Being You, Is Choosing To Be Beautiful!

Every once in awhile I look at a magazine and I want to hurl it across the room. Not because there is something “wrong” with it, but instead because sometimes I hate looking at the underlying messages. Forgive me for being blunt, but hear me out. Every day a little girl looks in the mirror, to see if she is “ok” by the world’s standards. She looks at her body, and she compares her curves or lack there off to models who represent less than 1% of girls and women, in size and stature. She looks at her face, and laments over the features that she doesn’t have as she and her male counterparts are told what pretty and beautiful is before they had the ability or information to decide on their own. She questions her very nature and spends countless years of her life, wanting to be someone other than what she is, how common and how tragic.

Beauty, Inc.

Do you know full-figured women are celebrated in parts of Africa? There are places where small feet are seen as beautiful, and where big lips are a feature of celebrated beauty. Beauty, is seen differently in every place that you go, and it is seen differently by people based on who they are, where they lived, what they have seen, and were told. The standards of beauty change based on people’s experiences, where they live, and who they are. The question we should ask is how can something so “important”, be so arbitrary? Beauty is something that we must all define for ourselves, and it shouldn’t be something that is based on someone else’s belief, concept, interpretation or look.

Each of us is beautiful in our own way. The details and features that we have come from our parents, or from the generations that have come before us. They are our legacy that is passed down from generation to generation, and although we can often recognize the beauty in them, we often are challenged with recognizing that same beauty in ourselves. Yes, some of us have straight hair and some of us have curly hair, some of us are tall, and others are short. The science of how we come to be is amazing, especially when we look at the roles of recessive vs. dominant genes. Nothing about you is by accident, that is why I encourage you to celebrate the beauty in you and in others. Each of us is beautiful, we are handcrafted by a loving God, and we are all beautiful, and wonderfully made.

Today when you look in the mirror celebrate you! Know and understand the difference between you and the model you see in advertisements, or on television. That is often a standard set forth by someone whose desire is to sell you something, influence your behavior, or get you to move in some direction. That should not make you doubt or question what you have been given, and your own ability to appreciate who you are, and the way you see yourself. The very woman or man in that ad has their own challenges with the way they look. The very face you love to look at or hold up as the standard for beauty, maybe the very face that THEY look at in the mirror, and want to change because something doesn’t look good enough to them.

Celebrate all of you, and learn to love and appreciate yourself just the way you are. Don’t allow yourself to speak negatively about your look or features! Catch yourself when you begin to slip into the habit or comparing yourself to others. Most of all, remember that you are beautiful, your features, your smile, your face and your figure are perfect, be about the business of celebrating and taking care of you!