Feeling Beautiful is Important
by Nia
I haven't felt beautiful in a while.
This was a hard shift to deal with. Up until a couple of years ago, I didn't have body image problems, except for an occasional niggling awareness that my weird-shaped feet would probably never look nice in flip-flops. Most days, I thought I was pretty darn pretty.
Then a couple things happened in quick succession. One of them was a relationship that should have ended months before it did. One of them was the sinking awareness that I was no longer 17, and hadn't been 17 in a while, and wouldn't be 17 again. And one of them -- the biggest one -- was going through the temple.
Going through the temple meant garments. And garments meant feeling ugly.
Some of you will think I'm crazy for that. I've met women, who, improbable as it seems to me, actually seem to love wearing garments and feel pretty in them. I am not one of those women. They make me feel hideous and shapeless. They hide my body from me. They make me itchy and sweaty. They induce a constant and well-justified paranoia that a little white sliver is sticking out somewhere, or stitching is poking through my shirt giving me the appearance of oddly-shaped nipples. They put limits on what I can wear, and I was shocked to discover that my entire modest wardrobe had to be thrown out to accommodate the cut of the neckline. I was thrown into a style of clothing absolutely at odds with my personality and body type. And I was shocked to discover this caused serious anxiety and had a huge impact on how I felt about myself.
Almost a year after I went through the temple, and several months after I got married, my husband and I were driving through a gorgeous city. We were on vacation. I was in a beautiful place with my favorite man in the world. I should have been happy. Instead, I was depressed and angry and my husband was getting very worried that he'd done something to upset me.
Finally, out it came: "I haven't felt pretty in a year," I more or less shouted. "I don't even remember what it feels like to feel beautiful." Cue tears. A few minutes later, I added, "And, I dunno, I guess it's more important than I realized."
My husband's "Of course it is!" startled me in its vehemence, and I realized that maybe he understood this better than I did.
I'd been rejecting the idea that I should feel beautiful, and I'll bet that many of you have, too. My feminist side was telling me how I was more than appearances and didn't need to change my body to find cultural approval, my socially aware side was reminding me that children are starving in Africa and my appearance isn't comparatively important, my intellect was pointing out that beauty fades before brains, and my flat-out grumpy side was snapping at me to shut up and stop being such a whiner. I thought feeling beautiful was frivolous, something reserved for skinny teenagers who can wear whatever they want, and that I just had to suck it up and get over myself.
I was wrong, and I realized it that day in the car.
We are meant to feel beautiful.
We're meant to feel beautiful because God designed us and said we were good. My favorite religion professor always said that God created Eve last, because He'd saved the best for last. She was the pinnacle of his Creation. I don't know if that's strictly true, but there is something true in idea. Women are beautiful, and I'm sure Eve was beautiful, and I believe that most of us want to feel like we take after our great-great-gagillion-greats-grandma in that way. We should feel like something special and unique and gorgeous. God made us. Beauty is in our spiritual genes, and feeling like it's not there means feeling like an important part of our soul is missing.
We're meant to feel beautiful because beauty gives us power. Beauty -- whether in a mountain or a symphony or a human -- is awe-inspiring. We humans love experiencing awe, and we love being able to inspire it. It makes us feel like we're part of something big and breathtaking. And being beautiful gives us a kind of influence over the attitudes and motivations of other people that can be used to inspire and nurture their innate goodness. A few years ago, I was substitute teaching kindergartners. I found that the day I made an effort to be pretty and pleasant, those kids would do anything for me... including getting along and doing their alphabet papers without complaining. They wanted that radiance turned on them.
We're meant to be beautiful because the way we express our beauty tells the world who we are. I feel beautiful when I'm barefoot in the garden first thing in the morning. One of my friends celebrates her beauty through stunning makeup artistry. Another is gorgeous when she's passionately explaining the finer points of massage therapy. Another takes my breath away when she snuggles her new baby. These women blossom when they're doing something that makes them truly happy, and that radiance displays their unique gifts and talents to the whole world.
We're meant to be beautiful because beauty gives us the confidence to freely share ourselves with the world. Think back to a time when you felt really, truly beautiful. I'll bet that in that moment, you felt free to love completely, to share your talents, to laugh for real, to connect with everything that moved you, to show your husband exactly how much he meant to you, and to use your personality to encourage and uplift everyone who crossed your path. Feeling truly beautiful fills us with a sense of expansiveness and light, and it's that feeling that empowers us to really change the world.
Feeling beautiful is so important. And it's the feeling that counts. Beauty rarely has anything to do with how you look, at first -- it's about how you feel. And feeling beautiful lights you up from the inside out, and no part of you -- not your looks, not your heart, and not your spirit -- can fail to be changed by that. So feel beautiful. It matters.
Why is feeling beautiful important to you? How do you help yourself feel beautiful? We've love to hear from you in the comments.
This was a hard shift to deal with. Up until a couple of years ago, I didn't have body image problems, except for an occasional niggling awareness that my weird-shaped feet would probably never look nice in flip-flops. Most days, I thought I was pretty darn pretty.
Then a couple things happened in quick succession. One of them was a relationship that should have ended months before it did. One of them was the sinking awareness that I was no longer 17, and hadn't been 17 in a while, and wouldn't be 17 again. And one of them -- the biggest one -- was going through the temple.
Going through the temple meant garments. And garments meant feeling ugly.
Some of you will think I'm crazy for that. I've met women, who, improbable as it seems to me, actually seem to love wearing garments and feel pretty in them. I am not one of those women. They make me feel hideous and shapeless. They hide my body from me. They make me itchy and sweaty. They induce a constant and well-justified paranoia that a little white sliver is sticking out somewhere, or stitching is poking through my shirt giving me the appearance of oddly-shaped nipples. They put limits on what I can wear, and I was shocked to discover that my entire modest wardrobe had to be thrown out to accommodate the cut of the neckline. I was thrown into a style of clothing absolutely at odds with my personality and body type. And I was shocked to discover this caused serious anxiety and had a huge impact on how I felt about myself.
Almost a year after I went through the temple, and several months after I got married, my husband and I were driving through a gorgeous city. We were on vacation. I was in a beautiful place with my favorite man in the world. I should have been happy. Instead, I was depressed and angry and my husband was getting very worried that he'd done something to upset me.
Finally, out it came: "I haven't felt pretty in a year," I more or less shouted. "I don't even remember what it feels like to feel beautiful." Cue tears. A few minutes later, I added, "And, I dunno, I guess it's more important than I realized."
My husband's "Of course it is!" startled me in its vehemence, and I realized that maybe he understood this better than I did.
I'd been rejecting the idea that I should feel beautiful, and I'll bet that many of you have, too. My feminist side was telling me how I was more than appearances and didn't need to change my body to find cultural approval, my socially aware side was reminding me that children are starving in Africa and my appearance isn't comparatively important, my intellect was pointing out that beauty fades before brains, and my flat-out grumpy side was snapping at me to shut up and stop being such a whiner. I thought feeling beautiful was frivolous, something reserved for skinny teenagers who can wear whatever they want, and that I just had to suck it up and get over myself.
I was wrong, and I realized it that day in the car.
We are meant to feel beautiful.
We're meant to feel beautiful because God designed us and said we were good. My favorite religion professor always said that God created Eve last, because He'd saved the best for last. She was the pinnacle of his Creation. I don't know if that's strictly true, but there is something true in idea. Women are beautiful, and I'm sure Eve was beautiful, and I believe that most of us want to feel like we take after our great-great-gagillion-greats-grandma in that way. We should feel like something special and unique and gorgeous. God made us. Beauty is in our spiritual genes, and feeling like it's not there means feeling like an important part of our soul is missing.
We're meant to feel beautiful because beauty gives us power. Beauty -- whether in a mountain or a symphony or a human -- is awe-inspiring. We humans love experiencing awe, and we love being able to inspire it. It makes us feel like we're part of something big and breathtaking. And being beautiful gives us a kind of influence over the attitudes and motivations of other people that can be used to inspire and nurture their innate goodness. A few years ago, I was substitute teaching kindergartners. I found that the day I made an effort to be pretty and pleasant, those kids would do anything for me... including getting along and doing their alphabet papers without complaining. They wanted that radiance turned on them.
We're meant to be beautiful because the way we express our beauty tells the world who we are. I feel beautiful when I'm barefoot in the garden first thing in the morning. One of my friends celebrates her beauty through stunning makeup artistry. Another is gorgeous when she's passionately explaining the finer points of massage therapy. Another takes my breath away when she snuggles her new baby. These women blossom when they're doing something that makes them truly happy, and that radiance displays their unique gifts and talents to the whole world.
We're meant to be beautiful because beauty gives us the confidence to freely share ourselves with the world. Think back to a time when you felt really, truly beautiful. I'll bet that in that moment, you felt free to love completely, to share your talents, to laugh for real, to connect with everything that moved you, to show your husband exactly how much he meant to you, and to use your personality to encourage and uplift everyone who crossed your path. Feeling truly beautiful fills us with a sense of expansiveness and light, and it's that feeling that empowers us to really change the world.
Feeling beautiful is so important. And it's the feeling that counts. Beauty rarely has anything to do with how you look, at first -- it's about how you feel. And feeling beautiful lights you up from the inside out, and no part of you -- not your looks, not your heart, and not your spirit -- can fail to be changed by that. So feel beautiful. It matters.
Why is feeling beautiful important to you? How do you help yourself feel beautiful? We've love to hear from you in the comments.
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