Beauty and the Beast

Most of us know the story of Beauty and the Beast, or at least we know the Disney version of the story. Here is my interpretation of the story slightly altered to fit my purposes. The Beast is a prince who was once vain and selfish. He allowed his obsession with physical beauty to prevent him from seeing the true beauty inside of others. Due to this flaw, his outward appearance was magically changed to reflect what he truly looked like on the inside-a monster.

I often wonder what our world would be like if you couldn't enhance your physical appearance with lotions, make-up, Botox, exercise, plastic surgery, pedicures, or facials. What if the only way to become more beautiful was to become a better person!?!? Your teeth became straighter and whiter if you only spoke kind words. If you gossiped and crap talked other people your teeth became yellow and crooked. What if your hands and feet only looked well cared for as you used them to do nice things for other people? Perhaps your eyes would truly be a window to your soul and reflect the true intentions of your heart. What would your eyes look like? Would they be bright, beautiful, shinning with thick luxurious lashes or dull, rimmed with dark circles and bags?

Since you and I don't live in the world I described, our outward appearance isn't a true reflection of who we are inside. So, if the only thing that really matters on this earth is how we treat our fellow human beings, why do we spend so much time focusing on appearance? I want to reflect a bit on this question and other issues surrounding beauty as I take a sometimes personal journey into my thoughts and feelings about beauty.

I was raised in a wealthy beach town just north of San Diego. Needless to say, I grew up with a warped sense of what was "thin" and "beautiful". That transcended into a deformed view of what things makes a person perfect. I always imagined that other people weren't just beautiful, but also intelligent, kind, talented, hard working, etc. , all of the things that I wasn't. I equated beauty with perfection, something that I dearly wanted to attain. Perhaps this is a distorted view of the LDS ideal to eventually become perfected through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, i.e. not only do I feel the need to be perfect in how I act towards God and my fellow human being, but I needed to be physically perfect too. So, perhaps I confuse the ability to one day become perfected with the incorrect idea that I must be perfect RIGHT NOW in every aspect of my life.

This twisted ideal of perfection "here and now" through physical beauty is probably best manifest in the good old Mormon state of Utah. My younger sister claims that(and I have no scientific evidence to back this up, only the many billboard advertisements along I-15 in Utah) second to Orange County in Southern California, Utah has the highest plastic surgery rate in the country. I interpret that to mean that many LDS women not only want the picture perfect house, car, family, and testimony, but also the perfect body. All of this "right now" or we somehow feel like we are less than worthy. Contrast that possibly false statistic and false ideal with the words of a leader of the LDS Church, Elder Jeffery R. Holland, "I plead with you young women to please be more accepting of yourselves, including your body shape and style, with a little less longing to look like someone else. We are all different. Some are tall, and some are short. Some are round, and some are thin. And almost everyone at some time or other wants to be something they are not! But as one adviser to teenage girls said: “You can’t live your life worrying that the world is staring at you. When you let people’s opinions make you self-conscious you give away your power. … The key to feeling [confident] is to always listen to your inner self—[the real you.]... Every young woman is a child of destiny and every adult woman a powerful force for good. I mention adult women because, sisters, you are our greatest examples and resource for these young women. And if you are obsessing over being a size 2, you won’t be very surprised when your daughter or the Mia Maid in your class does the same and makes herself physically ill trying to accomplish it. We should all be as fit as we can be—that’s good Word of Wisdom doctrine. That means eating right and exercising and helping our bodies function at their optimum strength. We could probably all do better in that regard. But I speak here of optimum health; there is no universal optimum size." ( "To Young Women". November 2005, Ensign.)

To continue on with Elder Holland's thought, I wish that I treated myself the way I treat my daughter. I tell her constantly that she is beautiful and amazing. How often do I tell myself that? Yep, not very often. If I expect my daughter to believe my words, I need to not say bad things about myself like "I am fat. I am ugly" etc. Daughters do mimic their mothers. The only way to stop the cycle of self loathing is to not pattern it for the next generation.

I feel more beautiful when I surround myself with love. I feel like a giggly school girl when my eight year old son tells me that I am beautiful at the most random times, like when I am wearing my favorite muumuu, no make-up, and my hair in shambles. My husband seems to think that I am a reincarnation of Aphrodite and the most glorious woman to walk the earth. Having the unconditional love of my family makes me feel beautiful, even when I am not at my best. Sometimes I believe that my family sees me as God does, as His treasured, beautiful daughter. When I feel that kind of love, I can shrug off the cellulite on my thighs with a laugh and an "oh well".

In my life journey, I have gone through many stages of how I feel about my body. Sometime it is loathing, sometimes admiration, sometimes gratitude, and sometimes just pure dissatisfaction. Yet as I age, I have become more and more at peace with this physical body that God has given me. I recognize that I won't ever have 16% body fat again, have perky breasts, or even a completely clear complexion, but I do know that I feel healthy, happy, energized, and strong. That is something that outward beauty will never replace.

I know that some women spend their lives worrying about every little imperfection, the minor flaws or even the major flaws. Women who aren't ever content with how they look, constantly searching for a beauty panacea. Many women don't, but some of us, me included at times, buy into the notion that we need to be more attractive to love ourselves or to be loved. In my experience, when a woman tries to fill the emptiness inside of herself with outward physical fixes, it only leaves a greater void. A friend of mine remarked on the effects that breast augmentation surgery had on her best friend. She told me that her best friend become more selfish, self-centered, and it was "all about her". Or as my husband stated after watching a TV show about people getting dramatic plastic surgery makeovers, "Their outside has changed, by who they are inside hasn't". Striving to be more physically beautiful doesn't make you any happier.

Also, here is a snarky, supercilious, random thought; in my personal experience, I have noticed that women who relay too much on physical beauty tend to lack. Lack what? I find women who rely on their looks to be lacking in depth, understanding, the ability to self reflect, and a general love and compassion for their human colleagues in this mortal experience. Like the Beast from the movie, vanity and pride have blinded them to the more beautiful things in this life. I desire for these women the ability to be magically transformed and learn about the beauty that resides outside of their bodies.

Some of my closest friends are people who don't have an ideal figure. Maybe I am romanticizing being overweight or stereotyping people who are as "jolly", but I swear that my bigger friends are more fun. They seem to not be as uptight and worried about life. They have a little more zest for living, more laughter. Perhaps it is because they don't spend their lives worrying about what other people think or worrying about not eating yummy food. Whatever it is, their beauty transcends size and makes them my most affable friends.

So, does it sound like I am saying, don't exercise, don't wear make-up, never have plastic surgery, let your hair become greasy and gross, and wear a burlap sack everyday? I am not. In fact, I exercise four times a week to keep myself sane and I wear make-up almost every day, because I like to look at me when I look my best. I do it for me, not for anyone else. Yes, I will admit in an almost contradictory statement to my previous paragraph that I like to look my best, but I recognize that the make-up or exercise don't change who I am on the inside. If I act ugly or feel empty inside, no amount of make-up or weight lifting will change that.

So, where is the line between taking care of myself/being healthy and diving into the deep abyss of beauty as self worth? It lies in the heart. Is my heart set on the latest fashion to make me happy? Do I obsess about having a perfect body? Am I willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money to have the latest beauty treatments? When trying to make yourself physically beautiful takes up more time and energy than trying to be a "good" person, it is a problem.

Lastly, what is beauty? To that I would say that beauty doesn't have much to do with outward appearance. Beauty is a reflection of how you treat others. It manifest itself through your eyes, your words, your smile; even if the eyes have crow's feet and the smile isn't perfect. I have noticed that a good person, a kind person exudes a beauty that has nothing to do with perfect skin or a toned body. I think of Mother Theresa and the beauty that emanated from her face, even though it was covered in wrinkles and age spots. Like my earlier analogy of a world where you could only enhance your beauty by the type of person you are inside, true beauty is simply a reflection of how your treat others.

With that thought in mind, my hope for myself, for my daughter, and for women everywhere is for them to become beautiful. Not beautiful like the beastly prince from the fairytale (attractive on the outside but cruel and selfish on the inside), but beautiful like Mother Theresa. May our wrinkles, our age spots, our cellulite, and all of our many physical imperfections be trumped by a good, kind, beautiful heart.