Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Vignette: After the Breakup


(The following results from experiments relating to the old "how do you stuff a character description in there without being utterly obvious?" question.)

Jane extracted the photo for one last comparison before she walked into the salon. It was time to differentiate herself from Kyla. No one ever won by imitating the competition.

They both had long blond hair, maintained to the limit of everything that overpriced beauty products could achieve. Jane's brown eyes probably counted against her, compared to Kyla's big blue over-mascara'd versions. But those blue eyes were set in a pudgy, chocolate-box face of the type that would age into wrinkles the day Kyla turned fifty. Or maybe forty.

How could he ignore Jane's infinitely superior bone architecture? Those high cheekbones? That well-sculpted nose, neither overlong nor nauseatingly cute and buttonish? Jane (thought Jane) would be beautiful into her eighties, long after Kyla had collapsed like an aging Halloween pumpkin.

Feh. Who needed him anyway? Maybe it was time for a pixie-cut. And she'd always wanted to try being a redhead.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

4 comments:

  1. love the way jane describes her rival! e.g., collapsed like an aging Halloween pumpkin ;)

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  2. Yo, Anonymous! Thank you! Now that I've put that image in my head, I keep seeing it. :)

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  3. I love this. I love it so much that I have come back to read it about five times, not to mention I have referred two fellow English-teaching friends to it. Very, very nice description. I think my favorite part is "Jane (thought Jane)...." What a lovely self-consciousness. I also appreciate a well-used "Feh." Who wouldn't?

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  4. Hey, Happy Dog! Thank you so much! Having someone appreciate the odd bits in my writing makes me feel so, well, appreciated. :)

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