"Butch", The Beauty Peddler

I was reading an article the other day that touched on who and what defines beauty for us and it got me to thinking.  "What is my first memory of beauty?"  Oh, I remember flowers and having an early appreciation of their colors.  I remember thinking my Mom was pretty.  How that  translates to my early definition of beauty I don't know.  I was young....I DO know that.   And then, I read an article about Avon, the perfume and cosmetic company that has been around, it seems like, forever.  (In fact, I found out that Avon was bringing beauty into women's lives 34 years before women got the right to vote!). The memories of what was beautiful to a young girl came flooding back.

My personal experience with Avon began before I even started grade school.  I remember when the Avon lady came calling.  Her name was "Butch"...an unlikely moniker for a woman peddling such feminine products.  She carried a black bag and it contained all kinds of creams and potions that she'd show to my Mom.  I can still smell the fragrance of the face cream Mom always bought (perhaps why she has gorgeous skin at age 90?)  Butch used to have small samples of the perfumes she had to offer.  And if she brought Mom's order from the last visit, I recall being impressed with the beauty of the containers.  One was "Topaz", a strong fragrance in a tall yellow decanter with a faux topaz-type gem on the cap.  Funny how we remember such things... The real excitement came when Butch would acknowledge the young girls in the house and allow us to choose a little white sample tube of lipstick.  I suppose we used it when we played dress-up but just to be given such a grown up thing made me feel very...well..grown-up.

We've come a long way from the days of the iconic Avon lady, ringing the doorbell of a non-driving Mom...bringing, with her, the promise of beauty.  Now, we are bombarded with ads in magazines, commercials on TV,  cosmetic counters in all of the shopping malls... trying to profit from our perhaps misconstrued idea of what beauty is.  I know it's all pretty superficial....striving to improve ourselves outwardly like that....especially if we don't strive to be beautiful inside, as well.   But I find it pretty humorous now that some of a young girl's earliest recollections of beauty came from a woman named "Butch".