Sometimes people are beautiful.
Not in looks.
Not in what they say.
Just in what they are. – Markus Zusak
As a photographer, I have always been a great respecter of all types of beauty. I’ve worked with so many incredible people, individuals with so many different backgrounds and their own unique style and “look.” People are living pieces of art, and like art, all of it has merit, all of it has beauty, but not everyone can see it.
Beauty that is merely skin deep has always had a purpose in society. It’s captured for advertisements, for artistic inspiration, for the pleasure of other people. It exists in abundance, and as a result, doesn’t have any real value.
Yet, people spend hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of dollars every year trying to achieve this superficial version of beauty. And there’s really nothing wrong with that, unless maintaining this skin deep beauty becomes the all-consuming end goal of their lives. Which it never should be.
Look Beyond What’s Skin Deep
What it comes down to is this: beauty that’s just skin deep is fleeting. Every woman knows that as she ages her body changes. She’ll gain a few pounds here and there, or lose them. Her face will form new lines, caused by years of emotion and experience. Her hands will become weather worn and wrinkled with time. This is nature’s gift to us as women, to us as humans. We are frail and we are finite, but whether you believe it or not, this reality won’t make us any less beautiful.
Some of the most beautiful people in the world aren’t necessarily those who rule the runways or the spreads of fashion magazines, although those people are often truly beautiful don’t get me wrong, but those people who realize that beauty has so more to do with who you are than what you look like. Truly, beauty has little to do with your external appearance, and much more to do with what you are underneath all that. That’s the part of you that has the greatest value, the part of you that really matters.
As a wise sage once said, everything does have beauty, but not everyone can see it. That’s because true beauty doesn’t lie on the surface. It doesn’t come in a bottle or a pill or in several hundred dollars worth of professional retouching.
It’s something that emerges from inside the core of person, the element that shapes their personality, the spark that ignites their soul. Without that part, your body is just a shell, a vessel, the temple that is meant to hold the sacredness that is you. That is all. Nothing more.
