On Beauty

I've been collecting beautiful images of women for a while now. I don't know why exactly. I just enjoy beauty. I think we all do. I am speaking here of the skin-deep sort that our mothers often assured us would fade. Who doesn't love to look at something beautiful? Someone beautiful?

I do enjoy beauty, very much. But. In my mind and with my heart, I believe that there is more to beauty than a pretty face. There is style, confidence, that certain something - joie de vivre.

I remember the summer I right before I turned 16. We were at camp and there was a guy named John who was adored by all: adults, teenagers, boys, men, children, and women. Oh, yes. The women surely loved him. He and I were sort of together - really just trying to decide if we would be better as friends or more. He was the kind of guy who loved people. He never met a stranger and always made you smile. I remember that he flirted with a very plain girl and I asked him about it. I told him that he could have his pick of girls, why flirt with a plain one? He looked at my quietly for a long time and then he said something I've never forgotten. He said, "Oh, Relyn. Everyone woman is beautiful. Every woman. You just have to know how to look for it."

John was right. He was. But, there's more. There is also the way that a person's beauty grows the more you know them, the more you love them. I've always called it the ET Syndrome.

Do you remember the first time you watched the movie? The first glimpse of ET was very nearly horrifying. Even if he wasn't scary, he was certainly ugly. Do you remember the end of the movie? Remember how adorable he was? How cute? Do you remember talking to people who hadn't seen the movie and indignantly asserting that Yes, ET was adorable. No, he was not ugly. Remember? The ET Syndrome. That little extra-terrestrial became cute because we got to know him, his personality, his voice, his great big heart.

Imagine a world where we all lived by the ET Syndrome. Think how much happier your high school years would have been if you had chosen your crushes based on character rather than height or a smile. Just think how much happier you would have been to have been judged the same way. By how you made someone feel instead of how you looked. Would it have made a difference?

Don't get me wrong, I love beauty. One of life's greatest gifts is an appreciation for beauty. In flowers and sunsets. In food and interiors. In faces and bodies. And I don't think that personal beauty is shallow. I don't believe that a love of beauty is a bad thing. Just that we should begin to live with a new standard. That we should begin to teach our children by example that spirit is more valuable than skinny. That character counts more than calories. That generosity makes for a better life than great genes. That if you know how to look for it, every woman is beautiful.

Just think how amazing our world would be if we celebrated heart, mind, spirit, compassion, enthusiasm, joy... the who of someone instead of the bone structure. Imagine how much happier our children, our teenagers, our marriages would be if we honestly measured beauty in character, in passion, in intelligence, in spirit, in generosity.

Karen Radkai's photograph, A Single Bloom can be purchased here.