Beauty

I don’t write about serious topics often, but this is a serious topic.

I am sick and tired of women feeling as though they are not beautiful. I am sick and tired of women thinking that they need to change how they look to achieve beauty. IT HAS TO END.

This beauty that we are comparing ourselves to is very rare. It doesn’t seem rare to us because we are so incredibly seeped in media that un-natural beauty constantly surrounds us. Makeup artists spend hours making our TV perception of beauty a “reality”, but frankly it is everything but that.

Like everyone else in North America, I am fascinated by beauty. While at university, I have this habit of looking at everyone who passes by. I’m searching for un-natural beauty, the kind we see on TV. I have not found it. What does that tell you? I pass by hundreds of young adults every day, and not once have I seen un-natural beauty. I’m not saying that the people I pass by are ugly. No, I’m saying that they are all beautiful, but not un-naturally TV beautiful. The people I pass by are all average.

When I say the word “average”, unfortunately I am comparing it to the media’s perception of beauty. But if there was some way I could rid myself of that perception, everybody I know and all the strangers I pass on a daily basis would be absolutely beautiful, and the word “average” wouldn’t even enter my thoughts.

If we could let go of those filters tainting our eyes we would see something startling. We’d be able to look in the mirror and not cringe when we see our stomach rolls, acne, and love handles. We’d be able to look at our own bodies with satisfaction and an admiration for true beauty.

It saddens me to know people who are perfectly healthy and look absolutely beautiful, but do not think of themselves in that same way. They look in the mirror and see the media’s perception of beauty, and instantly they find things about themselves that they think need to be changed. I look at them and think that absolutely nothing should be changed, except for their confidence levels.

I think that when we look in a mirror and become disgusted with ourselves, we our offending our creator. Did God not say that he made us in his image? So if we are always trying to change the way our body looks, what does that say to the being who made us? I’m not talking about changing our hair. I’m talking about the women who go to plastic surgeons and have their lips enhanced, or their nose transformed. I’m talking about the people who go to extremes and drastically change their diets, just to lose a few pounds. I’m talking about the women who are a perfectly healthy weight and yet think they are ugly and overweight.

Let me tell you a little secret. Men do not like skinniness. Men like curves. Why then do all women think that men are attracted to skinniness?

My husband and I were walking through a parking lot one day, and we both observed a skinny young woman wearing tight clothes everywhere. My first instinct was jealousy, not particularly over her skinniness, but over other things. Look at her perfect hair, I thought. And, wow, look at those legs. She’s got great legs. Legs that don’t curve in weird ways. My husband’s first instinct was to mutter a disgusted “eww” and avert his eyes. At first I thought that he had done this because I had caught him looking, but when I asked him about it, he told me he found skinny women like that to be unattractive. You can imagine the shock on my face.

Compared to media’s perception of fake beauty, I am not on that level of beauty. But, somehow, and I wish I could tell you how, but somehow when I look in the mirror now, I am not disgusted with what I see. I am happy. Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to brag about how I look; I am far away from being as beautiful as one of those fake TV stars. I have rolls, weird curved legs, huge thighs, big feet, bad skin, spider veins, stretch marks, and poufy, frizzy hair. Yet somehow I see beauty.

Is it possible for us to put aside all the images we’ve ever seen of un-naturally photo-shopped beautiful people? No, it isn’t.

But, it is possible to re-train our thoughts and finally be able to look at ourselves and one another with an admiration for true, God-given, beauty.

 

Image from: http://epicself.com/be/real-vs-fake-beauty/