This is not an inner beauty sob story, I hate those.
Music: Jealous by Labrinth
Don’t you just hate it when people say “everyone is beautiful, and it’s the heart that matters”?
Personally, I detest it. And every time someone says that I feel like tying up their mouths never to hear them utter a word again.
As humans, we all want to look beautiful. To look into the mirror and get your heart stop for a minute because you can’t believe you get to do life in this beautiful body!
This is a gift everyone should have and experience. And in this write up, I will be giving you that gift.
Not just from a superficial standpoint, but going into the intricate reason as to why you are beautiful physically and also working our way slowly to get you to see that too.
This is not a “see your inner self” write-up. It is a look at the exterior beauty that you have always been.
Beauty has always been a fascinating concept. The simplicity, yet intricate complexities of it. Like an unwritten rule scribbled on the muscles of the heart. Everyone seems to know what beauty is ,yet at the very core of it still struggle with the acceptance of what it might be.
Over the years, with different variations of civilization man has constantly changed it variation of what beauty means. From low thatched wooden houses to grand brick castles, then to modern glass house. A desperate match making mama in the early eighties would have sworn to her grumpy daughter that ball gowns would never go out of fashion, and its beauty is a constant. Jokes on her!
Before going into the dynamics of beauty, it is important to understand what beauty is, or at least an attempt to explain what it is.
Beauty, is a pleasantness you acknowledge. The understanding that something is appealing to you.
The concept of beauty is used in relation to so many things, the books we read, the sight of nature, the things we say, and most especially things that have life.
As humans, we have a great obsession with labelling beauty and calling out that which we view void of it.
And this brings us to this question, what is beauty? And in the absence of what is ugliness justified?
To understand this, we are going to walk through different eras of civilization across various cultures to get grasps of what they considered beautiful. Using this metrics, we are going to decide the preceding factor that makes for beauty, and how it is being analyzed.
In the ancient Egyptian culture, the ideal standard of beauty were almond shaped eyes, a straight nose, and large lips. A body shape that was sure to turn heads is a tall lean body structure that is not thin, more muscular with a small chest and wide shoulder, with narrow hips and long legs.
The Egyptians had dark skin complexions, however, their favoured skin tone was a light bronze like complexion. As it indicate affluence, differentiating between the commoners who spent a lot of time in the sun, and the rich who were mostly indoors.
The ancient Egyptians also greatly believed in enhancement, what we now call make-up. Most Egyptians male and female used wigs as well as dyed their eyelashes, eyebrow and lips with Irish juice.
A broad shoulder, small waist and narrow hip was an ideal in this era of civilization. So if you have a small breast and a flat backside, then you are an ancient Egyptian beauty.
Here is a glimpse of what that would look like in this present day.
Still in the ancient continent of Africa,
Beauty has been defined as contrary things.
In most West African part of continent, beauty has been defined in the roundness of the figure of an individual. The ability to accumulate body fat and the smoothness of the skin.
Another highlight of beauty that was used in the segregation of aristocracy was tribal mark. It was seen as the pinnacle of beauty, and to be without a tribal mark, is to poor, beneath, and most terrible of all, to lack identity.
Moving towards the eastern part of Africa, countries like Ethiopia, Somali, Eritrea. where the bone structure favours a prominent forehead, beauty was judge based on how prominent the forehead could be, as it was a sign of intelligence. In some regions of Somali, beauty was also found in dark teeth gum, and an hairy body,
However,
Within the same regions of Ethiopia, there is the Surma tribe, where their definition of beauty is in decorating themselves with different patterns of scarifications. To them, it is a transformation from childhood to Adulthood.
In the Maasai tribe in Kenya, both men and women attribute beauty to stretched earlobes, and wear metals hoops as a sign of beauty. Contrary to a lot of beauty standards across various cultures where the beauty of a woman is in her hair, most Maasai women shaved their head.
The Himba people of Namibia attributed beauty to the redness of skin from a mixture of Otjize paste, a mixture of butter fat and ochre pigment.
All this have been the standard of beauty across different tribes and group of people within the African continent.
Let go outside the borders of Africa, and see beauty through their lens.
Western beauty standards over the centuries.
The ancient romans preferred what is referred to as natural beauty. They were fond of roundness of the body, while maintaining a youthful and pecky breast. Most of the ancient romans had straight nose with a hump. The beauty standards also put a lot of emphasis on blonde hair, and that was their ideal of hair colour. This is a contrast with the Egyptians idea of beauty where the ideal hair colour is brunette.
During the renaissance period, foreheads were seen to be a great sign of beauty, and women would often pluck their front hair to give an illusion of a larger forehead. Pear bodied women were also thought to be most beautiful, as women would flatten their breast with corsets to reduce its size.
In the 1880, the Victorian era, women were considered more beautiful to the degree of their frailty, and wore tight corsets which further caused difficulty in breathing and reiterated the look of frailty.
In the early 1900’s due to the popularity of thin women on magazine, the beauty standards shifted to fit very slim figures with very little curves.
With preceding years, there were more acceptance of full breasts and buttocks with emphasis on trimmer waists.
Having gone through the lenses of beauty across various time in history and culture, it is safe to say that beauty is not one thing. And depending on the people and culture in a society, beauty can take different forms, and mean different things to different people.
From a thin and lean figure in the ancient Egyptian, to the roundness and curve of the ancient Romans. Beauty is not an absolute, and is very subjective to the lens from which it is being viewed from.
With the world now as a global village, and the increase in westernization, there is a pressure to believe that the beauty is one thing due to the fact that the most popular opinions and most prominent features are pushed by the media. Mostly for marketing purposes and to increase the beauty industry which is already a multi-billion dollar industry.
This brings about these questions, If you have never heard any idea of beauty, if you never watched TV a day in your life, or had an idea of beauty ingrained in your head, would you look at the version of you that is, and call it NOT beautiful? If you never had to compare yourself ever to another, would you be your version of beauty?
Take time to answer this truthfully.
Have you ever seen someone or something that you felt was so beautiful, that you decided to share with your friends, and all of a sudden one by one they start picking apart that which you saw as beautiful till suddenly it become void of it. Even though few minutes ago, you couldn’t spot a flaw?
This is to show that most times, most people have varying idea of beauty, and that is fine. But the problem is when an idea of beauty tries to falsify another as less beautiful. Because as we have seen, through the course of this discourse, that beauty is not one thing. In the renaissance period, a large forehead was viewed as the pinnacle of beauty, while in this modern era, to have a large forehead is to be castigated by the society as less. That brings up the question, who is right? And who has the correct understanding of beauty?
Only few decades ago, people prided in having very pale skin, because it showed a proximity to whiteness as possible. But with the change in perception, we have people tanning their skin for a darker complexion. What changed? How can that which was deemed not worthy of beauty, suddenly become attributed to the pinnacle of it?
This just shows that to be human, is to be a beauty that is acknowledged, was acknowledged, or would become acknowledged. The problem now lies in if you would be characterized as the ideal beauty in your civilization, and your response to that realization.
The essence of the beauty you are.
Plastered on your face is beauty. The testament of stories you would never know. The lives of people who have lived, strived, and seized to live no more.
Plastered on your face is your grandfather, great-grandmother, a great aunt Marie you have never met. Someone who through the passage of time who has lived the life you have. You are a walking essence of history. A collage of lives, however it might have gone. You don’t just have your mother’s nose, you got that which she inherited for her mother, which her mother inherited from God knows who.
You are a visual storyteller. A walking art. The lord forbids that a Picasso art worth 1/1000th of what you are. You are every bit of beautiful.
Millions of people have walked the face of earth looking like different variations of you, but there has never been a person who truly looked like you!
You are one of a kind!
To understand beauty is to realize that everything is beautiful.Not as a cliché, but as a fundamental human law. And the only problem is that you are viewing beauty through a distorted lens .One that the society has programmed in you.
To properly view beauty, is to see that one variation of beauty is not superior to another, but the appeal of a perception of beauty is heavily dependent on the lens from which beauty is being viewed.
Nothing is void of beauty, only people lacking of the ability to process the beauty in some things. For you stop seeing Mud as mundane the day you meet a potter whose life work is to see the beauty in muds. Appreciating the uniqueness of its beauty in all its variation.
Understanding this concept will help you see the beauty that you are, and also understand that your beauty might not be perceived rightly by everyone but that doesn’t make you void of beauty, but rather is a result of their own limitation.
Open your own eyes to beauty outside of the standard that the society has set, and you will see a whole new world opening up to you.
You will be able to enjoy the unique beauty of others, while seeing the unique one that you are.
A rare piece.
This knowledge will help you navigate the world differently. You stop trying to fit into the societal standard of beauty, and also learn not to try to make people forcefully accept the version of beauty of who you are, but rather move with the confidence that there are people in the world whose version of beauty you are. You then begin to actively form community with them while savoring the beauty that you are.
A physically appealing human, whose sight a fellow human look into and find beauty.
But what happens when that which see the beauty in you stares at you in awe, but you don’t believe it because you never saw the beauty that you are?
If this is your first time here, heyy!
Welcome to this community .
And if you a community member, hey boo! good to see you are back here.
I hope you are enjoying all that life has for you ?
Away from the hassle and bustle of life, here is home.
Remember, you can always come as you are, YOU can rest here.
I remain Ss (soul sister)
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You can also share with someone you think might need this .
I love you from the bottom of my heart, and I'm always rooting for you.
Till next time.
Ina ati ife .
