More than Skin Deep

This is a little bit of a tangent, I'll admit it, but I had a conversation today that sparked my passion, and I need to stand with my megaphone for a moment or two.

You are beautiful. You are so much more than what you look like on the outside, or what someone else judges you to be. You are a marvelous and wonderful being, full of so much life, and beauty and potential. This world is better off because you are in it.

My dear blog reader, I wish I could be sitting next to you, looking in your eyes and telling you this in a way that would reach to your soul, that somehow you could hear it, internalize it and never doubt it.

Today, I had a conversation with a friend about the judgments someone passed on another based on solely their looks. This comment wasn't even directed at my friend, rather a third person, but still these comments still provoked doubt and uncertainty in my beautiful, cool, confident friend. She is incredibly tough, and beautiful way beyond skin deep. She understands that person A was being incredibly shallow and immature. However, as we both noted, this drives us crazy. Person A making these comments creates a culture where girls-women, constantly question their image, because somehow we have decided that image determines self-worth. These comments create a culture where women, living in a foreign culture, with amazing new food, are self-conscious and worried about gaining weight.

My soapbox is this: you are infinitely and unaleinably beautiful. Your body is a wonderful part of who you are, but it is only a part. You are beautiful for the way you smile, what your laugh sounds like, the jokes you make, how you help other people, that little quirk you have that makes you uniquely you. Believe it. Hold onto it.

You are beautiful!