Fabrizio D. And Beauty

By Franco Mimmi

At what price beauty? Who decides what and who is beautiful? Franco Mimmi's short story is the Vanity Fair for our times

• Language: English
• Publisher: Babelcube Inc.
• Release date: Dec 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781547555642

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Beauty

Franco Mimmi

Passions – 1

Fabrizio D. and Beauty

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PART ONE

When he reached forty-two years of age, Fabrizio D. decided to become beautiful. Not that he was ugly: he was like countless others, with no magnificence of face or body and no needless nastiness of nature.

Around his early forties, his innate promptness of spirit and a certain brilliance for business had combined to bring him a stroke of good luck. He found himself very well-heeled and with no longer any need – or grounds, since he loved money only because it was comforting and liberating, the only reasons he had endured the hassle of wheeling and dealing - to work to live.

But there was that innate promptness of spirit of his for which he still needed to find an outlet. It was precisely while he was pondering this, one morning, patting his chin reflected in the mirror as he prepared to shave, that he acknowledged for the umpteenth time, but saw it for the first, that that chin and the whole head above it and the whole body below it were devoid of beauty, and decided he would make them magnificent.

He carried out a first assessment by himself without more ado starting from the top and found that his hair appeared to be dull. Even when carefully combed with a parting on the left, it was thick on his forehead but already sparse at the top. Straining his neck and eyes, he saw that it was indeed a veritable clearing, and it was there, therefore, that he would have to effect repairs.

As for his face, although no expert in the canons of beauty, Fabrizio D. realised there was work to be done. His eyebrows were bushy but seemed even more so due to his protruding arches, which cast heavy shadows over his eyes. Now, these – these were not unattractive, quite the reverse. Their colour - brown – was rather common, but they were so intense and bright that they were far from being ordinary and seemed almost beautiful. If, indeed, the eyes are the mirror of the soul, Fabrizio D.'s soul was already claiming the body he wanted to acquire. His nose was straight but rather large, and his nostrils too wide. His mouth was straight but his lips too thin, thus mocking the other proportions of his face. His teeth needed a going over, certainly: they were all there, it was true, but two or three were jagged, they were all somewhat yellowed, and several were showing receding gums. He had already noticed that his chin