For many years, displeasure with my appearance circled me like so many moons. It hung in the air, oppressing me with every breath. I thought about my body, my face, my hideousness with such constancy that I can barely call it thinking. It was a way of being. A sad, doleful way of being.
The energy I expended on this – not on primping, or dieting, but simply on hating myself, was incalculable. What a waste.
I still have the same face, the same intractable eyebrows and expansive forehead. I’m still short enough that I don’t feel fully grown. But thank God and therapy I don’t let those things consume me.
Was it really about my face, my stature, my weight? I don’t think so. It was about projecting my self-hatred on others’ perception or me. It was about being so concerned with others’ gazes that I always half-hovered outside myself, looking at myself with disgust.
This week I was tempted to play the comparison game. I was in an unfamiliar environment and I wanted to be better than the people I encountered. The most obvious way to do that was by being prettier. And thinking about that made me realize I need a haircut, and my color is off from a winter of being sick, and my hairline is still too high and my lips are too pale, and those hips! And those eyebrows!
I was appalled at how shallow I was being. None of this matters in the world I want to live in. It really only matters in the silly economies of power that value women by how much a man wants to be with them.
It’s not about my eyebrows. I don’t need compliments or reassurance. That’s not why I write these posts, or why I come back to this theme and these thoughts I can’t quite escape. I write all this out because I know how badly I need to remember comparisons are odious, appearance doesn’t define worth, and I’m a daughter of God, praise the Lord.
God looks on me with love. There have been precious few times when I have treated myself with the gracious care God intends for me. I was created in perfect love. This is more radical, more frightening than “learning to love my flaws” or “realizing guys like all types of women” or whatever self-help trope is being sold today.
To see as God sees means to drop the veil of hatred and see with clearer eyes, loving others and loving myself.
Margaret
I meet some people and think wow they are pretty good looking and after a time of getting to know them they don’t look so pretty anymore although nothing about their appearance changed. What changed was who they were was attached to what they looked like and that “look” no longer was very appealing. I have met others and have not been taken by their looks at all. Again after getting to know them they become more and more beautiful because who they are becomes what they look like and I think… wow they are gorgeous. I don’t think I can ever separate who a person is from how I view their beauty. For me beauty is tied up in who they are and the passion they bring to life. I do grow to love people’s flaws as well because it helps to define them…. It also makes them unique which I consider beauty as well.
It’s so interesting how our perceptions of peoples’ outsides are influenced by their attitudes and personality.
Yes when we look at ourselves in the mirror we do not see what other people see. We see the book cover…. they look at us and hardly notice the cover anymore … for they know what the book holds and that’s what they see…. perhaps it is beauty because our character leads them that way… or maybe we are repulsive because of the way we have treated someone we are ugly to them.
Interesting. My wife is 63 now, and absolutely more compellingly beautiful and desirable than at any point in the past. And I’ve known her since she was 26.
That’s sweet, and consistent with many of the other responses I have heard. I think that’s the sort of wisdom that only comes with time.