This Can Only Embarrass Me

Sometime between the release of the first two Underworld movies (I told you this wouldn't make me any cooler), I read an interview with Kate Beckinsale. What's more, something she said stayed with me. Naturally, I hate to set one of the tent poles of my life to a Kate Beckinsale-ism, but hey, it's a sight better than Carson Daly, is it not? At least, Kate Beckinsale was never dumped by Tara Reid: where rock bottom gives way and you fall another 30 feet through sludge and more sludge.

In the usual manner of interviews in fashion magazines, it was supposed that we care less about Ms. Becksinsale's accomplishments (I know, but stay with me) than her beauty regime and musings on what make women truly beautiful. What she had to say was so honest and so true (for me anyway) that it floored me. When asked if she felt beautiful and confident, she answered that she believed that whatever or wherever you were as a 12 year old never left you. That you could be glamorous, successful, the most stunning woman in the world and you would still feel like that gawky 12 year old--if indeed you were a gawky 12 year old. She admitted that she was chubby and awkward as a 12 year old and that that was her default, where she stuck sometimes.

Cut to me gobsmacked. Holy crap, yes! Rationally, I know I'm not that little girl anymore, strange and awkward, not really understood by my peers. But it makes sense that some strong vestige of that key developmental part of your life has stayed up way past her bedtime.

And it also makes sense that some people just don't have that lingering breath of gauche. Some people are so amazingly confident and unconcerned that it takes your breath away. These are the people who had an easier transition at 12. You know them, the sort of 12 year olds you imagine had a bright pink bike with a white wicker basket, parents who didn't argue and grandparents that didn't worry about their weight in front of them. And in my case, the kind of 12 year old who was every bit an American from birth (maybe blond, blue-eyed and named Laura). So yeah, I guess I personally had a long way to go to find serenidence. Much like Faulkner, this one is on me. Self-coined: where confidence isn't brash or arrogant. But instead shows itself as a serenity and a certain quietness of mind.

To tell you the truth, I haven't actually thought of Kate Beckinsale's theory of 12 in years. It actually crept into my mind as easy as pie this evening. It takes one awkward and stilted social encounter and suddenly, I'm 12 years old and Kate Beckinsale is right. Dammit.