In my job at a department store, I spend part of my day in the cosmetics aisles, lining up row upon row of lip gloss and foundation, mascara and blush. Grandiose claims leap at me from the packages, promising 'voluptuous lips' or 'sky-high lashes', all with the implication of making me more 'beautiful.'
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
What does that word even mean?
According to makeup companies, beautiful is a face adorned with luscious lips, long lashes, and spotless skin. But what if all those layers are just a veneer-a mask hiding hurt, shame, insecurity, or a mean streak? Does that make someone beautiful?
On the radio, I've heard advertisements for 'body reshaping' procedures-surgery to make a person skinnier, and therefore, in their eyes, more beautiful. After hearing that ad one day, my youngest sister, not even ten years old, told me that she wanted to get that procedure some day so that she could be skinny and pretty. I turned my face away so she wouldn't see the tears in my eyes as I silently raged at society's narrow definition of beauty. I felt that day as if a chuck of my sister's innocence was torn away, never to be recovered. I grieved that loss. At nine years old my sister had already been so deeply influenced and affected by the industry of 'beauty' that she wished she could go under the knife to more closely fit the impossible standard of beauty in today's culture.
I want my little sister, and every girl, boy, man, and woman to work to transform our definition of 'beauty' from "visibly flawless and thin" to a definition that truly captures all beauty-the beauty of a gentle touch or a soft smile, the beauty of a kind word or a goal achieved, the beauty of a mother holding her child or a family laughing together. When we stop thinking of beauty in a purely visual sense, we can begin to recapture the beauty that isn't always appreciated for what it is.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
You are.
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