If Beauty Hurts, We're Doing It Wrong!

This is my favorite saying of the Beauty Re-Defined movement. Yes, it is a movement as much as abolition and suffrage were. If beauty hurts, we're doing it wrong. I think this has a lot to do with emotional pain as well as physical. If striving to look beautiful hurts us emotionally, if you're always thinking about how you look compared to her or what he is thinking about your appearance, then our thinking is wrong.

Too bad some people disagree! A man from Utah, who testifies as a Christian, wrote this letter against "inner beauty" verses "outer beauty."

The gist of the letter is against how women are turning towards inner beauty and not trying to look beautiful anymore. He wrote, "Some girls I know tell themselves it doesn't matter how they look because they're beautiful on the inside, and then they just . . . well, let themselves go."

The letter begins by claiming that you shouldn't be convinced that beauty on the inside is all you need and you shouldn't let this "hinder your quest to achieve your physical ideal." Try the media's physical ideals, which are impossible to achieve because everyone is photoshopped and whatnot. We are striving to be healthy! not to be perfect.

But it's not about forgetting our outward appearance. It's about embracing who we are and instead of picking what we hate about ourselves, we try to focus on what we love about our bodies. The writer of this letter said that focusing on inner beauty took away from taking care of our bodies. Lies! If we are happy with our bodies won't we want to take better care of them? For example, if you have something that you love, something you treasure, you aren't going to throw it around like garbage, you're going to take care of it and keep it beautiful.

Another accusation is that "for those who are still dating," if you're not taking care of yourself, well that's the reason you're not married! He goes on to say, "The right person will love you eventually, but it's your physical aspect that often catches the eye." You know what? I believe the right person will be attracted to you right away, flaws and all. You don't have to look like Barbie to be found attractive.

At the end of his letter, this gentlemen says that we should strive for "healthy improvement." What does that mean? Seriously, he was just telling us not to let ourselves go. Like I said before, if we feel beautiful we will want to be healthy.

I thought Beauty Re-Defined had an interesting response to this letter as well. They wrote, "We don't need any more reminders [of "physical ideals"]. What we need a reminder of is that our perceptions of beauty and ideal bodies - even healthy bodies - are skewed by forces that no other generation has had to deal with." We should take care of our bodies, but taking care or ourselves and being healthy are different than being crazy about our appearance.

1 Peter 3:3-4 says, "You're beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and find clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight."

The problem with people thinking being beautiful is everything is that, well, first of all, there's a lot more to life than looking pretty. It doesn't last forever. Second, their ideas of beauty are so skewed by the media. Because of the invention of photoshop and cosmetic surgery and maybe even make-up, we don't know what true beauty is anymore. It's lost underneath the powder and behind the computer screen. It's forgotten behind the eyeliner and lipstick. We live in a society where if you're not perfect than you aren't anything. But remember, "You are capable of much more than being looked at" and "there's more to be than eye candy."