Blessing #12: I am Truly Beautiful
Dorothy Parker famously said, “Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.”
(Quite) a few years prior, Plato mused that “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.”
Is there a woman or a girl on this or any other planet who hasn’t at some point wrestled with the idea that she is, in fact, beautiful? In every age and in every culture, there are evolving and somewhat fickle standards of beauty that women have either tried to achieve or have struggled against. And don’t think that men haven’t been affected by this craziness. If you are a man and you have a mom, a sister, a girlfriend, a wife, a daughter- if you have ever interacted with a female at any point in your life- you know these 4 dreaded words: “Do I look pretty?” The beauty industry generates billions of dollars in revenue each year by playing on our fear of looking ugly. God forbid that we should be considered ugly! As though our face and hair and body must appear perfect by some industry standard or we just won’t measure up and we will be, I don’t know, less than.
I see nothing wrong at all about caring for your physical appearance and making an effort to look your best.
Sadly, we seem to have become so twisted in our view of what we really are and so skewed in our perception of what beauty is that we will do anything to be beautiful. We obsess over our weight, the size of our breasts, and the shape of our butts and bellies. We freak out over our first wrinkles and our first grey hairs. We go on unsustainable diets and insane exercise programs. We pour a fortune into facial creams and skin treatments and hair coloring. We modify and alter our appearance through accessories, cosmetics, even surgery, all on a quest to be beautiful. To hear the words, even if they are spoken by just one person: Wow, you look beautiful! Because let’s be honest- it feels pretty good to hear that.
We want so badly to be validated as beautiful. And when we are not, or worse- when we are cut down by the cruel words of someone’s intolerance, bullying, and shaming- something inside us dies a little, and we just give up. We don’t believe that we have anything beautiful about us, minimizing and ignoring the incredible creatures that we ALL are.
When someone compliments you on your appearance, do you ever catch yourself saying things like, “Thanks, but…” and then proceed to verbally tear down something else about yourself? Or maybe it’s more like, “I guess my ____ looks okay, but my _____ needs a lot of work.” Or how about, “Well, I might be (insert vaguely complimentary term) but I’m certainly not beautiful.” Hey! You know what? Stop it! You ARE Beautiful. Yes. You are!
I want to change that. Today, instead of criticizing the way I look, I want to go full on Plato on myself and see myself as Beautiful. I want to truly see the beautiful essence of LIFE that I embody! I want to look in my lovely green eyes and see the eternal energy behind them, all of my light and all of my darkness, and be in awe of perfectly, amazingly, uniquely beautiful ME. I will choose to stop picking apart every so-called flaw. I will silence the voice of the fat-shamer. I will turn aside the judging eyes. It may not be easy, and I may break down in tears, but I am determined to stop punishing myself. Today, I invite you to do the same. Come on, Beautiful. Let’s do this! <3
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