Sunday Scribblings: Skin

They say, “Beauty is skin deep,” but whoever “they” are often neglect the next part of the saying.

Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone. - Dorothy Parker

I’ve been doing a lot of observing and reflecting over the past few months. So many things have happened, yet so many things are still very much the same.

I have always loved collecting quotes. Even until now, I write down quotes I find in my journal. A quote that comes to mind is this: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Beauty is an altogether weighty concept to talk about, and it’s complicated. What an understatement.

I don’t want to force my experience on the rest of womankind, but, as a woman, I have had quite the journey with the idea of beauty. The media, the celebrities, the influencers, the world seem to have their opinions on beauty and its definition. Every season, there’s a list of what is beautiful and what isn’t. The list keeps on changing. Somehow, somewhere, there’s a group of people who are determining what look, what acts, what expressions are considered beautiful. I’m not only referring to the beauty standards of the fashion industry. I’m also talking about how we assign value.

It’s not a surprise to any of us that our human civilization has always existed with inequalities. There is always a group of people who have the power and influence, while other groups slowly lose their voice. The ones with the power and the influence and the voice gets to assign values. They get to assign what is beautiful and what is wholesome. They get to decide what, or maybe even who, are not.

There are so many things I can talk about, but I want to go back to the quote I mentioned in the beginning. Beauty, or at least the value of beauty assigned by the ones with the voice, is only skin deep. When we assign value to others based purely on what language they speak, the shape of their bodies, the marks on their person, the color of their skin, we show our ugliness that goes clean to the bone. I’m beginning to think that ugliness might be a human condition. It’s not just a specific group of people who have had power and privilege. The ability to withhold value is in every single one of us.

(Some people believe that humans are naturally good. We want to believe that when left to our own devices, we will choose to be good. I happen to disagree. I think people are naturally conflicted. We want to do good, but we don’t. That’s what scares us. That anyone, us included, might choose not to do good.)

True beauty, the one that people have neglected to see most of the time, happens when we see value in others. It happens when we celebrate value in others. It happens when we decide not to focus on ourselves and our insecurities. It happens when we decide that others are worth the space in this world. That they belong just as much as we do.

August 2, 2020