Living Beautifully

If this post ends up being ridiculous, I'm sorry, just bare with me because it's really late and there are a lot of thoughts in my brain tonight.

I do this thing, sometimes, where I totally lose myself IN myself. I think meditation is truly beneficial to the self and stepping back into the depths of the mind can be helpful, but it's hard not to lose yourself. There's an image that the media subtly impresses upon the women in current society: the perfectly complex woman. She is sophisticated but not elegant, quirky but not too awkward, playful and imaginative but not ignorant, and naturally and uniquely beautiful.

You would assume that Hollywood's glorification of the "beautiful personality" would only help women feeling pressured by the doll-like physical figures of women in television, but I think it may only contribute. While women should celebrate their personalities rather than objectifying their physicality, the media has created yet another expectation. This new 'ideal' woman is cute but not realistic. Not to say that she's everywhere, I don't think we can afford to demonize the media. But I've been thinking about this.

I want to be beautiful. Every woman does. We want to be interesting and unique and mesmerizing. And we are. And not because others are able to recognize that beauty despite the influence of the media, but because we know we are. I look at my eleven-year-old sister and I think she is beyond beautiful. There is something about her - she trusts herself.

Women need to be able to trust themselves. Once we let society and the world peel away at our inner voice until it is reduced to nothing but a whisper, replacing it with the mechanical judgements and second-guesses of modern society; once our beauty becomes about ourselves, we have lost the battle. This really applies to everyone now, not just women. Our beauty should not be about us. We should focus on being beautiful for the world (not the way you're thinking, though).


Beauty (as defined when typed into Google search):

1. A combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form that pleases the aesthetic senses, esp. the sight.
2. A combination of qualities that pleases the intellect or moral sense.

It is not a bad thing to want to be pleasing to others - it is only bad when this want becomes an all-consuming desire. We should want to be pleasing to the world. As human beings, we should want to contribute something beautiful to the world. I think definition 2 is more applicable to this post, but take from it what you will. I won't try to convince you of my personal beliefs anymore. I simply think that we should attempt to view beauty, not as a tool, but as a way of life.

Thanks for reading.