Beautiful starts now, don’t miss of i dot or a t dash from Missus Mandy of Love You Long Time

He told me I was beautiful. It was late at night, and we were under this enormous New Hampshire willow. The summer night was getting cold, but not so cold that we would touch quite yet, although that would come. The stars hung heavy in the sky and felt closer than the night before somehow – and he told me I was beautiful.

I didn’t believe him at first, which is sad and something that I think a lot of us as women tend to do. The blushing denial wherein we shake our heads and pretend it wasn’t said. We look around and point to ourselves as if to say, “You don’t mean me –“when we know exactly who he meant. But when he told me I was beautiful I felt like he was right. So I said thank you, and I didn’t blush, and I didn’t avoid his eyes.

That was the first time I really believed I was beautiful, because my entire life prior I thought beauty had a timeline. In Junior High it was, “When I get my braces off,” in High School it was, “When I fill out a little” (never happened, FYI), in college it was, “When I can afford to buy nice clothes and get my hair done.” I pushed off beauty. I thought it was a destination – a place I would get to, not realizing that I was already beautiful – and I was beautiful not because of all of those seemingly important things, but because I was kind – or tried to be, and I had friends and family who loved me and I was becoming someone I was proud of becoming.  That is why he told me I was beautiful.

It is difficult to believe in our beauty. We believe in the beauty of others – sure, but not ourselves. We pore over fashion magazines, and ask our hairstylist to, “Make us look like her,” always disappointed in the result when we look like ourselves after the process, with a hairstyle that definitely does not flatter our long, or round or heart-shaped face. We buy clothes because someone else wore them first. We attempt to lose weight because someone else is thin and they wear thin well. We mimic beauty to the best of our abilities because beauty is something we don’t believe we will ever possess.

We all know the cliché about true beauty starting inside of us, but let me state it again because it is the truth.  The heart of beauty is self-love – which is very different from vanity. Self-love is to embrace our imperfections – our split ends, and flat chest and unshaved legs (if you are me), because at the end of every single day we only have ourselves, and we can either be our closest ally or truest enemy. We don’t need a man to tell us we are beautiful to believe it because when he told me I was beautiful it was something I already knew, but didn’t believe. I think each of us really know it all along if we try hard enough to hear our lungs and eyes and hearts reassure us every day we get to live on this earth. This earth is beautiful because we are on it and we are improving it – and that is how I feel beautiful. 

Feed me fashionably fresh

In 2005 Elder Holland gave a talk, “To Young Women”, in the October session.  A few lines of this incredibly insightful talk have been permanently burned in my memory and heart:

“I plead with you young women to please be more accepting of yourselves, including your body shape and style, with a little less longing to look like someone else. We are all different. Some are tall, and some are short. Some are round, and some are thin. And almost everyone at some time or other wants to be something they are not!”

My whole life I have tried to “fit in”.  To be someone I am not.  I wanted to look like everyone else.  Average.  Normal.  I have had to stop using those words, because I reached a point in my life where I realized that they don’t have any meaning.  Now I am not delving into semiotics here, claiming words have no definitions, but normal, average have no meaning because they mean something different for every person.  There was a time in my life when I measured my thighs multiple times a day.  What was the ideal measurement?  Someone once asked me that.  And suddenly, I realized.  There is no normal.  There is no perfect thigh size.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  And I am the beholder in the mirror everyday.  I had to start believing that I am beautiful.  I had to stop trying to “fit in.”  Because that state of being doesn’t exist.  We are who we are.  And we need to like the way we are.  

I thought about some lines from one of my favorite ever, and ever children’s books: I Like the Way You Are.  Two turtles.  Two friends.  Very different.  And at the end of each story, one turtle says to the other: “I am who I am.  And I am not who I am not.”  And the friend turtle answers back: “I like the way you are.”  I cry almost every time I read that book with my kids.  I want to put those lines on each of their walls and say it to them every night before they go to bed.  And when they wake up.  And when they come home from school crying because someone said they were too this or not enough that.  I want them to know and be proud of who they are.  And proud of who they are not.  And to know that I, and their Heavenly Father, LOVE the way they are.  

Here is the big surprise: I am skinny.  I covet my daughters’ thick, healthy thighs (they’re 3 and 2).  I have tried to make myself gain weight through eating, prayer, weight gaining shakes.  But you know what: my body seems to know something that took my head and heart a lot longer to learn: I am who I am.  I am not who I am not.  And I like the way I am.  My body has a blueprint and it knows who it is.  And I am learning to love that person. It is different from my sisters, my mom, my grandma, my friends, my sisters-in-law, my mother-in-law.  But it is me.   

That is why Elder Holland’s talk resonated with me.  Because everyone wants to be something they are not.  So many people want to be thinner.  And I have spent my life trying to be bigger.  I am no one’s ideal.  Just like they are not mine.  Because there is no ideal.  There is no perfect measurement.  There is no normal.

And thank goodness!  We are all so beautiful and so different.  The world would be so boring if we all looked the same.  When I look at other people, I don’t see weight, I see beauty.  I see personality.  I see love.  I see faith and charity.  When I look at myself, I am trying to see those same things.  Because if everyone is trying to be someone else, we are not spending enough time being ourselves.  And God needs us to be ourselves.

Elder Holland quotes a Young Women leader, “‘When you let people’s opinions make you self-conscious you give away your power. … The key to feeling [confident] is to always listen to your inner self—[the real you.]'”

Everyday I tell myself that I love being me.  I love my imperfections and my strengths.  It is all me.  My weight does not define me, if I do not let it.  There is no normal.  We are all beautiful, powerful daughters of God.  And I like the way we are.  I like the way I am.  

Feed me fashionably fresh