Disfigured writer understands beauty

by Nick Kowalczyk

Lucy Grealy knows what it’s like to feel ugly.

The accomplished poet and author, who will perform a literary reading free to the public at 8 p.m. in the Music Recital Hall of Seigfred today, understands perhaps better than anyone else the pain of looking different.

At age 9, Grealy was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare strain of facial bone cancer of which she had only a 5 percent chance of surviving. She made it, but only after doctors removed one-third of her jaw.

After chemotherapy and radiation treatments and almost 30 reconstructive surgeries, Grealy’s jaw is now slighter on the right side. While it is hardly ugly, her face certainly lacks conventional, symmetrical beauty. In her 1994 memoir, Autobiography of a Face,Grealy recounts the childhood illness and the “journey back to my face” as an adult.

Normally, I would not write a column urging anyone to attend a literary event, especially because I don’t know if Grealy will read from her memoir or her new collection of essays, ••As Seen on TV: Provocations,•• which I haven’t yet read.

But she and her story are important, even inspirational. She’s also a damn fine writer who can describe suffering without a lick of self-pity and quite a lot of charm. Any nerd for good writing would want to attend the reading, but so might the occasionally self-conscious masses.

Even more fascinating than her wordsmith talents is what Grealy embodies: a woman who has not allowed personal anguish to overwhelm her. Her face might be ugly to some, but she refuses to gauge her beauty by that familiar social convention — how much she looks like the world’s pretty people.

There once was a time when she found comfort wearing masks during Halloween so she could cover her still-evolving face, which routinely underwent a new renovation. And when men saw her from a distance they whistled ­ pictures show Grealy has a beautiful, petite figure ­ but then would turn away in horror once they saw her face. And when, for a year, Grealy avoided looking into a mirror for anything more than a quick glimpse.

Now she refuses to be defined by the status of the mocked ••but-her-face•• woman. She found a sense of identity and self-worth that aren’t tied to a reflection in a mirror.

And this persona especially is needed at Ohio University, where abdominal-crunching spring breakers talk about the horrors of swimsuit shopping, and perfectly gorgeous girls consider themselves sub-par because “the other girls at OU are so beautiful.”

Occasionally feeling unattractive or unappealing is a universal experience. Yet few experience that feeling ­ or are as candid about it ­ as Grealy is.

Of course, this isn’t to say that personal appearance or attractiveness should be neglected. As Grealy once said in Interview magazine, “You can be incredibly smart, incredibly secure, and still be absolutely frantic about a pimple.”

Often, though, frets become obsessions, such as “fat days” that keep people from going out or even eating disorders, perhaps the most extreme form of self-criticism and the desire to control one’s appearance.

“I’m still trying to find the perfect words that would explain to all of us how perfect we already are,” Grealy said in a speech last year in Connecticut. Maybe she’ll have those words to offer at the reading tonight.

But until then I can offer this much: Beauty doesn’t exist only in the inside (like that horrible cliché says). It’s physical but also internal. And it can be found anywhere, even in a disfigured jaw.

 

— Kowalczyk can be reached at nk323298@ohio.edu