Dear Daughter,

Your beauty is different from mine. First of all, as I write this you are fifteen pounds to my hundred-and-fifteen pounds. Your hair is short and fine and curly. Your eyes are the color of the Arctic ocean, mine are the gritty shades of the Atlantic like your oldest brother’s. You are the beautiful of a five month old. And I am the beautiful of a thirty-two year old.

There is a lot of cattiness amongst women about what a “real woman” is, and about what defines beauty. It is somehow so important to be “beautiful” that people are ugly about declaring their own personal idea of beauty to be the definitive standard.

There’s supermodel beautiful which tends to be a teenage sort of beauty that is covered over with makeup to make it more surreal, and stacked on top of high heels to accentuate the abstract.

There’s rubenesque beauty, curvy, soft, and beautiful to the touch.

There’s athletic beauty where the muscles flex under the skin. Hard and unyeilding and full of power and shaped like sculpted stone.

There’s the ancient beauty of the ninety year old woman whose lifetime of smiles have settled into her face as lines that record her character.

There’s the beauty of someone who has given birth and whose body has softened to grow her child, and whose arms have strengthened to carry her after birth.

There’s beauty in someone who has never had a child.

There is beauty in someone who has confidence and who recognizes their own personal form of beauty.

And there is beauty in that beautiful soul that has been convinced that she has no beauty at all, and who simply lives life for those other things that make her heart sing.

There is beauty in people who know their own personal style and who rock it even if they’re made fun of by others who mistakenly believe that they know some greater truth.

And there is beauty in those who decide that their form of beauty is to tell the world to take its notions and choke on them.

The one place where no beauty is to be found is in the idea that one form of beauty has the ability to render all other forms non-existent.

As with all things.. One painting does not change the beauty of another. A sculpture does not invalidate the beauty of a movie. A mountain cannot be “more” or “less” beautiful than a valley, and the ocean is as beautiful as a lake.

To say that beauty only exists in one form is to close your eyes to the world around you.

Preferences exist, certainly. But never mistake your own perceptions or preferences for some universal truth. Your beauty is different from mine and different from the beauty of every other person that lives. Just like it’s different from the beauty of a squirrel or a mountain or a sky full of stars.

You do not need to be “more beautiful” or “a different kind of beautiful”. Just be beautiful like yourself.

❤ Mama