Diary of an Ugly Duckling by Langhorne, Karyn (general ebook reader .txt) 📕

here.”

“I find that difficult to believe, Audra,” the

woman said. “In your audition tape, you called

yourself fat, black and ugly repeatedly . . . and in-

deed compared to our American standards of

beauty, you’re quite different from what our culture

considers to be the ideal.” She pushed her glasses

higher up her nose and peered at Audra knowingly.

“In my readings about black American culture,

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183

there does seem to be historical preference toward

lighter skin tones and straight hair dating back to

the days of the Reconstruction, when it was some-

what easier for lighter-skinned blacks to assimilate

than darker-skinned ones. And even earlier, to slav-

ery. The conflicts between the ‘house negro’ versus

‘field negro’—correct?”

Audra stared at the woman, too stunned by what

she was hearing to speak.

“I know that black women are usually more satis-

fied with their body image than white or Latin

women . . . at least as far as issues like weight go. But

the skin-color issue is a very different image factor.”

“Oh, really?” Audra muttered, not bothering to

conceal her sarcasm. “Don’t tell me we’se going

back to the plantation now, is we boss?”

“Well, yes, we are.” Dr. Goddard smiled a profes-

sional little smile. “Darker skin was associated with

ignorance and poverty, lighter skin with education

and affluence. Fairer-skinned women were quite

sought after—at least until the 1970s and the Black

Power movement,” Dr. Goddard continued, sound-

ing like she was dictating a chapter of her latest

book. “And even now, biracial people are attributed

with a certain comeliness, but their darker compan-

ions are not. I’m assuming that’s why you want the

lightening—to be perceived differently. Would that

be correct? Have you incorporated the negative ste-

reotypes of dark skin? And what was the first mem-

ory you have of being told something negative about

your dark skin tone?”

As long as I can remember, as long as I’ve been

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alive . . . a voice whispered in the back of her brain,

but Audra silenced it with a blink, assumed some

Foxy Brown and snapped back, “All I remember be-

ing told is that black is beautiful, baby.”

Dr. Goddard seemed unfazed by the attitude.

“Which, of course, is true,” she agreed. “But you know

what I think?” The shrink leaned toward her and

placed a gentle hand on Audra’s knee. “I think a long

time ago, someone said something. Something you

carry deep in your heart to this very day. And you

know what else? Whatever other reasons you might

have had for joining us on Ugly Duckling, I think

there’s a part of you that wanted to do this show be-

cause you know it’s time to get rid of that image of

yourself. You want to erase it in any way you can.”

A flood of pictures and voices filled Audra’s

brain. She was nine again, overhearing her father’s

“she ain’t mine”; she was fourteen, enduring the

merciless teasing of teenage boys and girls alike;

she was twenty, in the criminal justice program and

the ultimate “dog date” candidate; it was three

months ago, and inmates were whispering “dude

with breasts” in voices too loud to be considered

talking behind her back. It was last week, and Art

Bradshaw was looking over her shoulder rather

than directly into her eyes.

These were embarrassing things, private things.

They weren’t things she could just blurt out, with

cameras rolling, to a psychiatrist she’d only met

once before.

“Uh-oh, sounds like a personal problem to me,” she

quipped instead. “Wrong for the show. Not at all en-

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185

tertaining.”

Dr. Goddard’s lips lifted in another small smile.

“I’ve worked with many women with terrible self-

images, Audra. And a good number of them develop

ways to compensate—sometimes overcompensate—

for what they perceive to be missing. Some women

work hard to be extra ‘nice,’ extra helpful. Others

concentrate on being wildly successful. Their promi-

nence or money becomes their shield.” Her eyes

found Audra’s. “And some women use humor. Their

weapon against the hurt is being the jolly fat woman

or the prankster or the clown.” The good doctor

shrugged. “Some women also escape . . . into nov-

els, movies. They create a beautiful fantasy life,

imagining themselves to be Halle, or Joan or Bette.

But it’s still a shield. A way to hide the hurt.” She

raised an eyebrow. “What do you think?”

The woman’s words resonated, buzzed and

echoed inside her as though all of her thoughts

and feelings had evaporated, leaving her hollow

and empty. The room was suddenly too warm, too

crowded, too small. Audra forced her lips into a

smile. “I think . . .” she began, striving for lightness,

for cheerfulness, and all the while feeling as if her

mask of certainty and competence had slipped be-

yond easy repair. “It’s not the sort of thing a funny

woman—who would like to stay that way—would

talk about on national television.”

Dr. Goddard must have practiced her piercing

stare for hours in front of a mirror somewhere, be-

cause she had that sucker down pat. She focused her

super high beams on Audra with the expression of

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Karyn Langhorne

one who would not be denied. “Unless, of course,

that woman was ready to lay those feelings aside . . .

and become an inspiration to millions of women in

the process.” She glanced at her watch, closed her

notebook and sighed. “Think about it. That’s all for

today . . . We’ll talk day after tomorrow.”

It was like living in The Odd Couple: Dr. Bremmar’s

upbeat-and-smiley-little-man routine, his white lab

coat neatly buttoned to reveal a blue dress shirt and

tasteful red tie; Dr. Koch his polar opposite:

grouchy, sloppy, frowning and sipping at a cup of

coffee as he stared at Audra through eyes so bleary

that Audra wondered if he’d just crawled in from a

wild night on the town.

The humiliation of another examination was

over—an examination that had basically amounted

to Audra standing pretty much naked in a sterile

room, with a silent nurse for female company, while

the two men took turns making marks on her body

with a purple pen as though she were their very

own living canvas . . . which of course, in a way, she

was. From time to time, one or the other of them

would direct a question in Audra’s direction, or ask

her to lift her arms or turn around. But for the most

part, their conversation sounded like the pages of a

medical textbook.

Audra stared down at her own body. In the places

where the sun never