What Really Makes Babies so Darn Cute?

Judy’s baby Emily had a birthday recently, and Judy had a One-year party for her, which was a hoot because all the moms from the Mommy and Me playgroup came and brought their own one-year olds. One of the things Judy says is that it gets a lot harder to maintain your personal style when you live with someone who’s constantly emitting various fluids, and the One-year party was a hilarious (for me) combination of drool and cake icing and runny ice cream. Imagine a dozen babies in party clothes, half of them screaming and half mashing cake through their tiny fists, and you have the general idea. Throw in an elegantly-groomed Golden Retriever (who ate a lot of cake off the ground, resulting in a genteel bout of vomiting under the table) and a bunch of Mommies in their own softly-flowered frocks, and you have the whole picture.

Babies in general, are beautiful, and the things we grown-ups often find lovely in each other are the things that are lovely in babies. Big eyes, smooth skin and small features are usually considered beautiful, and the models who hitch themselves weirdly down the runways of New York and Paris are usually absurdly young for the clothes they are sort of wearing. “Feminine” is often paired with “young”, in magazines and television, making women over thirty wonder if life is really nearly over when there’s so much left to do. But beauty isn’t really about youth: the beauty that comes with youth is incidental, superficial. It’s gone before a woman has time to become interesting, and her own person. The Mommies at the party were beautiful, laughing at their babies’ antics, joking with each other and enjoying the sunny day. There are few things more beautiful than people laughing from sheer enjoyment.

If you’re not feeling happy, it’s hard to appear beautiful. (And if you’re feeling unhappy, your looks are the least of your problems). Forget the sullen catwalk waifs, and the scary, long-necked, colt-legged sixteen year olds wearing sable corsets and six inch heels--that’s not real life. Laughing with a baby who just rubbed cake all over her face, that’s life.

(I’m pretty sure there’s nothing I could give Emily that she would appreciate, so I picked out something I loved, an adorable, flowered baggy-pants sunsuit, in pink and yellow, with a matching bonnet. I can’t wait to see Emily in her new beach togs!)