She stands before the mirror
Selects a hat and tries it on for size
She can't see the beauty looking back
She only sees the lines around her eyes
And the corners of her mouth turn down
They tighten with self-consciousness and shame
She takes off the hat, leaves the store
Concedes another battle in the beauty game
She's tried and failed to meet her mother's standards
Ever since she was a child
And the models she would like to be
Preach diet, self-loathing and denial
And their legs are long and tawny
Their eyes and lips and breasts all look the same
And they bear the marks of surgeons' knives
And the hidden deeper scarring of the beauty game
She recalls the lies her mother taught her when she was impressionable and young
"Nice girls don't express themselves
To get a man play it safe, play it dumb"
Now her mother's old and bitter
When she visits her she's sorry that she came
A fading gentle tyrant
One more walking wounded in the beauty game
So she didn't get the hat she liked
It didn't look as good as the one in the magazine
Instead she Œphoned a friend up to commiserate and talk about what might've been
"Why can't a man just love me for my humor and my strength and heart and brain?"
Worst of all it's she who can't accept herself and live outside the beauty game