have led me to believe. Especially as I got older, real life female beauty varied further and further from my ideal, until as an old person, I just don’t think the women of my youthful ideation exist. Except my wife, of course. She looks just like she did when I married her, but that’s what most long-time married men say.

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Susan Dey & Shirley Jones in “The Partridge Family”, Marta Kirsten, Joan Lockhart & Angela Cartwright in “Lost In Space”
Elizabeth Montgomery in “Bewitched”, Marlo Thomas in “That Girl”, Lucille Ball in “I Love Lucy”, Maureen McCormick & Florence Henderson in “The Brady Bunch”
Barbara Eden in “I Dream of Jeannie”, Tina Louise & Dawn Wells in “Gilligan’s Island”, Mary Tyler Moore in “The Dick Van Dyke Show”