Posted by Laine

Date Posted March 14, 2008

Beautiful is messy and disorganized, gooey and organic. My beauty is real. It is not symmetrical, tidy, boxed and packaged into the perfect size. Beauty is not the most external part of a person and the most external part of a person is not the whole person.

We cannot know a person based on their image. We cannot see their struggles or sorrows, joys or loves. Can we see where they came from? Whether they experienced parenthood or the loss of a loved one? What made them what I see before me here and now? But we are conditioned to see whether they are 10 pounds overweight, wear the right clothes or carry a blackberry.

We are all complex representations of works of art, works in progress. There is no such thing as a finished complete human, thus the preparation for life is to be ready for anything. Beauty and grace is how we choose to act, and it is not the failing that counts but the dignity of how we rise up.

I am a woman, a strong woman (mentally, physically, emotionally) who has experienced much, loved, lost, cried, laughed who has wishes and goals, and yearns to be understood.

The gesture of being a woman, of standing naked before my beloved and proudly and courageously wearing my sorrows, weakness and my big butt, is what makes me more than my body.

Why am I not seen as a complex divine spirit? A work of art? A gift from the divine? As opposed to a black-haired size 4 (on a good day) with junk in the trunk?

Unfortunately we have bought into the belief that human life is cheap and expendable. We have forgotten the miracle of our birth and gift of our life.

In western cultures this obsession with the superficial - this driving fear of fat, crows' feet, and body hair - dictates our daily activities, steals and consumes our precious life force, drives our actions and feeds our addictions.

The wheel of consumerism - the weight loss, medical, and advertising and fitness industries - has an enormous impact on all of us. It insists that thin is beautiful, while stealing the truth of our real inner, unique beauty from us.

It takes us away from our individuality by falsely dressing us in a cloned armor of conventionality, convincing us that to be the same is to be accepted.

We must not be driven by aesthetic results. The idea of body image must bow to the dictates of health, to moving your body and releasing emotions, to gaining endorphins and creating an abundance of energy through movement, to a sense of well being.
We must realize we do have a choice and a say, we have the ability to fight for the expression of our individual beauty and inner strength, and for the confidence to be proud to be who we are internally and externally.