I don’t like the beauty argument: what beauty is, how it’s defined or how you feel about it.

I’m caught in a world where even saying all things are created beautiful is not acceptable because we can’t generalize that much. I don’t feel beautiful even if you think I am, even if I fit the bill for the standards of beauty we currently employ, even if I agree with those beauty standards.

I don’t like the beauty argument because it is an argument. What’s the point of looking in the mirror on my way out the door if judgment is still going to be passed? I either am or I’m not, and I don’t feel beautiful, even if someone argues that I should feel beautiful.

I don’t like the beauty argument because it distracts me from my goal. I am not aiming to please, and if I get caught up in how the world perceives me, I’m not doing what I was created to do. I was not created to please an aesthetic of the minority. I don’t feel beautiful even when I try to feel beautiful.

I don’t like the beauty argument, even though I know what the world has told me beauty is, how the world defines it and how you feel about it.

And I don’t feel beautiful.

I don't like the beauty argument, even though we can argue endlessly on the boundaries of ugly and pretty, and struggle to redefine and hope for a change of heart in others, but someone will always fall into one or the other until we decide that there is no ugly.

But I don’t feel beautiful.

I don’t like the beauty argument because I let it take over.

I am sick of looking in the mirror and asking myself if my outfit choice or my hair is suitable.

I am sick of explaining to people that “this is just something I threw on” because it most assuredly is not.

I am tired of looking at others with a hardened heart because I don’t think they fit the beauty bill.

Just because I don’t feel beautiful.

I am not a work of art, but Pablo Picasso did not paint his lovers abstractly for them to go unappreciated. The amount of work I put in for the world to both pay me more and less attention at the same time is exhausting. Because while I choose my outfit carefully to get the compliments I want, I am blending more into the world around me where everyone cares about opinion.

Beauty is not a matter of opinion.

My beauty is not determined by the size of my jeans, the color of my skin, the length of my hair, the style of my clothes or the brand of my makeup. These might cover up the fact that I don’t feel beautiful and change your perception of me, but you do not decide what beauty is.

Because even though I don’t feel beautiful, I am beautiful.