I am sorry that I am late this week, It has been a long few days my friends. However, the events of the past few days have given me the idea for our topic today and I am ready to discuss our next subject! I really do intend to discuss things in some sort of order beginning with child Elaine and moving forward, but that day is not today (I am really quite sporadic in life so why would I expect anything different from my blog). Today let's talk about beauty!
There are a lot of ways that we talk about people. We describe people as tall, short, blonde, brunette, red-head, brown-eyes, blue eyes, round face, square face, long hair, short hair, or beautiful. Now it makes perfect sense to talk about people in this manner because we are usually trying to create a reference for someone else to follow. Instead of saying things like "you know the guy with the face and hair", we try to paint a picture for the listener to follow. If you pay attention you will notice that we talk ALOT about how people look, mostly like I said on a descriptive basis, but some of it is purely opinion based on their appearance. It is not based of fact, but on relative ideas about beauty. As a society put a lot of value on how beautiful a person is. I wish I knew the statistic: how many times are the words Hugh Jackman and sexy used the same sentence and how frequently is Hugh Jackman discussed based on his versatility as an actor. Don't tell Hugh, but I think his rugged beauty is more frequently discussed. I would go so far to say that the general public values ol'Hugh on his attractiveness, although there is much more to him than that.
Every single day, we walk around and associate terms with people that we see. Without batting an eyelash we make judgments about the people we see. We associate the term beauty with a certain person based on their physical appearance. However, I think something else factors into our ideas of beauty. Think about the people that you know. Which ones would you consider beautiful?
I realized as I was thinking about my friends and family, that most of the people I consider beautiful are also really nice people. I am sure that you have noticed that on first acquaintance a person is good looking, but upon longer exposure they become more attractive to you. My friend when she first met her husband she said he was an alright looking fellow. Now they are married and she thinks he is pretty dang attractive. Now you might ask, did he have plastic surgery? Does he constantly wear a mask? Did he steal her glasses? No, not that I am aware of. He is, however, a really nice person and as we all got to know him better he became more attractive.
I believe that as a society we do ourselves a disservice in the way we value people, we put way too much focus on the physical. I also think that people can't help but love a loving person! I truly think one of the most notable things we can do to increase our self-esteem and be more attractive to others is to be internally beautiful. The people that I truly consider beautiful are loving, kind, and most of all caring! People like to be liked, so like people! Treat them like you like them! Don’t forget to like yourself and also treat yourself like you like yourself! I hope that you and yourself have a wonderful week! ;)
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(Look, I am wishing you a wonderful week from space! I go to such lengths for y'all!)
Okay, I have a comment on this subject. (Thanks for writing thought provoking posts, btw.) I had an odd experience my freshman year at BYU. I was watching people go up to bear their testimonies in Sacrament Meeting, and I realized that I wasn't critiquing their appearance, and every move and expression like I had the few years before whenever I was in high school. I mentioned my change of perspective to my sister, Sarah, and said, "I used to be such a critical, judgmental person." And Sarah said, "yeah, I remember." Her comment struck me, because surely all the critical, judgmental thoughts weren't making it out of my mouth, were they? I truly had not realized that I was expressing my critical judgments out loud. On the other hand, in years since, I had an experience where I looked at a lady I knew and saw about weekly, and realized that she had lost some weight, so I asked her about it and she said, "Yes, I've lost 65 pounds." Whoa! That time I was so surprised that I hadn't been noticing a person around me at all. To me she looked the same, until it was a very large change. Then, I wondered if maybe I should be more observant of the people around me. But overall, I find that I'm much more happy if I don't pay attention to people's appearances. And they'll have to forgive me if I don't notice their weight loss--I also won't notice any weight gain.
ReplyDeletelove the selfie.
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