Well, I’ve wrapped up another issue (yippee!!!!). I’m not doing a separate “What Oprah Knows For Sure” entry because Oprah doesn’t talk about beauty in the beauty issue. Maybe Oprah feels ugly. Maybe she doesn’t feel like she knows something about beauty for sure. What she does know is that when she was in Krakow visiting Auschwitz with Elie Wiesel, she realized that all of life is extraordinary. “There are no ordinary moments.” The whole Auschwitz experience made her feel sad for the Holocaust but also made her happy and long to be alive.
Beautiful thoughts, yes, but it was a bit of a jolt to read them at the end of the Beauty issue. I liked the fact that the magazine tried to get you to change your thinking about beauty without the pat stories about beauty being from within. It was a very non-cliched issue that opened up my eyes to the way we’ve been conditioned to think about beauty and to think about how beautiful or not beautiful we are.
I remember when I was high school age, I used to sit and look at myself in the mirror and tell myself I was beautiful and some guy would eventually see that and think I was beautiful. I went to a school with a lot of Dutch people, many of whom had blond hair and blue eyes. I looked a little bit different–not overly so, but I wasn’t a looker. Telling myself I was pretty though I think had a decent effect on me because I don’t really buy into the idea that a serum will make me look better–maybe it will enhance my already stunning beauty, but it’s not going to cure anything.
Like many women, I’ve been able to beat myself up about who I am or am not. I compare myself to others all too often, and I focus on that stupidity rather than become excellent on my own. Accepting my own beauty is at least was step in the right direction of being a better person.
