Your beauty takes nothing away from mine! There is space in the world for each of us to be beautiful. Our uniqueness, rarity and individuality makes each of us gorgeous. When we try to subscribe to the media’s notions of beauty is when it all get’s ugly. I love the Dove commercials. Especially this one:

It is sad to see people in competitions about beauty. These range from the school yard quasi popularity contests to the pageants and contests held all over the world to determine beauty. We all know these kinds of things are fleeting, in the eye of the beholder and irrelevant to the real things in life. Most of us are aware of the forces that come into play when these contests occur. Look at the movies about them:

“Little Miss Sunshine”, “Beautiful”, ,“Miss Congeniality” ,“Drop Dead Gorgeous” are films giving some insight into the ugliness of the beauty competition. It’s all wrong!

I remember when my daughter was a baby, one of my most embarrassing memories was putting her in a baby photography competition. I knew she would win because she was divine. She was absolutely gorgeous. My best friend Jane, whom I dragged along with me, begged me not to do it. She sanely pleaded that it was a stupid idea. I couldn’t see the harm. I’m not sure what it was I wanted to prove to the world (and a small world it was). Strangely my daughter did not win. I was shocked, as was every other parent in the room whose child didn’t win. We all know our children are amazing and beautiful and the truth is they are. I didn’t make that same mistake with my second child.

I have been showing my students the evolution clip this week and discussing with all classes the impact of what we see in the media about our gender, beauty and sexuality. It’s been interesting and has been inspired from the great talk I heard on Monday by Anthea Paul. I have purchased ‘girlosophy’ and have loved what I have read so far. It is visually stunning.