| My Two Bits: What exactly is beauty, anyway? "...The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." 1 Samuel 16:7 When I was in grade school, I would watch more than my fill of television. I grew up watching the images of violence, sex and conflict, and I knew that television did not equal real life. I understood that Arnold Schwarzenegger shooting someone or Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff didn't translate very well in the real world. If I fall off a cliff in the middle of the desert, chances are that I won't be in the next episode. I thought the same way when I saw that the women on television didn't look like me. They weren't built the same, they didn't have my physical features. I saw that the long flowing hair, high cheekbones, skinny waist, large breasts, long legs, and clear skin were the norm and were considered "beautiful," and the fatter the woman was, the more often she was portrayed as an ugly joke. Like the other things on television, I thought it wasn't real. After all, I was lucky to meet one, maybe two of television's many requirements for me to be "beautiful." Unfortunately, like many other people, I learned that this wasn't exactly the case. I realized that the people I would see every day would treat me a certain way based on how I looked, and the guys I would meet would determine their future dealings with me solely based on my physical makeup. It didn't matter what kind of person I was, my qualities or even my personality faults. It was all based on what they saw. As I got older, I noticed that although some people grow out of the "physical beauty is everything" phase, even some people who should know better don't. You just may wonder why it matters what you look at in a person. It's not so much about those who don't fit the "standard", it is about you. Some people wonder why their dating relationships don't work out or the people they think are cool at first turn out to be total losers, when their focus is on what looks good to them. Some wonder why they can't meet someone that has some of the same interests as them or that they can click with on an intellectual level, when they never tried to talk to that person they see everyday on the way to class or even that boy or girl they're cool with because his/her looks are not up to that "standard" of beauty. I'm not saying that we can't have certain physical tastes or we can't be attracted to certain people, but this physical attraction isn't going to mean a whole lot without that person's mind and soul. The mind and the soul makes up who a person is. What a person looks like does not equal who a person is, and if you still think this way, I really hope that you begin to think about it and grow in this area, because if you don't, you may be in store for a lot of disappointments. For those who have gone through something similar to me, understand that although you may run into those who are stuck on what you look like, it's what's on the inside, who you truly are, that counts. There are other people out there that really look at who a person is, and for the one you may come across now or in the future, that person has found something beautiful. |
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