Beauty

My thirteen year old sister came into this world with an attitude. There are some people who were born leaders, and she is definitely one of them. She's also a knock-out with her black hair and baby blue eyes, which only helps her cause. Our family has...ugh it's weird describing this without sounding cheesy but, like a punk rock attitude. We're pretty tough, and we really don't give a damn what people think of us. That comes with a sort of style sense that can be interpreted as...different. Sam always loved her looks, her style, her music. She was one of those lucky people that was truly comfortable with themselves.

This June marks the end of her second year in the public school system.

No, this is not another post about how much I hate said system, it is a post about beauty, as the title says. And I guess a little about peer pressure.

If you beat on something long enough, it eventually gets soft. Well my sister has been turned against herself. I know she is only 13 and that is a very difficult age. I still remember. It hasn't been that long for me. The mob at her school has finally convinced her that she isn't pretty because she doesn't fit into their definition of beauty.

All of a sudden she was wearing ribbons and pink and a seemingly whole new attitude had emerged. I said Sam, what happened. Her words were as she has always been, honest. "We were just sick of getting made fun of."

Now I am not here to write about the evil that is middle school girls. That could go on for pages and could be summed up in two words. They suck.

As humans we have always had a problem with people that didn't necessarily fit our mold. We don't like things to be different. And women are the worst. Especially if whatever the other girl is doing looks really good on her, and she likes it. Women who are insecure are a huge danger to themselves and others. They maliciously hurt each other in order to make themselves feel better. There's a certain glow about confident people that people with out it can't stand. I know, because I've been on both sides.

My sister is beautiful, inside and out. Sadly, she is only 13 and feels the need to conform to the mob's increasingly loud and violent influence. I know that Sam is beautiful regardless of what she's wearing, but that is something they don't yet care for.

Maybe they never will.

Our country has put such a high value on the physical. A Paris Hilton body is only so good if it has the Paris Hilton price tag (and even worse, the reputation). As I said before, it doesn't matter to these people how physically beautiful my sister is (and she is very) if she's not wearing the right clothes.

Since when did clothes define us? We were created naked and born naked and naked we shall return. Clothes are necessary in our culture for many reasons. Style is, well it's just gravy. If you've got it, good for you. I don't believe it should cost an arm and a leg.

And women are suffering the most. Our idea of beauty is often very unsafe for our women. Look at what we require of models. Aren't models supposed to be representative of the woman shape? How is 5'10 and 95lbs supposed to be representative of the American woman? Not that I support obesity, no way. I believe in a healthy life style for all shapes and sizes. But this is the idea we're giving our girls.

I hate it with a passion. Because I believe everyone of us was made by an intelligent and artistic Creator and what he put on you or didn't put on you is a direct result of his plan. I don't believe in cosmetic surgery because I see it as almost a slap in the face to the one who made you. He doesn't make mistakes. And how can a plastic surgeon do better work than he? As we've seen by so many horror stories, they can't. They often make mistakes, very expensive mistakes.

You should be proud of who you are, and take care of your body. It's a gift.

That being said, I'm not saying that the other girls definition of beauty is wrong, either. What I'm trying to say is that we all have our own individual ideas and we should be accepting of that. As long as someone isn't hurting themselves and others, why not just leave them alone? Better yet, why couldn't we be supportive of each other?

In the end, we all get wrinkly and old and wind up in the dirt. With the worms and things crawling all over us. We may leave behind a few stunning pictures, but what really matters is the influece we left. That's where our true beauty lies.


And that concludes my after school special.

Pain

I believe I've heard something about this before. Maybe in a cheesy movie, maybe from my mom or possibly both but here is my take on it.

It's funny but I was thinking about how important pain is in my life. I guess I never really noticed it before so if I seem a bit naive, that's not necessarily true. I'm just slow.

I always considered the pain I went through growing up (and still some today) as what has contributed to making me the strong person I am now. In that sense, I was grateful for turning out the way I did. My brother struggles with the same issue and hasn't yet found strength from the pain. He's an incredibly angry person. The way I see it, we had no control over what happened to us then so we have two options : Let those people and experiences ruin us today, or use it to our benefit.

But I also noticed that pain in the smaller aspects of life seem to reveal change. For example, Riley is learning to walk. He is finding out rather quickly what he can and cannot do by the small bits of pain he feels on his bottom when he fails. This is how he learns. He'll learn many things from pain in the future. It's sad, but it's life. Obviously, I don't just mean physical pain.

Then Josh mentioned to me the other day about how he loves the day after a work out when his muscles hurt. He said he could feel them ripping while he was lifting weights, and that in a way feels good because it's progress. That's when the light went on over my head. I had just beeing feeling the same way about some new face wash I was using. It burns when I put it on and I remember thinking the first time, Oh that's good. That means it's working.

Besides healing and strength, fear is a result of pain. But as John Mayer says, Fear is as friend that's misunderstood. See as I said before, Riley is learning from fear. He has a few fears that are irrational, but he will eventually learn that he won't be hurt by those things. It's the things that do hurt him he should fear, and he is slowly learning that. Children are famous for the monster under the bed syndrom but it's really no different for adults. Our monsters have simply changed location.

I realized just yesterday that I still have a few monsters and one of them lives at church. That's a fear that has no basis, as nothing there can really hurt me. There are people there that could do me harm, but I've learned to spot them. I've learned how to handle them. See once you grab that thing you're scared of, it usually turns out just to be a pile of clothes, right?

So to sum things up, pain is an important aspect of life. It is necessary if change is expected.

Besides, there's nothing you can really do about it.