“I am the REAL American Beauty!”

Northside Chapel was a lively place to be raised as a boy. The small racial reconciliation church planted by my father in Paterson’s poor first ward was filled with characters with enough interesting stories to fill his book. It was a place where white and black, sober and drunk, clean and high, clear and confused could find community, hope, respect, and a bit of help when needed.

Prayer request time in the service gave this motley crew an opportunity to express themselves and on one particular Sunday morning Pat stood up to declare that she was indeed the “real American beauty”.

Although Pat was not necessarily a homely woman, few of us would have suspected she had ever been a beauty queen, or was even in the running for such an award.

Her declaration was not merely an announcement, it was a vigorous assertion. In her mind some apparently within the relational network of this small congregation, possibly prompted by the appearance of the guest pianist that morning, doubted her beauty credential and she was determined, in the joys and concerns portion of the worship service, to set the record straight. The more forceful she attempted to drive her point home, the more difficulty I, as a boy, had to keep from laughing.

Identity

This would become a story repeated by many in the church for years to come punctuated by the declaration “I am the real American beauty!” This was an aspect of her identity that she clearly wished to have validated by those around her. When we remembered Pat, we remembered this story.

Identity is important. Identity fills out the self, gives it distinction, affords room for attributes. Identity creates a space, a facade, a front and back yard if you will, where public and private aspects and attributes are attached, stored, displayed, recognized affirmed or denied.

If the self is the core thing that is you, identity becomes a space for expression and a meeting space around the self where the possessions of the self are accessible both to the self and to other selves.

For Pat, being the real American beauty was an important item in this space and she wished that those around her, those who had access to this public/private space would recognize, affirm and respect her credential.

Identity and the self in Community

The identity is a space around the self, with both private and public parts, some of which is under the control of the self, and some of it was not. Some of the items in that space we consider to be hard, public facts, and other items are we consider to be softer, thinner, weaker, more open to debate.

Had Pat really won a beauty contest? Most of us who saw her had our doubts. Whether or not she had was a matter of historical record. Either she had or she hadn’t.

It may be that she entered a contest but had not been awarded the prize. According to Pat she rightly should have won that contest, but due to the judgment of other persons, she was deprived of the victory. The pianist that Sunday morning apparently reminded Pat of the person Pat thought had robbed her of her crown and quite possibly this prompted the public declaration of this cherished piece of her identity.

Pat’s assertion of her credential, of this cherished token of her identity held within it an appeal to ideal standard, an ideal scenario, and ideal narrative where she would, in her opinion, measure up to this ideal and be awarded by others who would know this ideal, this prize of being the real American beauty.

In the space around her self, that we call her identity, a good deal of exchange would be happening around this subject. The award of being the real American beauty would change the image of her self, both as viewed by her self, and as viewed by others seeing her self through this identity.

Identity can also be seen as clothing upon the self. Clothing creates identity and confers on the wearer status, it can express something of the self, or not. How it is seen by others depends greatly upon other items within that community.

Pat’s Identity in the Story

I have in just a few paragraphs through the vehicle of story created in your mind an image of Pat. I have said very little about her, it is quite likely that your mind has filled in the story with things from your own life. You have probably filled in the story with items from your identity space. Pat has become real to you, in a very small way, just by reading these words.

A few dozen people, some of which will read this book, actually knew Pat. They knew her as a young, African American woman struggling with schizophrenia in Paterson’s north side. Having now named “schizophrenia” the image of Pat for many of you changed wildly. Perhaps you have a family member or a friend with schizophrenia. Now the story of “the real American beauty” sounds more doubtful, less real, more sad.

There are more stories of my mother trying to discourage Pat from bathing in the bathroom sink of the church, or my father trying to encourage her to take her medicine, of the church folks keeping the phone number of her father handy so that he could come and bring her home when she would get too disruptive even for the commonly chaotic Northside Chapel.

Now many of you are feeling sympathy for Pat and her family. Pat would die young, never experiencing relief from her mental illness. Initially you might have seen her, as I saw her as a boy, as a comic figure, but now you and I together see her as a tragic figure. There was, behind all of that identity a self just as real as our own, and we somehow through the story feel a connection with that self.

We have an intuitive sense that that self existed, because we exist. Does that self still exist? Does it exist only in this story that now populates this page and still resides in the minds and hearts of those who knew her? How does that self relate to those items of her identity? We have more to explore.