a little beauty mask fun – clean pores and laughter

There’s an innocent little lie that many a young girl was told through the ages. “Beauty is only skin deep” was meant to make adolescence somehow less painful for those of us who saw freckles, crooked teeth and plain hair staring back from the mirror. Which wouldn’t have mattered if we didn’t leave the house and meet the golden curls with a button nose and rosy complexion, and hear how pretty they were but because they were immature enough to flaunt it, that it was only skin deep. Hearing that beauty was only skin deep made me think not only that there was not much under those lustrous locks and long eyelashes, but even worse, with no outer beauty, I was a lost cause. Nothing. Not even skin deep. It’s probably why I love Anne of Green Gables.

Well, I grew up in spite of it; and praise God, His word expounded on the issue of beauty. In fact, it put the old adage to death.

“Do not let your adornment be merely outward–arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel– rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.” I Peter 3:3-4

The thing we girls should have been told is “beauty is what lies beneath the skin, in the heart”. Even if I’d been afraid of a ‘skint knee’ bleeding out my beauty, at least I would’ve known it wasn’t all that outward stuff. Anyway, kids eventually realize the difference between flesh and bones, and the invisible heart and soul. Now, don’t get me wrong – I am all for teaching children to appreciate and compliment others for their accomplishments, and there’s no way around recognizing a pretty little cocker spaniel versus a scrawny old mutt. But boy oh boy, have I ever loved some of those mutts! Why? Because we find out real soon that they can be loyal, smart, and clean up real well! There’s nothing wrong with attractiveness, as long as there’s acknowledgement that it is in the eye of the beholder – an opinion, and that true beauty is defined by the Maker – a thing of the heart.

Notice that Peter used the word adornment to speak of outward beauty. But he used the terms heart and spirit to describe incorruptible beauty. Adornment can be changed on a dime. The heart and spirit of a person are developed over time, formed in a furnace of trial and error, and have a way of becoming a permanent fixture. A gentle and quiet spirit, and the inside heart of a girl, not the outside looks; those are the things of beauty. Don’t let the world tell you or your daughters or your sisters that they need a certain body type, eye color, hair style or hip shoes to be beautiful. Point out how beautiful their grandmothers are (yes the ones with wrinkles, gray wiry hair, and chicken wing arms) because of the love they lavish on others. Point out how pretty the mentally challenged child is when her eyes sparkle at ‘hello’. Remind them that babies are so beautiful because of their innocence. When you are looking into their eyes right straight into their hearts, every single day, when they are at their worst – tell them they are beautiful! They’ll know what you mean.

The valuable and virtuous woman of Proverbs 31 has 21 verses of descriptors and none of them say anything of her looks, but one points out that if she does have charm and outward beauty, they are deceitful and passing (vs 30). Yes, girls, beauty may start at skin level, but goes SO much deeper than that. Our grownups didn’t mean any harm, bless their hearts; they were just repeating what they’d been told, I’m sure.