For the first time ever in my life this weekend, (by someone who was not my mom or my best friend), I was called “beautiful” by someone; not “pretty”, not “hot”, not ”cute”, not “nice” (the latter the worst of those three generic let-you-down-easy words), but “beautiful”. That word conjures up all kinds of intensely invigorating, lush images; it is a word that denotes a kind of fantastical vibrancy that only very few people can possess and embody. For example: Kat Von D is “hot”; Amanda Bynes is “cute”; Taylor Swift is “pretty”; nobody is “nice” because the very word itself is so generic, it implies only ugliness; but Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly… are “beautiful”. It’s a legendary word, an untouchable word. And thus, I was completely, totally flattered. So much so, I figured they were totally bullshitting me, and maybe they were. Aesop says to never trust flattery. Aesop, always a cautionary pessimist, might be right. I wonder if he was right in this case as well.
The thing about “beauty” – the iconic kind – is that it is firstly, in the “eye of the beholder”, despite how cliche that is; and secondly, beauty isn’t what’s on the outside. You could be the most beautiful woman (or man) in all the world. But if you do not embrace your beauty, you will always be stuck; you will never embrace what you have been given. The question then becomes, what’s the point of being beautiful at all if you can’t appreciate and embrace it?
Beauty is a brave trait, and therefore a quality that you must own up to and accept, even when for inexplicable reasons, it is hard to. Beauty is in your personality, your conduct, your experiences; it is every single day you’ve ever had where you embodied something or someone special; it is every single day you have spent crying or bleeding inwardly; it is every single time you’ve ever wanted and achieved something, and every single time you failed. That’s what beauty is. It’s everything you are, and everything you aren’t. It’s just you.
