A lot of the time, I don't feel quite beautiful enough.
Due to having my hair butchered one too many times in my life, I only let one person go near my hair with scissors, and since she lives in Georgia, I vowed to go the entire 11 months of the World Race without a hair cut.
Unfortunately for me, at month 6 my hair was beginning to look similar to a lion's mane. So, I decided brave getting a trim.
Mistake.
A trim turned into 3 or 4 inches, and thinning out and somehow removing the basic texture and body of my hair. Oh, and now my hair is shorter than it was before I left in January, not to mention it just looks weird.
Probably this shouldn't be a big deal-well, definitely. However, if I'm being honest, sometimes I fall asleep feeling sad thinking about how I was prettier when my hair was longer and fuller and wavier.
I'd like to say I think this makes me crazy to care so much, but the truth is, I think most women care a whole lot about how they look. Maybe not everyone freaks out so much about bad haircuts, but a lot do, and either way, we all have our things we dislike the most about our appearance.
Regardless of where I am on the crazy-scale here, my reaction to this haircut ordeal definitely has me thinking.
Why do I care so much about being pretty? Why am I legitimately unhappy if I don't feel attractive? Why do I need people to tell me I'm beautiful? Does everyone need that? Am I ever just going to be okay with how I look ?
I think it's okay to want to feel pretty, but I don't think it's great to be debilitated by a haircut that most people won't even notice.
I think somewhere along the line I decided to believe I'm lovable and desirable based on how I look- my hair, my weight, my complexion…I think that's a problem.
At some point in life I decided that unless I have the most culturally admirable beauty attributes, I am not desirable. And culturally speaking, I don't think that is too far from the truth.
I could rant for a while about how culture, the porn industry, and media in general shape the way we view each other and our own personal appearance. However, I think it's a well-covered topic-even though talking about the topic hasn't seemed to produce a lot of change.
Beauty must have been intended for something else. Not to get all Stacy Eldridge here, but don't all little girls want their daddies to tell them they are pretty? Maybe we don't all wear frilly dresses and turn in circles on coffee tables, but we sure as heck all want to be noticed. And that doesn't stop when we are little girls.
But as we get older, we learn what works and what doesn't. We cover up the things that don't work, and put on new things. By the time we are in our 20's, there is a good chance that the beauty we are displaying is a lot of hard work, and not much of who we really are. I'm not sure that's actually beauty anyway.
The “beauty industry” is basically manufactured appearance. Can manufactured appearance be beautiful? Let's be real, to the eye, it can be at times. Personally, my eye prefers natural beauty, but there is a good chance culture taught me that as well.
So what actually is beauty? And why do I want it so much? God created beauty, right? How did he intend it to be captured? How did he intend us to experience it?
Probably not through vanity, insecurity, self-loathing, and comparison, and probably not through striving.
Beauty surely means more than physical appearance, but we do have a physical appearance, so surely it's relevant, right?
I'm honestly not too sure. Probably like everything else I'm learning, thinking about myself and my needs deserves a lot less thought than I give it, and I'll probably be way more content the less time and energy I give to perfecting and evaluating my appearance.
I have a lot more to learn about the topic- including learning to receive love that has nothing to do with my physical appearance. Maybe. But maybe I'll try to start with just thinking about it less. Although, suppressing thoughts doesn't do a whole lot of good either.
My friend Joe told me I'd learn about this on the World Race, and probably shave my head in protest against an identity based on physical beauty.
I'm not quite ready for such a drastic move, and let's be honest, I don't want to shave my head. But I do want to care a lot less about my haircut. And I do want to walk around at rest with my appearance. I do want to carry a beauty that is not dependent on how I feel that day, or on the clothes I have, or on my weight or my hair.
Shaving my head sounds radical and a bit weird, but how cool would it be if I really had so little stock in my appearance that I was willing to do it?
Fundraising update: Need $3,750 by July 1 to reach the final deadline
