With apologies to a reader named Jennifer who feels I write too much about my friends, my best friend shared with me how confused and ambivalent his daughter was at 12 and 13, when she was freakishly beautiful for a junior high school student. (Really, she did look like a miniature Michelle Pfeiffer.) The attention from older boys was scary. The resentment from other girls was sad. The praise from adults was embarrassing because it felt undeserved. As a result, she became both shy and passionately athletic. After all, when she makes a goal in soccer or reaches the end of the pool first, it's an objective, indisputable achievement -- made without the benefit of her platinum hair and high cheekbones.
It may sound strange to say this, but I am pleased to report that now, at 15, she has hit her awkward phase! In her most recent photos, her forehead is a little too round and her teeth are a little too big. Hurray! In short, she looks like a cute, scrubbed high school sophomore, almost indistinguishable from her girlfriends. Which is precisely what she longs to be.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE5Q6fqkxnMbVP17ELAO2dU5aOZXNrd5ahSrKSK9SIaNxZTXIQzhnQXynZSmz-DFXLav02zzeG-usSWz07ZXCZFx905NfYeyRaryCFBj5JHVD4wM7hZQUnaZDu4YWR60cVmjQX/s200/caroline.jpg)
At any rate, my friend's daughter now knows what Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg's life seems to illustrate -- that there are more important things for a woman to be than pretty.