So said Ben Franklin. Aristotle hailed beauty as “the gift of God” while Socrates called it “a short-lived tyranny.”
On the mirror of a bathroom at the Ritual Coffee Shop in Des Moines, Iowa there rests a sign:
“Warning: Reflections in this mirror may be distorted by socially constructed ideas of beauty.”
Our photo expert friend, Karen Pike, often gets asked if she can make people look beautiful or young or skinny. She responds with an old quote from a mentor, “Wait 10 years and you’ll love how you look in this photo.” Indeed, when looking back at old photos we often say, “I wish I were that young, or that skinny, or had that much hair again!” But when we think about how we felt about our image back when it was taken, even then we wanted to be better, brighter, and more wonderful; not at all appreciating the beauty in front of us.
Over 20 years of being a trainer and health coach, rarely a day goes by without someone asking, “How do I get rid of ________ (type in body flaw of choice)?”
Never once have I seen what that person sees – the presumably bulging thigh, the love handles, the back-flab, the double chin, even the zit on the end of the nose are always five times bigger to the person then they are to the outside world looking on.
It goes like this: You say, “I’m so embarrassed, look at this ginormous zit on my forehead.” What’s the typical response from your listener? “Well, now that you point it out… I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.” We spend an awful lot of energy on wishing we were someone else or had a different this or that.
A friend commented on the coffee shop sign, “Aren’t all ideas of beauty social constructs?”
Sigh. It’s hard to think of a circumstance where that isn’t true. And that should be a slap in the face to us all.
In the movie What The Bleep Do We Know, scientists talk about indigenous people on an island. Boats with explorers pass by for eons but never land. Because the natives have no concept of what a boat means and how it could change their lives, the boats are essentially invisible. It’s not until Ponce De Leon (or the like) lands and gives them social constructs around what travel is and what other worlds might bring to them, that ships come into focus and design a new sense of longing or intrigue.
What’s my point? Until you told me you had a zit that embarrassed you, it was totally invisible to me. Beauty is about perception. And…imaging if we could switch the tide?
If we could deconstruct media driven measures of beauty and assert our own definition, maybe the existing hurtful parts of the could become invisible to us. New constructs of beauty really aren’t far from shore. Indeed in some cultures being overweight is beautiful because it symbolizes happiness with a bounty of wealth.
Though the media throws up standards of beauty that are most difficult to maintain, we perpetuate a culture that exploits inadequacies with our longing and complicity. After we “Occupy Wall Street” let’s rise up in rebellion over the revolting morass concocted by air-brushed, emaciated divas who starve themselves to wear clothes in which no human can possibly move freely. Get this… Many of the recent Miss America winners were considered malnourished by definition (World Health Organization). YIKES!
The warning on the mirror is a wake-up call and an opportunity to bring a new boat into focus with a totally new context we can actually enjoy.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” – Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
Here are some thoughts on how to lose the longing and become the beholder:
- Love how you look now and appreciate how your beauty changes over time.
- Revel in the parts you find most exciting and enticing.
- Look for unconventional markers of beauty in your life that you can savor.
- Find the poetic in the simple, the proverbial wink of beauty in the haystack.
- Evoke the term “sexy-ugly” – sexy in some inexplicable way that others might find ugly but you cherish.
- Take time to see what you love most about those people and things in your life that you find beautiful. Chances are it won’t be conventional.
“Did my heart love till now?
Forswear it sight,
For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”
– William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.” – Helen Keller
“Beauty is a light in the heart.” – Kahlil Gibran
See you on the most beautiful PATH Ahead!