What is Beauty

What Is Beauty?

by Sai Marie Johnson

Everyday we are exposed to imagery, and ideology. Even at the moments that we are not trying to we are steadily exposed to the idea of what beauty should be.

The issue with beauty is that it is something everyone sees differently, and yet it also causes shallowness to develop within our personalities because either we are too absorbed with it, or we are obsessed with thinking it is something we cannot attain.

The unattainable is something that humanity has long been attracted to, and the thrill of the chase is probably one of the strongest motivating factors in many people's lives. We yearn for that thrill, and that moment of euphoria that comes from seeing something strikingly beautiful.

And then what happens? Life passes by, and we gain and lose weight, we gain and lose scars, and we gain and lose other identifying marks. Marks that at times induce pride, and at other times cause feelings of hopelessness, and depression.

I'm an average woman. I'm not strikingly beautiful. I do not have the body of a model. I do not have the picture perfect description of society's ideas of beauty.

Does that make me ugly? In the eyes of some people I am sure it does, and throughout my life I have been consistently told I was ugly. In elementary and middle school I was always made fun of for having freckles, and being shy. In middle school girls made up a rumor I was a lesbian who had tried to date my best friend. It was so devastating to me that I ended up being pulled out of school because I was close to getting into fights everyday with the girls who were lying about me.

For years and years I believed that I wasn't a pretty person, and that I just had to accept that life would be different for me because I wasn't one of "The Beautiful People."

I first got married at 16, and I admit that was a very young age to be married at, but I had my reasons. In the end I was married for 7 years, and had things been different with him I would probably have stayed married. They weren't different though, and so I had to make decisions about my life that required realizing that yes I was pretty, both inside and out, and that I could succeed in life by applying other skills in the necessary places to succeed.

Still let's come back to beauty. It is the topic of the posting, right?

I've been a size 8, a size 16, a size 9, a size 12, a size 10. What I have never been is a size 0, or anything below an 8. I am a curvaceous woman. I was blessed with hips, and a petite frame. I've never been model size. I don't think I ever will be, but does that make women like myself any less beautiful?

And let's not makes this a beanpole versus a whale topic by insinuating that skinnier girls are prettier than heavier girls or vice-versa. Each woman is uniquely beautiful to herself. Her strengths as a person, and what make her amazing are the traits of her character. They're not the size of her boobs, or how well her butt fills out a pair of shorts.

Those are all attributes, but they are not beauty.

And that is the problem with today's society, and youth. We think big booty women are what define beauty. We call out people for being ugly when they're different, but when do we look past the outside and start seeing REAL beauty?

Because to me real beauty is in a beautiful song, a thought-provoking poem, an entrancing story, a butterfly on a flower, the birds singing, and sunshine on my face.

If people think I am ugly when those things happen? So be it, but to me I'm beautiful, and so are all of you. So remember beauty isn't skin deep, and it comes in all kinds of shapes, sizes, and packaging.

And that's the beauty of beauty. She's an everchanging drama queen.