Beautiful: Having beauty, possessing qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear, think about, etc; delighting the senses or mind      

In 6th grade it was a little bit of lip gloss, junior high the eyeliner and tight jeans, and high school brought the short dresses and heels. As a girl in our society we go through our lives searching for the various ways to feel and look beautiful.

As the trends change we do too, adjusting to what the media and our peers fancy at the time. I was talking to a young girl once who said to me, “I don't feel beautiful because the only thing guys call me is hot.” We live in a world now in which hot or sexy has become the definition of beauty, which diminishes girls’ self confidence and also their sense of what they deserve. In high school I got a lot of attention for my body. Even though this attention was negative and detrimental to my self-confidence I began to crave it. To me it meant that guys thought I was hot and that was the closest I could get to feeling beautiful. After a while, dressing in a certain way to receive attention became exhausting and unsatisfying. It was not until this summer I realized what feeling beautiful really meant.

Every year at the end of camp we throw a dance party for the kids. It was a blast for me as a camper and has been a blast for me as a counselor, but this year was different. There was a camper who was on the spectrum, he had been engaged and participatory all week but at the dance he was sitting by himself in a corner. I went up to him and asked him if he would dance with me, he said “I cant dance” I reached out my hand and said “Yes you can. I’ll stay with you the whole time.” He grabbed my hand and stood up. We walked out to the dance floor, and at first he was reluctant to move much and just swayed back and forth holding my hands. When the song changed I let go of one hand and spun myself around. He lit up and began to spin me around and around like the ballerinas in the jewelry boxes, he started dipping me and spinning me and began to start creating moves himself. We danced for an hour and at the end of it he looked at me with a huge grin on his face and said, “I don't smile very much so I think I’m going to go home now.” I gave him a hug and he left.             

The next day his mom came up to me and said “You have absolutely no idea what you did last night, you gave him confidence to go to dances in the future. You are an angel and he will never forget you, you changed his life and I am forever grateful.” You might be wondering if this article is just to toot my own horn or how it has anything to do with being beautiful, but just hang in there I’m going to tell you. His mom may think I changed her son’s life, and maybe I did, but all I know is he changed mine. Being beautiful means possessing qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction not only to others but also to your self. I have never felt more beautiful then I did that night. It had nothing to do with what I was wearing, what I looked like, but purely because I did something that brightened someone’s day.             

The point of me telling this story is to challenge people to find alternative ways to feel beautiful outside of the superficial ways we are used to. At the end of the day you’re all you've got and when you look in the mirror do you want to only see the makeup and the tight clothes or do you want to see a human being that you’re proud to be? One of my favorite quotes is “There is nothing more rare nor more beautiful than a woman being unapologetically herself; comfortable in her perfect imperfection. To me, that is the true essence of beauty” - Steve Maraboli. I promise you the moment you figure out who you are at your core and why THAT is beautiful, society’s idea of beauty pails in comparison. 

Be unapologetically yourself and bring on those POSITIVE VIBES.   Sending all my love to you beautiful people.