first published on ylcf.org, April 26, 2006
read original comments here
“I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want – an adorable pancreas?”
-Jean Kerr, The Snake Has All the Lines
I’ve written about frumpy fashion. I’ve discussed the rhyming of comfy and frumpy. But recently, discussions on ylcf.org have turned to beauty.
To be quite honest, I don’t care what anyone else has to say about beauty. All that matters is that I am beautiful to my man. Because I am his beauty. He is my mirror. No one else matters.
Yet, while I look to my man to see my reflection, I am a reflection on him as well. I do not want to appear badly to others, and thus reflect negatively upon him, upon his choice for a bride. I try to dress tastefully, yet I know I will never please the majority. I try to act pleasantly, yet someone may always misunderstand. So my best crowd-pleaser is a cheerful smile. They may think Merritt’s girl has a strange sense of style, but they can at least know I am happy in his love, happy to be his girl.
“I’ve never seen a smiling face that was not beautiful.”
-Unknown
It has been said that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and nothing has ever shown me that so clearly as having a man love me. He thinks I am beautiful when I first get up in the morning. He thinks I am beautiful with no makeup. He even thinks I’m still beautiful at the end of a very long day. He doesn’t love me because I am beautiful. I am beautiful to him because he loves me.
“I don’t like standard beauty – there is no beauty without strangeness.”
-Karl Lagerfeld
While anything is “in” these days, I want my closet to reflect not what’s in, but what my man wants to see on me. He gives me lots of compliments on my cute summer skirts, but he’s quite partial to my Levi’s. He likes my hair short. And he loves me in pink and blue.Two summers ago, I found a pink shirt at JC Penney. Merritt told me over and over and over again how much he liked it. Since then, I’ve kept my eye out for any more pink shirts that will actually go with my red hair. And of course, his favorite color is blue, the one color I never used to wear. “It goes with your blue eyes,” he said. Since that discovery, I have kept my eye out for cute blue shirts at GoodWill. Now my family comments on how frequently I wear the color. But you know what? Merritt adores blue on me. And so I wear it as often as I can, just for him.
“Plainness has its peculiar temptations quite as much as beauty. “
-George Eliot
Every time Merritt comes upon me putting on makeup, he asks, “Why are you doing that? You don’t need it!” It’s really nice to be marrying a man who likes me in my natural, freckled, pale-skinned, pimpled state. But he wants me to feel good about myself, to feel beautiful even when I look in the mirror on the wall instead of the mirror of his eyes. So I have the freedom to wear makeup on the days I feel like “the barn needs painting,” and skip it on the days I don’t.
“As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
While I was out shopping on Monday, my cell phone rang. “This is your reminder to eat lunch,” said the dearest voice in the world. I am thankful that my man wants me to be beautifully healthy, not perfectly skinny. He is always reminding me to eat, but he never thinks I have enough fat on my bones. I have an idea that with years, this will change. But I don’t ever want to be too heavy to sit on his lap.
“Beauty is indeed a good gift of God;
but that the good may not think it a great good,
God dispenses it even to the wicked.”
-Saint Augustine
Beauty cannot be defined, for beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty cannot be bought, for beauty is not something we put on. Beauty cannot be earned, for beauty is not a reward. Beauty can only be appreciated. And, I think, love is beauty’s most ardent admirer.
For to him, and him only, am I truly, completely beautiful. Because love is blind.
Thus, even when I’m old, gray, wrinkled, and pudgy, I will still look into the mirror of his eyes and see the adoration reflected there and know that I am, forever and for always, his beauty.
“I hope you have lost your good looks, for while they last any fool can adore you, and the adoration of fools is bad for the soul. No, give me a ruined complexion and a lost figure and sixteen chins on a farmyard of crow’s feet and an obvious wig. Then you shall see me coming out strong.”
-George Bernard Shaw, to Mrs. Patrick Campbell
This is one of the old articles that I’ve saved to go back and re-read on occasion, so thank you so much for posting it again.
Everything you’ve said really resonates with me. Though I would say that the cause isn’t so much that love is blind as that it really sees.
G.K. Chesterton (I’ve noticed I post a lot of his stuff in my comments
) wrote this love poem to his gray-haired wife while she was still young and red-headed:
A wan new garment of young green,
Touched, as you turned your soft brown hair;
And in me surged the strangest prayer
Ever in lover’s heart hath been.
That I who saw your youth’s bright page,
A rainbow change from robe to robe,
Might see you on this earthly globe,
Crowned with the silver crown of age.
Your dear hair powdered in strange guise,
Your dear face touched with colours pale,
And gazing through the mask and veil
The mirth of your immortal eyes.
I love this one!
Last February this post inspired and amazing conversation between myself and a girl a few years younger than me while on a high school youth group ski retreat. We talked on the ski lifts and even on the way down the hill because we were so excited. We talked about the concepts and also applied them to God and how we should “look nice” in our deeds and personality in order to reflect Him. It was wonderful. Thank you so much for posting it again!
This has been by far my favorite post for the six years I’ve been following the fellowship. I was delighted to see you posted it again. I even reread all the old comments!
May I one day have a love like yours, beautiful!!!
That’s so beautiful — thank you for sharing.
Thanks for the reminder. I need it often. One way that I do remind myself to search for my inner beauty rather than concentrating on the outward, is to put away all my make up AND my jewellery for the season of lent each year (one year I went so far as to remove the mirrors from our house, but that annoyed my husband! So now I resort to posting 1 Peter 3:3&4 on them). On the first week, it’s HARD. But by day forty, I feel better about myself as a person and a child of God. I encourage anyone who reads this to try the same!
What a beautiful post! I loved reading it and it will be one I come back to again and again. Such an encouragement for those of us who are unmarried not to focus fleeting, physical beauty. Thank you so much, Gretchen!