“What is ‘beauty’?”

Do you know that magazines ads will show you a 60 year old woman and make her look like she’s 40 by putting a gob of make-up on her and photo-shopping any other “imperfections?” How does this make a naturally aging 60-year old woman feel? Not great. In fact, it often makes her feel old, ugly, and hopeless.

In our society, in our magazines, and on our televisions, we are constantly bombarded by what “beauty” is. Generally, what American society finds “beautiful” for a woman is usually young and thin, as well as gray hair and wrinkle free. How does that make a woman who is aging, going gray, getting wrinkles, and overweight feel?

My mom is from Taiwan and I have visited there several times. My mom would tell me that in her culture, being thin meant that you were poor. It symbolized that you didn’t have enough money to eat. On the other hand, if you were overweight, you must be rich. If you were obese, you must be royalty, because you were rich enough to eat to your heart’s content. In our country, being thin is prized over being overweight. In her country, “beautiful” was being overweight.

So we can see that beauty is relative. Beauty should be defined by each of us, not by what society defines it as. We must change the way we as women see beauty before we expect society to change what it defines as beautiful. As Gandhi so famously said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”