Lucy Grealy

Interview, Feb, 1996 by Andrew Essex

Today, at thirty-two, Grealy is, by any standard, an attractive woman. She fancies sleeveless shirts and tight leggings to show off her trim, well-muscled body. She laughs generously. When she stares at you, the first thing you notice is a slight foreshortening on the right side of her jaw; then you notice her dark blue eyes. In a world that is perhaps kinder to those with symmetrical features, she seems perfectly at ease.

ANDREW ESSEX: Your book captures the cruelty of children with particular clarity. Is it natural for kids to be so cruel?

LUCY GREALY: I think kids have always been that way, so I suppose it is natural. The worst forms of cruelty have to do with group dynamics. Kids in groups will tease you about the way you look. If you look O.K., they'll tease you about what your father does for a living, or how much money you have, or the house you live in - whatever. Teasing someone about the way they look is the easiest form of cruelty.

AE: It seems to me that childhood cruelty is so effective because it's honest. It's not agenda-driven, like the adult version.

LG: Well, I don't think that children really understand how they hurt people. As an adult, you know exactly how to hurt, and what your specific tactic will be. When adults want to be cruel, they do it very well. For me, being ignored is the worst form of cruelty.

AE: You had the fight half of your jaw removed when you were nine. How do you think things would have turned out If you'd become sick during puberty?

LG: It would have been a lot worse. At nine, I was a real tomboy; I didn't care about my looks. If any sexual stuff came up, I repressed it. If I'd been in the throes of puberty, I probably would have lost my entire sexual identity. And that would have comprised a much larger part of who I was. As it turned out, I only lost half of who I was.

AE: When do you think women first realize the power of their beauty?

LG: It happens, for the most part, in adolescence. When a girl is repeatedly praised for her beauty, she grows aware of the effect it has on others. Most girls don't really understand that effect, but they go with it. Meanwhile, most boys at that age are so unattractive. [laughs] I mean, let's face it - adolescent men are simply repulsive. So all these attractive young women begin to reject their hopeless male peers. And then the men spend the rest of their lives avenging that initial rejection. It's the origin of the war between the sexes.

AE: DO you think that self-awareness has become increasingly defined by our relationship to advertising and MTV?

LG: Well, I'm really glad I'm not a fourteen-year-old girl right now. When I look at what's going on, I find it horrifying. But I don't think it's simple cause-and-effect. It's just a mirror, really. Look at the evolution of special effects, for instance. We're no longer impressed by Star Wars. We need something like Jurassic Park to satisfy our level of sophistication.

AE: I know a whole bunch of people who actively detest models and everything they think they represent, but most of these non-models are still crippled whenever they get a pimple.

LG: Some people think that knowledge is supposed to negate certain things - that once you become aware, everything base disappears. That's a bunch of crap. Being aware that you're created by certain forces doesn't necessarily change those forces. I've been in Elle, Allure, and Glamour, and, at first, I was sort of irked by the hypocrisy of it. Who could have ever predicted it? But later, I realized that I was being used to illustrate the myth that beauty exists only on the inside. And I was expected to perpetuate this myth with a soothing bunch of platitudes, which suddenly renders what is basically a nice idea into a harmful cliche. The point is: You can be incredibly smart, incredibly secure, and still be absolutely frantic about a pimple.

AE: Does this make us a superficial culture?

LG: Yes. [laughs] Though I haven't lived in that many cultures to speak with authority. In France, they're more open to different types of beauty. But at the same time, it's a fairly sexist society. There's a famous quote: "There's no such thing as an ugly Frenchwoman, just a lazy one." Here, it's much more straightforward: You're either beautiful or you're not. So, yeah, I suppose that's the essence of superficiality.

AE: How do you feel about the cult of the supermodel?

LG: I think it's kind of sad. But I think it's the money that has everything to do with it. If they didn't make so much money, things would be a lot different.

AE: Is money beautiful?

LG: Sure. In a certain sense, it's the ultimate beauty. To some people, if it makes money, it's beautiful. Other people have different standards about what makes something good. But in the marketplace, if it sells, it's good. Everyone knows that pet rocks were stupid - but they were genius, too. Money has the ability to redefine everything.

AE: You write in your book that beauty is related to mystery. What do you mean by that?

LG: I think that notion was originally inspired by Rilke: "Beauty is the beginning of a terror that we can only just understand...or something like that." Anything that's known can't be entirely beautiful. I think true beauty has to have a touch of the unknown to it. I don't mean the sort of unknown that frightens us, but rather, the unknown that we find compelling.