The Cosmic "No"

I am tired of living in a contradictory world. I am tired of hearing a cosmic “no” as soon as I start to feel good about myself. I am tired of being reminded I should be sexier whenever I feel really creative or smart.

Because that’s the way it works, ladies. We have moments of complete confidence and contentment. We look in the mirror and love what we see, or we bask in the success of some new idea. But those moments are fleeting. They are gone before we can experience them enough to be able to remember them later. Leave the house beautiful and a billboard or TV show makes you chubby. Do something you’re proud of and a movie will surely remind you that there’s no sexy in that.

This week is what my University calls “Love Your Body Week,” and tonight they had a speaker named Stacy Nadeau come to talk to us about “real beauty.” Stacy’s credibility comes from the fact that she was one of the six models in Dove’s Real Beauty campaign… and from the simple fact that she is a living female in our society. In her presentation she threw out a terrifying statistic: when asked if they feel comfortable calling themselves beautiful, 2% of women said yes and 98% of women said no. This shows me two crucial things

1: Women cannot feel proud of themselves the way they are. The unrealistic, crazy, pretend idea of beauty projected onto us is something that 98% of women can’t identify with. Instead, they spend their lives wishing they were something or somebody other than themselves. That kind of hate can’t be good for the soul.

2: This statistic is shocking because feeling beautiful is something we count as very important. What about feeling smart? Or clever? Or funny? Or industrious? Or successful? Or happy? There is so much more to the self than that which we can see. That’s why we’re sad when people die. Its not their physical bodies we miss, it’s their true, precious, valuable selves. Everybody has one, but it breaks our hearts when people don’t feel beautiful.

Don’t get me wrong. I think feeling beautiful and comfortable with yourself is a terribly important thing, but I’m working for the day when it is just as important to feel smart or caring or ambitious.

So I have decided: I’m not going to listen to that cosmic “no” anymore. I’m going to embrace the immutable aspects of life and not try to be more of anything. I am determined to be “enough” for the rest of the world and for myself, and I would love it if you would join me. And let me tell you, tomorrow is a much more exciting day knowing I get to wake up and just be OK.

-E