Perception of Beauty
By Adriana Ortega
¨You can only perceive real beauty in a person as they get older¨ Anouk Aimee
I have volunteered for Beauty Night for 2 months; it’s been a life-changing experience. I have learned about patience, compassion, respect, empathy and so many other things more than I have in my whole life. Every Tuesday, I apply make up to our participants. Today, I had to apply make up to this beautiful women in her late 40´s or early 50´s. She asked me some tips about make up because she was looking for a job and wanted to know how she could look better and more presentable.
As I started talking to her, she tells me how hard has been to find a job for people her age, and even though she has all the energy to work, employers only want to hire young people.She tells me she is old and not pretty anymore. As I listen, I cant help thinking that sadly, most of the time this is true, but what it really hits me is to see how she actually believed she wasn’t beautiful anymore, and she was.
All the marketing and propaganda around us has made us believe that ¨beauty¨ is something that comes with ¨youth¨ and specific stereotypes; skinny, tall, perfect nose, perfect hair, etc., and there is nothing further from the truth. If you pay attention to all the ads, not only do they always use perfect photoshopped women, but always say things like ¨younger beautiful skin¨, ¨look 10 years younger and beautiful¨. The list is endless. As soon as you get older you automatically stop being beautiful. I see every day how those companies and products that claim to give us that ¨self confidence¨ are the ones that took it away from us in the first place.
All this makes me think about how we perceive beauty and how mistaken this perception is most of the time. Wouldn’t it be so much better if instead of saying things like ¨I want to look younger¨, we said ¨I want to age beautifully¨? or those ads instead of saying ¨Look younger and beautiful¨ said, ¨Look gorgeous at your age?¨ And that we started to appreciate beauty in all her forms and ages?
How would the world be if only we accepted and realized that each and every one of us are beautiful in our own and unique way? If only we didn´t let anybody else put us down and make us believe we are not beautiful and important? If only we respected other´s uniqueness, regardless of their age, origin and beliefs?
Perception of Beauty
Sometimes I complain
Sometimes I complain….
I complain my feet are sore…. tonight I saw a woman so debilitated, her only means of getting around was to be hunched over a walker and half walk half push her body into it, her body was covered in scars and all she wanted was to get the opportunity to experience “those glamorous smoky eyes”.
I complain that I am tired…. Last week I met a woman who had just been thrown 30 feet in the air after she was hit by a car that carried on driving as if it had hit nothing more then a cardboard box, she told me that all people needed to believe in something in this world and that life was beautiful.
I complain that I am lonely…yet I know at anytime of the day or night I can be connected to someone I love and those who love me can be connected to me. Tonight my friend was a lady who is currently suffering from the fact that her toes are slowly and literally turning the wrong way around. A lady who when asked if she should accept my friendship said she wasn’t sure because she didn’t have any money to pay me to be her friend. A lady who gave all her money to a stepson in hopes of one day being a part of his family when she grew old, but instead became a lady who was left with literally no one in the world when he took her money and used it to raise a new family of his own.
I complain that I am bored…while she sits in her apartment both acutely aware that there is no one left in the world who will come and visit her, and in too much pain to even make her way outside.
I complain that I am afraid that I don’t know what the future holds… She is afraid to leave her apartment because she is in fear that if she falls no one will help her home.
I complain that I don’t have enough stuff…Tonight despite the pain in her toes, the unsteadiness of her flimsiness manufactured cane and her uncertainty in the fact that if something happened would she even make it home…Tonight she finally left her apartment to come see me and give me a small gift and a hug.
What she may not realize and may never fully know is that she has given me a gift every day and with every ache I acknowledge, and with every complaint I make…she has given me a gift of perspective.
- Annie Centric
