In my 13x15 room, I have everything that defines me, as I am sure many of your dorms, or your bedrooms, are decorated for you. It is cluttered with little trinkets that portray the girl that I am, the girl that I like the world to see me as. I have my sorority letters above my door, my bookshelf filled with at least 20 novels, only half of them read, my green and white stripped bib overalls hanging in the corner and, last but not least, a quote my mom and I pasted onto my wall the first day I moved in. In the bold, black letters it reads, “Be Your Own Kind Of Beautiful.” And how true those six words are.
In a society where pretty girls are continually praised for their looks and raised to grow up relying on these attributes, it is no wonder many women struggle to find their inner beauty, to discover what beautiful actually means. Shows, like The Bachelor, where only the hottest of the hottest women are contestants, or even a throwback to America’s Next Top Model, are wasted minutes of women defining beautiful in all the wrong ways. Not once do we see a magazine cover of Cosmo titled “33 Times You Loved Yourself” over “33 Smoking Hot Sex Secrets.” Even Kylie Jenner is on blast for being a 17 year old with lip injections while everyone else brushes aside the pressures that family has placed on their shoulders to be the most attractive clan in all of Hollywood.
You have heard it before, and I am going to tell you again. Beauty is not defined by your smoky eye on a Saturday night or the 529,348 crunches you did to impress the boy next door. Beauty is expressed by what is in your heart and what makes you happy. I am a big believer of letting your true colors show and not judging a book by its cover. Not all pretty faces are genuine, and not all people are beautiful on the inside and outside. Sometimes, people just suck as humans and lack the capability of being sincere, kind beings no matter how stunning they appear to be. Sometimes, you were not genetically gifted with a flawlessly symmetric face, long legs and Miley Cyrus’ hair before she cut it. But, she is the perfect example of what I am trying to get at. Again and again, she gets heat about her major transformation in 2013. However, how many times does she repeat how happy she is, now? She has become her own kind of beautiful. And that is all you can ask for.
We may not have the Hollywood described look all the time, and we may not be the perfect tens, or knockouts society idolizes over, but screw that. It all comes down to your heart and what you are willing to let people see from that. Be your own kind of beautiful, flaws and all. Have your own sense of style without caring what others think. Don’t always kneel before the pressures the 21stt century burdens you with. Ultimately, be happy in your own skin and proudly be the person you are. We only get one life, so why not start doing what makes you happy, now, rather than letting that opportunity pass you by for another time. Be your own kind of beautiful. I think that is the most attractive thing you can be.
