BEAUTY CURRENCY
When I was a wee young thing, I was taught that beauty is a currency. And I was told I had none of it. So, from that perspective, I was very poor.
It wasn’t just something my mother and grandmother taught me. It is something women see and hear everywhere we look. The message is quite clear – the more beauty you have, the more value you have.
But beauty is a myth
The media’s definition of a woman’s beauty is all about physical appearance. Youth. Glossy hair. Flawless skin. Perfect bone symmetry. Shiny white teeth. Sizes and proportions of facial and body features in some random ratio that none of us can quite perfect. Noses and eyes and mouths and cheeks, hips and waists and boobs and bums, have to be just big enough but not too big, and just full enough but not too full, and just long enough but not too long, and just soft enough but not too soft, and just colourful enough but not too colourful. According to glossy magazines, this is beauty.
My face and body don’t appear in magazines. Do yours? Quite possibly not. The vast majority of us don’t meet these ridiculous photoshopped standards. And yet, we can so easily fall prey to using these platforms as mirrors, searching for all the comparisons and imperfections.
Beauty becomes a currency when we are taught to associate our worth with our physical appearance. Where our value in relationships, the workforce, and all of society is arbitrarily linked to how we look. And if how we look does not measure up, then we can feel inherently worthless.
This does not happen to everyone. Sometimes, the people who love us can teach us that we are valuable because we’re funny, clever, kind, compassionate, sporty, musical, academic, loyal, honest, loving, friendly, interesting, passionate, dedicated, calm, entertaining, persistent, caring, trustworthy, understanding, patient. The friend someone can rely on. The life of the party. The quiet confidante. The colleague who gets things done. The shoulder to cry on. The hiking buddy. The love of someone’s life. All the things that make us beautiful on the inside.
But I was not taught those things
I value other people for all those things, but I am still learning to value myself outside my body. Because I wasn’t taught it as a child, it is very hard to learn as an adult. I still feel very poor when it comes to self-worth. I am very much a work in progress.
The lovely thing about cherishing internal qualities rather than external ones is that they don’t change much over time. And when they do change, they tend to change for the better. We become more loving and interesting. More dedicated and calm. We become more of all the good stuff. The longer we know someone we care about, the more beautiful they seem – inside and out.
But physical appearance becomes less over time. Age comes to all of us who are blessed with a long life. And the external parts of us are destined to change. We may still be beautiful people, but not in the classic way that society deems valuable.
It is so easy to judge a stranger by external appearance
I think we nearly all do this. Subconsciously, at the very least. I wish I didn’t…. I know what it is like to be the person that others are not drawn to. Nobody’s value lies in their external appearance but until we know them, it is all the information we have to go on. It always makes me cringe when other people are described as ugly because it is never said with kindness, and regardless of what other people think about me, it is how I often feel. I know it is a feeling and not necessarily a fact, but I hope I can ultimately be judged on who I am on the inside not the outside.
I have recently dipped my toes into the dangerous waters of dating apps. It is the minefield that everyone described, and it took me two little weeks to feel very disillusioned. But we are all in there judging each other on a photograph – which says absolutely nothing. It doesn’t even say what someone actually looks like because a photograph is just a moment in time, and we all go out of our way to pick the images we feel are the most beautiful, not necessarily the most representative. Just look at the photo I attached to this article. It’s me. But I don’t actually look like that – as a (former) friend liked to point out repeatedly. It was a lovely moment in time, however. And a lovely memory of a really fun, glamorous day.
Women are inherently valuable
Our value is not in perfect teeth or pert breasts. It is in how we contribute to our relationships and society. How we nurture those around us and lift each other up. How we care for gardens and books and children and the planet and everything that touches our lives. We are valuable whether we’re shaped like apples or pears. Like pineapples or bananas. Whether our boobs are watermelons or raspberries. We are a giant, delicious bowl of fruit salad that needs to be celebrated at every age and stage.
Beauty may be a currency, but we are all wealthy if we just know where to look.
