Beauty and Praise

Hedra, an online acquaintance of mine, is a very wise woman. To our joy, she has recently started blogging. She always has interesting, well-informed, and thoughtful things to say, which was why we all (the community over at AskMoxie) all encouraged her to start blogging.

Today she wrote about praise and beauty, and I hope you find her remarks as thought-provoking as I did.

I've never worried too much about my appearance. When I was born, it was evident that I would be a person of some size, and my parents instantly embarked on a "big is beautiful" campaign, which worked quite well. I've never been "fat", although I've always had some womanly curves about me, which some who obsess about that sort of thing might think of as excess. Every once in a while, when my jeans get a bit too tight from drinking too much soda, I fuss about it a bit, to myself if no one else, but I never really change my habits. My body is as it is, and I like it as it is. There are things I'm not too fond of - my appendix scar, for one. But there are many more things I like, even love - my hair, sable and wavy, and beginning to turn the beautiful silver of my grandmother's; my eyes, dark hazel-brown, big and liquid; my waist, uneven from scoliosis but swelling sexily to my hips. I actually inherited most of my physical traits from my mother's mother, from my hair to the shape of my nose to the very way my pants crease over my thighs. It was a revelation the day I was looking at pictures of Gran as a very young woman, and admiring her beauty, and then realizing how much I resemble her (except for the part about being seven or eight inches taller). I wish I had some of those pictures of her to show you. Maybe I will someday!