BEAUTIFUL?

What we see as beautiful and how we define beauty is so definitive of who we are and how we have been cultured,
I can remember being a young girl coming of age in the sixties,
And being considered pretty, but dark,
I had yards of long, curly hair and that by definition made me lovely to so many,
The but dark comment was interesting because it was in comparison,
To my lighter hued mother, grandmother, sister and aunts,
For whatever reason I don’t recall feeling any kind of bad way about it,
Possibly because I heard smart and pretty often enough,
As the years passed I recalled a friend talking about those of ‘us’,
Who were ‘light-skinned’,
I looked at her saying, ‘I’m not light-skinned, I am dark…”
She laughed and said, ‘No you are not XYZ is dark, you are right in the middle,
Hmmm…
To this day I am still startled by that,
And what those kinds of messages send,
Just this past week my husband told me that my makeup was darker than necessary,
At first I took slight offense,
But he took me to the mirror and showed that the color came nowhere close to my neck,
Or any other part of my body,
Interesting,
Left me to wonder what the heck was that about,
If anything,
Was I making my face darker, subliminally,
Who the hell knows,
I do not that I cut of those yards of hair,
Many times over the years because I didn’t like being defined by good hair,
However, I have always felt that I had a healthy self-image,
The way I define beauty is from person to person,
And I find so much beauty in people,
And it never has to do with skin hue,
Hair texture or eye color,
I will admit that I am disturbed by those who only seem to find,
Beauty in that which is the opposite of them,
The dark haired girl who craves light hair,
Or the ebony girl who wishes to be ivory,
Or the black girl who only says white people are pretty,
Or the white girl who only thinks thin girls are beautiful,
I pay lots of attention to what people say,
As a writer it is food for books,
But more true that as a humanist,
I care so much about what make people tick,
And there seems to be no better sign of a healthy acceptance of self,
Than by that which we define beauty,
A friend told me recently was that one of the problems she had with me,
Was that I thought highly of myself,
Huh?
She told me that she had been raised to never think of herself as smart,
Pretty or special,
Ouch~
What a message to give a child,
Especially when she was all those things and had spent forty plus years not knowing it,
Kids need to know they are all those things,
And that dark brown skin is as lovely as cream colored skin,
That thick bodied girls are as fine as skinny ones,
That ebony locks are as beautiful as blonde straight hair,
And that all of that should be tempered with,
You are as good as any,
Better than none,
Smart as you choose to be,
And individually awesome,
Always….

Be THE PEACE YOU SEEK~

Angelia
http://womenwrites.blogspot.com