Become Your Own Role Model

True beauty comes from within,
 and validation and self worth must also come from within.

This past week, while doing a little cleaning, clearing out, I came across some pictures that had belonged to my grandmother, pictures of me, school pictures. I looked, I thought, and I shredded the pictures.
A good portion of yesterday was spent on the internet doing research. I write for The American Opera Society of Chicago, so I research our scholarship winners, operas that they have been in, what's happening in the opera world here in Chicago as well as other cities. The job can be a little overwhelming, and at the same time, quite rewarding. While I was looking around the internet, I just happened upon this byline,

"How To Wear Everything You've Been Told Not To."

Of course it caught my eye, we all want to look our best. There was a video that accompanied the story, so I took a look. To be honest, I had never heard of Ashley Graham, but I loved her enthusiasm. Take a look!

As it goes with the internet, one thing leads to another, and to be honest, I can't remember how I got from her Glamour video to her TedX video, but as I watched the TedX video, her words brought me back to those school pictures and the fact that I had shredded them.

What was it that prompted me to shred the pictures? What was it that I saw? It really wasn't so much about what I saw, but what I felt and what I remembered. My heart ached for the little girl that tried so hard to just look pretty. For me, it wasn't about weight, but a perception of beauty.
My fourth grade picture brought back memories of coming home from school and working with my hair. It was so thick and curly, with what seemed a mind of its own. I would get out my mother's curlers and do my best to tame my hair. Maybe that would make me look pretty.
As the years went on, my hair grew longer, still thick and full of waves. I devoured every fashion magazine that I could get my hands on. There was advice on how to wear makeup, how to frame your face by plucking your eyebrows. I tried it all and yet, when I went to school, I was told I looked like a witch. True enough, my nose is long and I have sharp, piercing green eyes. Boys would laugh and shout out, "beauty is skin deep, but ugly goes all the way to the bone." Most days, I would come home in tears. I would look in the mirror and wonder how they could call me a witch, and wonder why I couldn't be pretty like so many of the other girls. My grandmother had told me the story of the ugly duckling more times than I wanted to hear it. I didn't want to be the ugly ducking, it was too hard, and what if it never changed?
Ashley Graham makes the statement in the TedX video that only 2% of the women in the world feel that they are beautiful.
So what is beauty?
Beauty can be seen in the person who has compassion for others. Beauty is seeing joy in another person's face, when they smile without any inhibition. That beauty is reflected back to you when you know that it was you who allowed that person the freedom to feel so uninhibited and free. Beauty can be seen in the selfless act of a child when they want to share their food, their toys, or a kiss.
Beauty is not about clothes, or makeup, or any of the other external things we can surround ourselves with. It's not about how much we weigh, how tall or how short you are, or even the color of your hair. Yes, true beauty does come from within. Some of the most beautiful women I've known would never make the cover of a magazine. But they had a profound sense of making this world a better place, somehow, and making all those around them feel wonderful about themselves.
Shredding those pictures will never make the pain of those young years go away. To be honest, there are more of those pictures in existence, like all school pictures, there were sheets of them! The picture is not the point, the person in the picture is the point. I'm sure that many of you have very painful memories, memories of not being accepted, unloved, not good enough. These things can rob us of being who we were meant to be. But think about it, none of that has anything to do with beauty. It's all about some other person's inability to bring love into other's lives as well as their own.
Be you, be authentic, and know that you are beautiful.