Beautiful Women: Messy Lives

You've been there a million times. You're standing in the check-out line of the grocery store and out of boredom and possible morbid curiosity, your eyes drift to the headlines on the magazines and tabloids. And there's that gorgeous star once again going to court or just being released from jail or going to rehab. You have to ask yourself, "What in the world?! Why would this gorgeous woman have a single problem?!"

Maybe you actually know someone like this person. She's beautiful, seemingly intelligent, but she can't quite get her act together. Wherever you go with her, she turns heads, both male and female, the women mad with jealousy and the men, mad with longing. She's just one step away from life being perfect, just one man, one job, one whatever away, but she just can't quite get there. And there's always some kind of devastation in the aftermath.

From the beginning of time, it seems women who were deemed to be physically attractive have had difficulties...and many times caused difficulties for those who chose to become involved with them. Even in Biblical times, excessively beautiful women were regarded as prizes to be won and influenced men to make some poor choices. Take the story of King David and Bathsheba, for example. As the story goes, David was on his roof taking a stroll and caught sight of the beautiful Bathsheba bathing. He was immediately attracted to her and wanted her, but Bathsheba was already married to Uriah, who served in David's army.

Bathsheba ended up sleeping with David and becoming pregnant. To hide it, David tried to get Uriah brought back from the field, so he would sleep with Bathsheba himself, but Uriah was loyal to the army and wouldn't. So David ordered the captain of his army to abandon Uriah to the enemy during battle, Once Uriah was killed, David took Bathsheba as his wife. However, as David and Bathsheba's punishment, the baby died when it was only a few days old. This wasn't David's only punishment however. His son, Absalom, not only murdered David's oldest son, but turned against David and was killed himself by the commander of David's army.

Then there was the amazingly influential and reportedly beautiful Cleopatra. Power hungry, she managed to get two of the most powerful men in the Roman empire to fall in love with her and bore children by them both. However, this brought happiness to none of the three. Julius Caesar was murdered, Mark Anthony committed suicide after losing a key battle, and in despair, Cleoptara followed suit by killing herself with a poisonous snake.

The list of beautiful, yet unhappy women with lives complicated by instability, scandal, and dependencies of one type or another goes on and on. In past years we've seen Bettie Page, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Garland, and countless other beautiful, but troubled women all with a bent toward destructive behavior. Many of these women, some who passed away quite awhile ago, have a cult following that young starlets of today can only dream about having.

We watched in horror and sometimes disgust when Anna Nicole Smith self-destructed and her personal life was combed through in minute detail by the media. Other contemporaries include Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan who abused themselves and their talents, although Spears does show signs of coming to grips with her problems in recent years.

What is it that's so troubling to these women? They certainly have fame, which you would assume is the reason why they went into the business in the first place. They make money, if they can manage to hold onto it throughout their wild exploits. They have the attention of men, perhaps too many men. So where does the self-doubt come from, why do beautiful women sometimes seem to hate the very image they have created for themselves?

Society perpetuates the myth that beautiful women are not as intelligent than their less attractive sisters. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. As a whole, beautiful women are more intelligent. How many times have you seen a beautiful woman with an average looking man and wondered why she wasn't with someone more attractive? Nine times out of ten, the man she was with was very intelligent and successful. Now do you question her intelligence?

This brings us back to the original question...if these women are beautiful AND more intelligent, then why are their lives a mess? Think about the way society, particularly men, treats attractive women. We fall all over ourselves, we fawn, we adore, but does anyone ever look at a beautiful woman and wonder what she is thinking? Does anyone even care? Attractive women become so objectified, they start drinking their own Kool-Aid. They neglect developing their personalities, because they don't need to develop them. Then one day they wake up and wonder why they are being treated like a bimbo, why all they are getting is the dumb blonde parts, and why the man of their dreams ends up marrying their unattractive best friend.

Amazingly, quotes from Marilyn Monroe have surfaced and are appearing on posters everywhere. and what these quotes are proving is that she was far from a dumb blonde, that she had a keen grasp on what society thought of her worth and what she herself thought. She bought into her hype, because she felt she didn't have a choice. She let herself be used and objectified, because she felt she was giving the public what they wanted.

"Being a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is tired, hurt, and bewildered."

"Some people have been unkind. If I say I want to grow as an actress, they look at my figure. If I say I want to develop, to learn my craft, they laugh. Somehow they don't expect me to be serious about my work."

"In Hollywood a girl's virtue is much less important than her hairdo. You're judged by how you look, not by what you are. Hollywood's a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty."

Will we ever get past the notion that women are to be looked at and men to be listened to, that women's worth is not tied up in who and what they are, but just how they look? In a recent TV interview, a female singer from a popular country band said, "I didn't sign on to be a super model. I didn't sign on to eat like a super model. I signed on to be a singer. I have to remind myself of that all the time."