Cute is the new beautiful. Surgery and cosmetics have made beauty so much more achievable in a plastic sort of way, but cute can’t be faked, because cute goes way beyond looks, and the very nature of cute is sincerity.
Cute is something you can be sure of. There is no cuteness implant, cuteness injection or cutelift.
Cute no longer should be an insulting second tier below beautiful. Cute is the total package, and it may even mean no makeup at all.
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I once was granted a courtesy embrace by a beautiful “plastic” woman who was paid to show up at a press event. That was her shtick, to look womanly in an exaggerated, angular way like an auto-show model, then rub up against embarrassed guys. And true, she bulged dramatically in all the right places, but I felt like I was being hugged by a new tire.
I bring this up as something of a protest, because I’ve had enough of the daily dose of supposed beauty we get via the pop-culture pipeline. There’s the leggy mega-talent Paris Hilton, or the somewhat synthetic Pamela Anderson, or Jessica clones who put their looks to music.
These pop-culture mannequins are an insult to men, who apparently are supposed to pine for this stuff, and certainly to women. There is no texture there, no humanity. There’s barely one dimension.
So based on my alternate theory of beauty, I am declaring Samantha Brown of the Travel Channel to be the most beautiful woman on television, at least for this month. This is my subjective declaration, but there is a legion of “Brownheads” from fan Web sites who probably would agree.
Brown is the ultimate girl next door, if the girl next door is witty, goofy, a clever scriptwriter and, well, cute with perhaps the slightest hint that she could have hip issues if she eats more than a couple cannoli in one week–a slight imperfection that only enhances her genuineness. (If that’s just wide-screen distortion, my apologies to her.)
By reading fan postings via the Travel Channel Web site, I can’t tell if most of the people writing are guys, but a significant number are. Oh, there are some cracks about her belonging on “Sesame Street,” but that only reminds me of one of my past “cute” loves from that show, when I had to watch it with my kids. She was Maria (actually, Sonia Manzano). Sometimes I’d try to catch the show even if my kids didn’t. And Maria reminds me of yet another cute pop-culture forerunner, Anacani of “The Lawrence Welk Show.”
These were women. Cute women.
Yes, I do know from the fan Web sites that Brown has lightened her hair, but hair color doesn’t even count anymore. For the modern woman, that’s like brushing teeth.
Note to wife: Yes, you’re cuter than Samantha Brown.
Note to Samantha Brown: Do you ever do auto shows?
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