Millennial's Monologue: Secret Dramas in Our Hearts & Souls

Question #6: What if I really, badly want to be beautiful?

Question #6: What if I really, badly want to be beautiful? 

For those of you who care about inner beauty more than outer beauty, bless your soul!  I would be flat-out lying if I claim to have reached that kind of enlightened state myself.  I mean, I’m pretty but not that pretty and it bothers me more than I’d like to admit.  Believe me, I tried to be all Mother Teresa about this, but what I realized is that I can’t just command myself to be more mature and self-effacing.  Dealing with an insecurity issue is like living with a moody monster trapped inside of me.  It constantly whines and worries about not being beautiful enough, and it freaks out when I'm seated next to a cuter girl.  One day, I realized that I’m stuck with it for life so I decided to develop a healthier relationship with this needy monster by learning to better manage and take care of it.  

What I first noticed is that the monster was sadly chained to a narrow, restrictive standard of beauty: bigger boobs, long smooth legs, flawless skin, etc.  Sure, having a symmetrical face or a shapely body helps, but what really makes someone beautiful is the unique ethereal qualities people sense when they look at her.  In other words, beauty is something we feel with our hearts, not just see with our eyes.  A cosmetic surgeon can make our tummies flatter and our lips fuller, but he can’t create feelings like kindness, raw sexuality, purity, innocence, or cuteness.  This perhaps explains why beauty is considered such a subjective matter.  Beauty defies categorization because it’s more like a transfer of certain ineffable feelings and energy from one individual to another.  

Then, I told the monster that it takes a lot of hard work to be beautiful.  Like Cameron Diaz said in The Body Book, beauty is “the culmination of everything you have ever eaten, all the physical activity that you did or didn’t do, all the efforts that you’ve made to understand and take care of it.”  Two weeks ago, I saw a picture of two identical twin grandmothers.  One looked tense, melancholy, somewhat angry with the bitterness of life etched onto her face.  The other one looked easygoing, good-natured, kind, almost mischievous; the pleasant expressions she had repeatedly worn in her youth had now become her face.  The contrast was so striking.  Lauren Bacall was totally right: “Your whole life shows in your face.”  This is especially true as we get older.  So to me, beauty is a lifestyle.  Actually, it’s more than a lifestyle.  It’s a style of being.   

Looking back at my own life, it seems that worshipping beauty throughout my twenties has yielded mixed results.  On the one hand, hitting the gym regularly and developing a better fashion sense gave me a lot of confidence.  On the other hand, my desire to be more beautiful got in the way of forming and enjoying genuine friendship, and I often succumbed to cattiness and jealousy.  I also wasted a good chunk of my youth, beating myself up for not looking good enough.  This is unfortunate.  So here is my plea to Mr. Monster: I will take good care of you, treat you right, and feed you right, so please I hope you will soon mature into a calmer fairy that has a better appreciation for life.    

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Suggestions For Further Reading

Wolf, Naomi (2009-03-17). The Beauty Myth. HarperCollins.

Diaz, Cameron (2013-12-31). The Body Book: The Law of Hunger, the Science of Strength, and Other Ways to Love Your Amazing Body. HarperCollins. 

Kerr, Miranda (2010-12-01). Treasure Yourself. Hay House.