How Beauty Comparisons Make it Difficult for Women to be Great

“Ja she’s pretty, but Yho her sister! Her sister’s prettier than her.” It seems like the kind of simple, harmless thing that one guy would blurt out during a group discussion about some hot girl. He would say it with such passion, then forget about it just as quickly as it came as they moved on to the next topic. For them it is harmless, and as soon as those words leave their lips, they are gone from their minds as well. In general, another fundamental difference in the wiring of men and women.

As a woman, even as one who just happened to be around when this conversation was taking place, it stayed with me. I remember getting instantly annoyed that this guy said that and saw nothing wrong it. I have nothing against people admiring other people’s beauty, I even encourage it. However, I expect at this level, for people to understand that ‘You are beautiful’ is a compliment and, ‘You are beautiful, more beautiful than person X’ is not. The latter creates a competition between the two people whom, you acknowledge are both beautiful, yet one was come out as the winner. The latter is stupid.

 Not only that, it also plays so deeply into the twisted inner dimensions of girls’ self esteem issues. Now all of a sudden, you are not just working to be pretty, you’re working to be prettier than person X too. This automatically makes person X your arch enemy, your nemesis if you will. You find yourself not being allowed to befriend certain people because well, you’re enemies now aren’t you? This is the reason that to some great extent, on average, pretty girls are not really friends with other pretty girls. They are friendly, and they keep all relations in a friendly manner (taking lots of ‘we are pretty’ pictures etc), yet that idea that ultimately it’s a competition never leaves. And so we get robbed of the chance to really get to know people, people who may have had the greatest impact on our lives.

We do live in a generation where looks are everything, more so now than ever before. So, even without knowing it, we all fall victim to these carefully planted thought cycles that dictate that success only comes to those who are attractive. They even dictate what attractive is, and actually while we’re on the topic, they dictate what success is too. Why would you want to conform to the regulations of this mental and social prison that leaves nobody happy?!! Beauty is only skin deep, yet we cannot pretend that the effects it has on our minds are as shallow.

I don’t want to be a slave to beauty, I am far too great for such. There is too much I am still going to achieve that requires my focus, a focus I cannot split with constantly rating other girls to see whether they fall above or below the beauty benchmark that is me. I am a beautiful young woman, that is not going to change because another beautiful woman walked into room. My beauty doesn’t take away from anyone else’s and in the same way, nobody else’s can take away from mine. Do not ever come and tell me that I am more beautiful than so and so, because I will not be impressed.

When you get to a place where outward beauty is secondary, where the inward journey to discover all the things that are truly worth discovering is most important. When you get to a place where you are getting really comfortable with who you are, even in the realization that that is a lifetime journey of discovery on its own. When you get to a point where you realize just how fickle it is to judge others on how they look, when peoples personalities start to make them either more or less attractive to you. That is a good place to be. I’ll wait for you here, and I will try my best to not get sucked back into that world where we are all just trying to be hot because that’s all that matters. When you arrive, we can leave all the other petty stuff behind and choose to rather focus on being great.

We are women. We matter. We are valuable beyond anything we can ever purchase.  There is so much more benefit in working to beautify and strengthen our minds and our spirits. We need to know this, especially now as we shape ourselves into the kind of women we wish to be. There is so much more to being beautiful than what you look like, and I think that we should be holistically more beautiful than our outward appearances. May we still be considered beautiful when all that is being judged are the contents of our characters.

Love,

Noni