Monday, June 11, 2007

Beautiful.

Ask any woman is she thinks she is beautiful. I dare you. Not pretty, not attractive, not cute: beautiful.

If she is honest, chances are her answer will be no, or, at best, a "yes but". Maybe a "I was when I was 16/21/25". More than likely, if her answer is honest, it will include some reference to a "need" to lose weight.

According to the cliche, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but in truth, beauty is in the command of the cultural powers that be; the magazines, the designers, the films we watch and celebrities we are carefully encouraged to envy. Their brand of beauty is impossible, since most of us don't have personal chefs and trainers, we can't airbrush real life, and our genetics don't match those of the 2% of the population that can actually achieve that beauty.

I say those powers are wrong.

I say this woman is beautiful.


And this one.


And these two.

This one.

And these two.

This one.



Even these two.

If you are a woman and you are reading this, forget asking anyone else anything. Go look in the mirror. Ask yourself if you are beautiful. Say yes, you are, exactly as you are right this minute. Then believe it. I dare you.


Welcome to the revolution.

5 comments:

Mast said...

Thanks Erin! I admit it's been hard to be happy with this body of mine since I lost my baby boy. But it's great to have a friend like you to remind me that its okay.

Anonymous said...

so hard. so very, very hard. smart? yes. funny? yes. beautiful? can't quite get there.

Anonymous said...

Thank you Erin, that was really cool of you and you are right, the word "Beautiful" holds so much weight and pressure that most women don't feel like they measure up. I am trying to learn what it would be like to embrace that word.

Anonymous said...

I was struggling with the issue of beauty a couple of weeks ago, and my husband told me that while there is the static beauty that models have in pictures, there is also dynamic beauty - beauty in motion, in action. He said that static beauty has the power to draw men, but poor retention. He pointed out that all those beautiful women can get a man, but few can keep one. I thought it was an interesting point, an interesting unspoken commentary on which kind of beauty the world considers important, even while the spoken commentary says something radically different.

Anonymous said...

Preach it, Sistah!!! Have you seen this video? It is awesome.

Fat Rant