Are We Beautiful, Or Not? | Day 3: Objective and Perceived Beauty

I searched “things women hate about their bodies” and got 26,500,000 results in a third of a second. Twenty-six and a half million results! I just find it so sad. There is clearly very little love for our bodies God has made us.

Girls and women alike strive to reach the ideals put out by the media. Everyone wants to be loved, look beautiful, and feel worthy, and the message we get is that this is beauty:

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to look like that, but it’s unrealistic to say that everyone should be the same and look like that to be considered beautiful. It is not true that only one or two body types are beautiful.

There is another side to beauty that we do not hear about very often. When someone says “She is so beautiful!” you immediately picture someone with a “perfect” body, a certain hairstyle, flawless skin, the stereotype figure and face, and the “in” stylish clothes. You probably never picture someone like this:

Mother Teresa

Or this:

 There are two sides to beauty: objective and perceived. And there is a big difference between the two. 

Watch this video to clarify the difference. Skip to 3:30 to get to the point. 

The media and society puts all the focus on objective beauty (in which the requirements are abnormal), and then our perception of beauty also changes. Therefore everyone starts judging others by their looks and image rather than the whole person as a package. I know I used to do that, but now that I have gotten aware of what I’d been doing, I threw that behind me and now I see not only other people in a more kind and accepting way, but also myself.

Although the rest of our media obsessed culture believes these ideas of beauty to be true, now that we are mindful of what is going on, we don’t have to go along with it and be the same as the rest of the world. We can start to see true beauty in everything and everyone we look at, even ourselves.

Perceived beauty is the most important. Beauty really does come from within. I, my sisters, and my friends are no beauty queens by society’s standards. But to me, my mom, sisters, friends, and those that are close to me, are the most beautiful people in the world.

When you get to know someone, you can see their beautiful soul that just shines right through, and you don’t see any physical flaws (if there is anything you consider a “flaw”.) Someone may be considered a Plain Jane, but all you can see is beauty written all over them when you look at them.

Learn to seek true beauty in everyone you meet. You will always find it.

Love is beauty. Kindness is beauty. Compassion is beauty. A smile is full of beauty. Laughter is the music of beauty.

It is not cellulite, fat, skinniness, pimples, grey hair or wrinkles that is ugly. That is normal. It is judgment, criticism, snobby-ness, a superior attitude, unkindness, bigotry, and cruelty that is ugly. Society is ugly.

So why should we believe something that really is ugly, when it tells us we are not beautiful?


Tomorrow I'll write about The “Beauty” Timeline.

Thanks for reading!

Love, 

Linnaia