Mirrors are amazing instruments. The ultimate instrument of self-reflection. Through them we see ourselves, our faces. We see our expressions, we see what life is doing to us, what the elements are doing to us, what our health is doing to us, and what our souls are trying to tell us.
At 20 we have the faces that God granted us. Just the beginning of mood and personality leaving permanent expressions. Just the beginning of too much smoking or too much booze. Just the beginning of seeing our faces as maps, road maps of how we live our lives. At 20 a couple of nights sleep, a little sun, a little hydration and we are back in shape. We all have lineless, faultless faces.
But at 50? What do we have then? We have the faces we have earned. The battle scars, the abuse, the care, and what we have thought about, are all there to be reflected on our faces. The look in our eyes, the lines. The continual moods have begun to leave road maps that can't be erased. How have we lived? What have we thought? Who are we? It's right there to see. The world sees your face everyday. Every exchange you have, every person you meet, everyone you know, knows you by your face.
Put your best face forward. FaceBook. Face the world. Your face.
Have you looked at the standard face of plastic surgery recently? The other night I saw a commercial for Nutrisystems with a celebrity I have really always liked, Marie Osmond--but now she has purchased the every-scared-woman face. Plastic surgeons are all making the same woman, over and over again. And now Marie has the face. She gave her face away, she threw it away. Every woman who was afraid to let her own face tell the story of her life has joined her in her quest to do what? To appear young and beautiful--but at the cost of losing something that should have been precious to her--her own face.
What of aging gracefully? We aren't meant to remain 18. We aren't meant to look forever 29. We are meant to age gracefully and until society will allow anyone over 30 to be beautiful we will forever have rich plastic surgeons and women who trade in their very own faces for pretend masks that someone, somewhere, calls the "in" young face.
We are meant to get smarter as we get older. We are meant to get wiser. With that wisdom we are meant to get kinder and calmer and hopefully happier. We are meant to embrace ourselves as beautifully aged. Lovely, wise and kind.
Who sold us this bill of goods (especially in the United States) that there was only one way to look? How did we decide a young perfect face and an entirely too thin body was was the ultimate goal? I find it hard to believe that the advertising and fashion industries could dictate to the people of the world what defines feminine beauty.
I am constantly amazed at what people in the world find interesting and valuable. Case in point: I have been writing this blog for almost two years, during this time I have written 47 articles. Some have been enjoyed by multiple readers around the world, others have been widely received because of content (The Good Man for Kirk Knipp, for example), but no one article has had even close to the hits that the photo gallery of obese women has had. This one article has thousands of hits and my other articles hundreds. The search words have amazed me--"funny fat women", "no fat chicks", "fat humor". The reason I don't pull this photo gallery, which I obviously posted for far different reasons than it is used for, is that I live with the hope that one in every thousand people will read another post, or read my captions for that gallery. It is hard to not be discouraged with these numbers and what I believe they mean about who visits this blog. Is enlightenment so dear? Is human kindness so lost? Every time I look at all those hits I have a hard time not losing faith in humanity.
There is a snobby, elitist joke I have always found amusing: "When your IQ gets to a hundred, Sell!" The fascination that these some 12,000 people have at the pictures of grossly obese woman on my blog make me think of this joke. Who are these people? Who educated them? What can they be thinking?
So this blog continues to be my candle. My one candle in what I am hoping isn't a dark digital night. I urge you to share my blog with people who would appreciate it and even more, I urge you to be that light in your own life, to be the light and to reach out.
We have to keep trying. We have to keep striving. We have to let kindness rule us and we have to drive out the darkness. I don't care who you are or what God's church you have joined. Kindness is my God. Loving kindness.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?
YOU are beautiful. Be YOU.
Beautiful--Chistina Aguilera, all rights reserved, c. 2004
Reflect goodness. Be the light.
God bless,
Beauty
