To Be Beautiful...

At fourteen, I felt awkward and shy with bushy eyebrows and glasses.
At nineteen, I feel beautiful with my still bushy eyebrows and whenever I wear my glasses (funny coincidence I'm wearing Kitty's grandma's glasses in this picture).

Something that I have learned to appreciate and accept over the past few years though is that being pretty is only skin deep. Every day I interact with pretty people, but something that is lacking is real beauty; beauty that is not only physical, but can be seen in one's heart and is shared and visible by the rest of the world.

This afternoon I went and bought some new eyeshadow and blush, and when I got home I of course tried them on like a new pair of shoes and had my own fashion show. I was fourteen again. I posed in the mirror like Tyra, pretending to be on ANTM (I had been watching the marathon earlier) and then it hit me again: being just a pretty face is not enough. It's not about how blue my eyes are, or how luscious my lips; it's about the whole package; it's about being beautiful, inside and out. Sometimes I forget that though, being in college and always surrounded by materialistic and shallow twenty and twenty-one year old girls, as well as being subjected to the conformity of trying to be sexy and appealing to all the fratastic boys running around The Plains. It's hard not to fall victim to this vicious game, but all the same I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the attention from time to time. It's nice to have heads turn when you pass by, but that's just not enough for me. One day I'm going to wake up and being pretty is not going to be enough. I mean, why the hell would anyone want that to be enough!? I want people to see who I really am, not just my face. I want people to appreciate me for my good intentions, my beliefs, my intelligence, and my witty (not always, unfortunately) jokes that I crack even when the timing is wrong.

Nothing in vain of course, but the nicest comment I have ever received was from a boy who told me that I wasn't just a pretty face. That meant a lot to me, more than any "you're pretty" comment ever has, and I'll never forget that.

I found this quote from Marie Stopes that reads, "You can take no credit for beauty at sixteen. But if you are beautiful at sixty, it will be your soul's own doing." I'm completely and utterly in love with this. It's by God's grace that we're attractive when we're young, but as Emerson so eloquently states it, "As we grow old, the beauty steals inward." As we get older and hopefully much wiser, we will learn that having beauty is having the ability to love others, both good and bad; to give selflessly; to be pure in thought and heart, and to be genuinely happy with life and its blessings. It's not all about physical aspects, and I'm so tired of seeing girls (some even my friends) think that their pretty faces are going to compensate for their lack of personality and depth. One day it won't, and it will probably be one day sooner than they thought.

Just a little food for thought, I suppose.