AXIOO

I had a chat with a friend the other day and she brought up an interesting topic. It was a girl’s perspective and it was completely new to me. She talked about beauty and how a lot of girls in our community didn’t know how to receive compliments. When people tell her she’s beautiful, she’ll say “No, I’m not.” There can be two reasons for this; one, she is being modest – or she had the ability to lower herself to be deemed higher (another cultural trait) – or two, she simply didn’t know that she was indeed beautiful.  Now true modesty is an excellent personal trait. But not being able to believe when someone pays her a compliment has so much to do with a healthy self image – or an unhealthy one, for that matter.  She wouldn’t be able to believe what people say because she couldn’t see it for herself. She couldn’t see what everyone saw because her mind is so clouded by negativity. The thing about self image is that it is self-seen. It doesn’t matter what other people thought as long as the person thought it about herself. For what she thought in her heart, therefore she is.

My friend even talked about the Evil Queen in Snow White, who woke up every morning asking a magic mirror who was the fairest one in the land. Only insecure people do that. Secure people with a healthy self image would walk up to that mirror and tell him “I am beautiful just as I am”. That’s when true beauty will shine through, when a person is able to tell herself that she is indeed beautiful, not to make her feel better, but because she truly believed it.

I never saw it that way, and like I said, this was all new to me. But I guess it’s true… there is no one more beautiful than a girl who is so confident about who she is. Thank you, friend, for the enlightening. I learned something new.

Cheers,

Jan