My friend Danielle did a series on beauty on her blog last week, and started it off by sending a few questions to her female friends. Here's her post where she included responses: http://daniellesbrainbits.blogspot.com/2010/09/beautiful-part-2.html

I said I'd answer the questionnaire, looked at the first question, and promptly shelved it until I was ready to think about the answers. I didn't get back to it until the day after she posted that article. I've been thinking about that series of questions a lot in the last few days and a few things have surfaced.  When I first looked at the first question, "What areas do you struggle with your beauty" I had trouble answering it. Nothing came to mind.  But was I being honest or just deluded when I replied, "um, I don't struggle with beauty"?

But I don't. Beauty. Being beautiful. Thinking of myself as beautiful or not. ... I don't think about it. Like, at all. Sure, I struggle with my weight, in that I'm not happy with being as heavy as I am, but it's not because I feel unbeautiful -- it's because it gets in the way of doing what I want to do. I can't run, my joints hurt... I feel unhealthy but I don't feel unbeautiful.  Sure, there are times that I don't feel sexy, and things I buy (like high heels, the modern torture device) to help me feel sexier, but again, that's not beauty.

Beauty just doesn't enter my thoughts. Am I beautiful? Um, yes and no. It depends on who's looking at me. To God? Yes. To Greg? Yes. To "the world"? No. Does that matter? Yes, yes, and no. Should it? Yes, no, and no. Does it bother me that I don't measure up to the world's standards of beauty? Not at all.  I got over worrying about how others saw my body through a trial by fire, in high school. I was on the girls' diving team and weighed at least 20 lbs more than any other girl on the team (they were all gymnasts and cheer leaders). The football team would crowd the gate to the pool to watch us dive. Lovely. So I learned to ignore them, to ignore that I wasn't 'beautiful' like the other girls.

But even before that, certain things just didn't matter to me. I've never been a fashionista. I've never bothered with styling my hair or painting my nails, or pedicures, or makeup or any of the other trappings of female beauty. So that made it difficult to answer the second question she asked, about what things I do to make myself feel more beautiful. Because I don't. I don't need to or want to. I just doesn't matter.

Of course, this is good and bad. I don't have that drive to lose weight -- "OMG I'm so ugly, I just have to drop these last 10 (or 70) pounds".  Sometimes my appearance impinges so little into my frame of reference that I forget to use deodorant or brush my teeth. I don't shower every day, but only when I start to feel dirty. I can only remember once or twice when I've gotten out of the house without brushing my hair, but I keep a comb in my purse for just that reason (and a toothbrush and toothpaste as well). My clothes usually match, but I only own a few pieces of clothing for each occasion, and I wear mostly jeans and tshirts. I try to wear colors that I'm told flatter me, and do take care when it really matters, like when going to an interview or someone's wedding or funeral, when first impressions truly matter or it's about showing respect to someone I value.

But really, if someone thinks I should do more to look beautiful, they can go stuff it (stronger language deleted). I don't care, I'm happy the way I am, and all this primping and fussing takes too much time and energy.

This begs the statement that the lady doth protest too much. But I've been thinking about it and really, I don't think I do. The answers in Danielle's article are real, they're honest, they're dreadfully common with women today and throughout the ages, but they don't resonate with me. I can understand but I can't empathize.

That's not to say I don't struggle with things. I struggle on a fairly constant basis with feeling competent and feeling that I matter to people. I'm competent in areas that come easy, like keeping the house running and the kids healthy and well behaved (well, ok, that last one is a matter of more pride than it should be, that my kids don't throw tantrums and that they eat their veggies). I struggle with competence in areas that other people tell me are important but that I'm not interested in, like technology (since I work in technology, I should have some level of competence and I certainly doubt my talents in that area).

But the biggest bugaboo in my life is not beauty, it's whether I matter to people. This started in grade school where I was ostracized by everyone in my grade for over three years, until we all went to junior high and had an influx of new faces. It was awful and the results of those years haunt me to this day.  I'm better at ignoring it and dealing with it, but it still rears its ugly head whenever I don't get invited to a party (that I wouldn't be able to go to anyway), or when friends have fun together without me, or I'm not the first to hear about some little tidbit of news. Do I matter to God? Certainly. But he's not here (physically) every day reassuring me of that, and no, no amount of reading bible verses helps. Do I matter to other people? There's a huge gaping hole that nothing short of God will fill. If the questionnaire had been about that, I could have given raw, blog-worthy answers.

But beauty? For good or ill, that's not something I struggle with.