WHAT IS BEAUTIFUL?

     High fashion models in magazine ads always look so serious; as if being one of the beautiful people must be hard work, and I guess it is. Starving through days, focused so extremely on the physical side of things, it's no wonder that their faces seem gaunt with the strain of being desired and envied. Their expressions are almost aggressive, their posture strong with attitude. "What are you looking at?" they suggest, threateningly. "This line of clothes is serious business. Are you man enough? Are you woman enough to handle it?"
     And that's what we envy. That's what we strive for. Not the exhuberant, vital joy of a smiling, heavy-set, Italian grandmother offering us a plate of pasta and some warm bread, but the cool, harsh, edgy jaw-lines and big eyes of the half-starved who dare us to be like them. Why? Why are we so focused on being thin and beautiful in this sharp and gaunt kind of way, over and above almost everything? As if this look is the shining pinnacle of life from which everything else that is good and wonderful must trickle down.
     Maybe it's time to re-think our vision of beauty. Maybe the scale we use to create value is actually shrinking us from the outside in.

I honestly consider what makes a person beautiful and realize that it has everything to do with vitality, and very little at all to do with some magical number on the scale.