Musing on muses

When I was nineteen years old, I realized I was never going to be somebody’s muse. They’re described in every book, script, and casting call. Slender, delicate, tall (but not too tall), white skinned, symmetrical features, huge eyes, soft voice. Either so brash and reckless that she must be saved from herself, or so quiet and delicate she must be saved from other people. This girl is fascinating. Movies, books, and epic poems are created around her. She doesn’t talk too much, not enough to counter the personality people project onto her. She is probably sad. Or else she just has “sad eyes.”

I am none of those things. I am not slender, or delicate, or tall at all. My eyes are too small, my thighs are too big, my voice is too grating. Yet I, like many women I know, have always yearned to be someone’s muse. To have someone take a chance on me. To be discovered by a handsome artist who will create a movie, or a song, or a book, or an art piece all from finally seeing me. To expound on the beauty of my wavy golden hair, or the soulful tears in my big blue eyes.

Except my hair is brown. My eyes are brown. I am not the stuff of fantasies. I am a human being, built of flesh and imperfections.

So why wait? Why wait for a scrawny boy with oversized glasses and a ponytail to cast me in his film? Why wait for a loud voiced guy with a flannel to ask if he could possibly take my photograph? Why wait one more minute for some man to fulfill my own self worth with his art or attention? Perhaps because I have always assumed a man will create better art than me simply because he has a penis; a misapprehension no doubt perpetuated by the overinflated presence of art made by men.

So what’s a girl to do? A short, loud, argumentative, insecure, human, girl? Perhaps, the answer is to become my own muse. To be so inspired by my mind that I write a whole novel full of my own ideas. To be so taken with my body that I can describe it in dozens of flowery poems. To be so fascinated with my own experiences that I write a script telling the whole story of me. To be so convinced I am worth something, that I be the one who gives myself a chance. I don’t need someone else to make me into their art: I have been art all along.