True Beauty

What is true beauty? What does it mean to have divine worth? What would I say to someone who expressed doubts about their beauty or worth?

I recently helped plan an activity designed to help the girls in my ward feel their worth, to feel beautiful, to feel valued.

My friend and I went around and asked several guys in our ward these questions and recorded their answers (11 minutes, totally worth it to watch) :

After that, several people have asked me what my thoughts are. I'm not sure if it's revenge for putting them on the spot or just curiosity. I am not sure I can come up with complete, or eloquent, answer, but I shall try.

Like many people, agree these concepts get tainted easily. My belief is that there is the true standard, and then imitations created by people who consciously or unconsciously don’t want to have to work for what really matters. For centuries people have debated and tried to analyze what it means to be beautiful. I don't plan to uncover new ground, just explain a little more about how I feel.

Let me see if I can explain this better in the context of the question of beauty and worth.

I grew up at the beginnings of the self-esteem generation, where everyone was involved in activities and everyone gets a trophy. Ok. That didn’t happen to me but I want to illustrate the point.

It is easy to believe something is true if we have an outside source confirming it. This means that what they say can either really be true or false, but we have an easier time believing it with confirmation.

So, with beauty and worth, we are easily swept up in external affirmation. There are true standards of beauty, both physical and in personality. It is thus easy to fall to an easier standard when comparing ourselves to it or against it.

I am not sure if that makes sense, but I was given some questions to answer and I promised I would.

Should a woman care what others think about her beauty? Well – as you’ll see with most of my questions – it depends. What’s her motivation? I care that I am presentable and I like to feel beautiful, but I try not to be concerned about being beautiful to make myself worth something. Should a woman only care about what others think about her beauty? No. Ok. I’m moving on.

Why should a woman spend time and effort to be beautiful?  Well, because everyone is beautiful. And, it edifies those around you when you show you’re beautiful. No, not just in a sexually-attractive sort of way—beauty is more than that. Like thousands of others before me, I struggle trying to explain what beauty is. It’s like faith in that you can’t describe it, but you know the feeling, you know what true beauty is and what it is not – though it is easy to get distracted/blinded and forget the true meaning of both.

Can a person be beautiful and angry? Why? I would say no. They can have a pretty face, but I think beauty is something that radiates from the person, from the inside, and if they are radiating anger, that isn’t beautiful.

What is the value in beauty? Well, something has value if it is worth purchasing/sacrificing for. So, the value in beauty is that it is not something easily attained, that it reflects the meaning behind the person’s life and motives, and that it is worth working for. The hard thing is we over-analyze ourselves in respect to beauty. As is said in the above video, it’s the smile, it’s who the person is. And a good person is hard to find, it’s hard to be, but in some way we all want it because we recognize the meaning behind beauty, at least deep down, is more than looking perfect all the time. The value is that there is meaning behind it and we recognize the depth and motives behind true beauty. I don’t know if I’m making any sense here but that’s what I thought of.

Why is this concept touched on in the 13^th Article of Faith? "We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul --We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things." Well, my understanding of the article is that we seek after things of worth. Beauty is inherently as close to perfect as possible. Therefore, we seek after things that are close to perfection, possibly because it reminds us of our Heavenly Home. We want to become better, and truly good people are beautiful beyond words and so it is something we seek after.

“I’d particularly like to hear why a woman is hurt/offended /upset when they are called beautiful.” Personally, when I am hurt by being called beautiful it is because I don’t feel beautiful, and it’s like a reminder of who I could be and want to be, but feel it is impossible to be beautiful. It’s like the stereotypical high school popular girl pointing out that you aren’t her, even if she doesn’t use words, just the inherent comparison. You can probably tell that I don’t always feel beautiful from what I just said. I want to make it clear that when I remember the truth behind beauty, I can recognize it in myself. It’s just a demon more common in girls to jump to the opposite end of pride, and completely believe that they aren’t beautiful. (I say the opposite end of pride because I fully believe that humility is an acceptance of truth, and in all cases that needs to be balanced. There are always extremes and so, there are two sides of pride)

To quote the person who asked me these questions, “Trying to be beautiful will make you more beautiful, remember to sincerely smile.”

You know the popular song by “One Direction,” “What makes you beautiful”? That song drives me nuts. They say, “you don’t know you’re beautiful, that’s what makes you beautiful.” Now I get that they are meaning the girl isn’t aware of her physical beauty, and is not prideful (in the traditional sense) around others. Yet, it bothers me. What happens when she recognizes that she has inherent beauty and can be humble and quietly confident about it? That’s a semantics problem and we could debate it all day.

Remember to trust in who created you. He knows your worth and has given it to you. That’s what makes you beautiful. You are His child, and you are worth loving, infinitely worth sacrificing for, as His Son, even Jesus Christ, has done for you.