Onward, Upward, and Further In

What is beauty?  How would your friends define it?  How about your neighbours, the kids on the playground, shoppers at the mall?  Does the definition change if you are male, female, young or old? I'm guessing the answers would be vastly varied.  I confess at my heart, my answers are confused. What I explain to my daughter, and what I feel when I look in the mirror are at odds.  Beauty can describe a million different things: people, nature, morality, art, etc. I scoured Youtube to see if I could get a feel for how the public understands beauty.  Here are some of the answers I gleaned from this esteemed source :) Pretty, being yourself, being kind, being beautiful on the inside, being strong, being happy with yourself, lovely scenery, life is beautiful, everyone is beautiful in their own way, the physical appearance of a person, the qualities a person possesses, youthful appearance, a certain size of a person, compassion, confidence, being happy, perso...

I have a daughter.  She is six years old.  One day I caught her in front of the mirror, puffing her cheeks out and sucking them in.  She had been standing there for several minutes.  I asked her what she was doing.  She told me her cheeks are too fat.  I asked her if someone had told her that, and she said no, she just figured it out on her own. This moment broke my heart.  Here was this lovely little girl, created by God, joy-filled and eager to love others.  But she stood there convinced she was deficient.  And only six years old! I knew this complex and difficult subject of beauty would be the focus of many mother-daughter talks, but I didn't expect it to be so soon.  I also didn't expect it to be of her own observation.  I thought it might begin after some mild bullying incident. But the teaching and encouraging and truth speaking must begin now. Little girls and little boys grow up in an overwhelming society, bombarded ...