How do you define beauty? | “Beauty” Debunked – Unleashing Kalon.

“If only our eyes saw souls instead of bodies, how very different our ideals of beauty would be.

– Anon

“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“Oh, all right,” I replied.
“Won’t you even say thank you? That was a compliment.”
“Oh, was it? I thought you were simply stating your opinion on my appearance.”

I was all dolled up in every bit of make-up I owned, wearing the sexiest dressI could find in my closet. It was until he called me beautiful, that I knew looking and ‘being’ beautiful meant very different things. I also realised that these differences can be noted in even how the word is pronounced. Sure, I was definitely looking pretty – but I did feel that he knew me enough to call me beautiful.

I am listening to Esthero’s “Black Mermaid“, and I recall a certain argument I had with a few roommates back in secondary school, when I was 14 years old.

The argument was based on the definition of the word beautiful.

My friends argued that the word beautiful means “someone being stunning and pleasant to the eye”. Now, my 10 year old self would probably have agreed with that definition – but my 14 year old self was not happy with that analysis.

In my opinion, I said, beautiful is a word much different from words like ‘pretty’, ‘lovely’ and ‘cute’. The word beautiful means much more than that to me. In as much as one would use all the words mentioned, including ‘beautiful’ to describe a physical appearance, I believe that the word beautiful describes more. It is more wholesome, and captures more in whole what a person is, than just what they look like.

Now, obviously, what one looks like is paramount to what a person is, because it literally is the first thing you get to experience about a human (unless they are a writer or a voice over actor) – but there surely is more. The way the person talks, the way they treat others, the way they associate with people different from them, their heart for change, their effort to self-improvement, the things they say and do, the way they feel about themselves, how they take care of themselves, how they take care of others, and a lot of other things.

The definition of the word beautiful has changed vastly, overtime, to me.

Definition

“Beauty”
A combination of qualities – such as shape, colour, or form that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight.

“Beautiful”
Pleasing the senses or mind aesthetically.

“Kalon”
Beauty that is more than skin-deep.
The ideal of physical and moral beauty.

I highlighted the definition “Kalon” because that is the beauty I would love to focus on in this discussion.I hope your definition of beauty is more than skin deep – beyond just the way you or others look.

You define your own beauty.

“Imagine a glass panel filled with mirrors. Inside the glass an image appears, slowly and steadily as it transforms into a shape. This shape is of a young woman, a young woman gazing intently into the mirror. Her body language clearly shows she is not amused. She appears to be fidgeting as she gazes deeper. Tears are trickling down her cheeks and forming small puddles upon her face. Tissues are shredded around her, as her lips quiver trying to hold in her cries. Something she has been taught to do, to hold it in and create an almost façade of who she is.”

Marissa DePino

I love Marissa DePino definition of beauty beyond the looks.

The connotation of beauty in itself implies splendour, magnificence and exquisiteness. Many perceive these connotations as a reference to physical beauty. In turn, the true definition of beauty is often lost or overlooked. It has become materialised into this idea that beauty is only skin deep – beauty standards, if you may call it.

Over life, you have possibly been led into believing that you are only beautiful if your hair curls a certain way, you have the perfect brows, your skin is flawless or that your teeth are perfectly white.

As a young person, you are probably focused on all the fun things. Your outfits have to be on point. Your hair has to be perfectly done or cut. Your nails must always be “on fleek” and your make up forever “slaying”. Your shoe-game is always under question and oh so many things that in all we define as ‘beautiful’.

I’ve struggled with the ideals of beauty for as long as I can remember. Never feeling like I was good enouch – or wondering why I did not possess the features that were most times associated with beauty by the mainstream media.

On my journey to self-discovery (or coming back home to myself), I have given up a lot of things I did in the name of beauty. I stopped wearing make up, stopped wearing all the unnecessary “push-up” undergarments, stopped shaving; gave up my relaxed hair and wigs and a lot more things – so I could come home and make peace with the human being that I was created to be.

I spent a lot of time thinking about the definition of “beauty” as it is perceived when I was writing #BytheEndofyourTeens. I have started working on a book “Debunking Beauty”, an expansion of a chapter in my first book – and I felt like sharing that chapter.

I remember my father complaining to my mother, and asking, “Why is Nthanda always in the bathroom whenever I get home?”

It may have been a genuine concern on his part, but in all honesty – I always went to the bathroom because it had a bigger mirror than my room. I constantly had to check myself to make sure not a single hair nor make up was out of place.

The young woman described by Marissa represents numerous women, myself included, who suffer from the unrealistic idea of beauty. A beauty ideology that one has set for themselves often influenced by society. There’s this idea that there is an ideal beauty mould that each woman should possess and strive to be – that if this ideal beauty standard is not met, then there is a problem with that woman.

“Change the Voices, in your head

Make them like you, Instead.

– Pink, “Fucking Perfect”

To be beautiful, there are no guidelines. One’s assets should not define beauty, because those are things, most times, out of one’s control. The beauty of the mind, heart and soul, should define beauty.

As you get older you will most likely get busier, and I hope you do. You will start to realise that inward perfection is by far much more important than outward perfection. Instead of focusing on having perfect hair, you will start to focus more on having a well-read and well-informed brain. Instead of worrying about how your clothes hug your bust, you will be more worried about actually having a loving, caring and relatable heart.

Marissa states that the key is to remember to be beautiful and that there are no rules. Be beautiful for yourself not for others and let your beauty shine through. She says that beauty is your own definition and you are beauty. For as long as you have defined beauty by own standards, you become your own measure and are beauty itself in your own eyes. Other people’s opinions of your physical appearance do not bother you as they used to when you gave them the power to define your beauty.

As you grow older, instead of having striking selfie angles, you will be more worried about having the correct angle and perspective on social issue – lending a listening ear and actually being up to date with current affairs. Instead of worrying about having that perfect British or that American (and sometimes mixed) accent, you will become more worried about the words that leave your mouth if at all actually having meaning.

As you grow and your life starts to have actual meaning, you will stop worrying about outward ‘Beauty’ and start focusing on Inward perfection. Instead of worrying about just looking pretty for the day, you will start to focus on actually being beautiful – from within every single day. The kind of beauty that stands the test of time and beauty that simply does not fade.

Natural Beauty

I cannot quite say I am yet at a point I do not wish to be seen as beautiful. I am not certain if such a thing is at all achievable. When I was 15 I spent hours in the bathroom making sure my eyebrows were on fleek, that my outfits were colour coordinating and hugged my (arguably inexistent) curves just right. I was unhappy that I was not as curvy as the other girls. I have always had an indecisive orangey tone of brown skin and at a time just wanted it to either be light or dark – preferably light, such that I could have bleached at that time. There were a number of things that bothered me about my appearance then. It meant that anyone who saw me better than the way I looked down on myself, made me feel great about myself. They made me feel beautiful.

Being a late bloomer did not make it easy for me to love my physical appearance. I remember when my sister looked at me as though I was insane as I told her that I would get breast implants when I got older and had made enough money. It must have been watching too much Dr. 90210 coupled with a number (a lot) of insecurities. Push-up extremely padded bras were the order of day. I wanted to get my bow-legs straightened somehow. I did not find it as ridiculous as I do now, when I heard of butt implants. There was a time I even considered getting permanent eyeliner (a tattoo across your eyelid that looks like eyeliner) for whatever good reason I must have had then.

I think of how at peace I am with my appearance now, and I acknowledge there are a lot of factors that have come into play. I finally did bloom – maybe not exactly as I had hoped but I was happy with the woman body I got. My hips eventually got wider. Suddenly my not so humongous chest did not bother me anymore. My skin complexion was just fine. It was only in my twenties that I did start working out – and then I fell absolutely in love with my body; but not so much for what it looks like. I fell in love with what my body could do, how strong it could be, how much pain it could endure, how fast it could heal and how greatly it could transform. Working out also meant that I was continuously dehydrated and my body always craved water. I started drinking more and more water and guess which part of my body thanked me for it? My skin was glowing! That and African black soap. I am dropping serious self-care hints here – I hope you are grabbing them! If someone had handed 15 year old me the deal of getting a transplant of perfect skin somehow, I could have taken it! I wore more and more make up to cover up my acne issues and contoured my face in all sorts of ways to look like someone I was not.

African Beauty

As a child, my favourite movie was “Parent Trap”. I even led myself to believe I was in fact pen pals with Lindsay Lohan. I was so disappointed when I got a bit older to find out she was not my age and that movies tend to freeze people in time. Shucks.

I remember picture day for my sister and I at home. My parents occasionally sent a photographer to the house to take a few pictures of us. I remember doing only one thing for my looks that day – and that was to carefully comb my afro into some neatly arranged bangs. My penpal, Lindsay had bangs.

I can only imagine how confused my parents must have been with my hairstyle when the pictures came back. I was the most shocked as the look that came in the pictures was not the look I had been going for. I had the rest of my afro flared out, and the front-centre part of my hair sticking forward and up. It did not lay like Lindsay Lohan’s had. As you can imagine, I was not very pleased.

Today I acknowledge, representation matters.

Back then I did not really question or think through most things as I do now. According to psychology, that may have meant that I was happier then, than I am now – and I quote “The happiest people have a natural emotional protection against getting sucked in by the intense gravitational pull of little details.” Ironic, if you ask me.

By the end of my teens I certainly wish I had seen more representation of black beauty on television. I wish I had seen more movies with black girls taking centre stage – and as we naturally do, wish I looked like them.

I know I want my daughter(s) to see more girls with afros and curly hair styles. I wish I saw more little girl with beautiful brown skin in the mainstream media. I wish I saw more little girls comfortably being black girls. All the black girls I saw on television back then had long curly hair and lighter skin. If I really saw a black girl on TV, it was a naked girl with beautiful over edited brown skin on a Vaseline advert. There was a few more but none that I looked at and said “wow! I want to be her!”
As children, we latch onto everything we are exposed to. We are at a stage of learning where we are hungry for knowledge. We are eager to know more. We observe the world, what it accepts, what it rejects and try to emulate that which it readily accepted. Back then we used to call it fitting in. I hope by the end of your teens, “fitting in” is not on the list of your problems.

If we are exposed to too much television, we always catch a thing or two from it. We see all the white people represented. We see all the black girls with the lighter skin and curly hair. We try harder and harder to be more like them. You find little black girls trying to relax their hair so it can be straight or curly.

You see little black girls trying to bleach their skin so it can be lighter. Can you blame them when that is all they are exposed to? Can you blame them when the only black girls they see on TV have long wigs or are mixed having curly hair? Can you blame them when their own mothers tell them their hair needs to be “treated” as soon as it starts showing any signs of being its true self – an “afro”?

Today I want to tell you black girl, you are enough. You, with the beautiful brown skin, you, with the kinky African hair, you, with the well-rounded curves, you, with your short height – you do not need to be anybody else – you are enough. And if nobody has told you yet, black girl, you are enough! Black girl, you are beautiful, naturally.

“Pretty pretty please

don’t you ever ever feel

like you’re less than

Fucking Perfect.

Pretty pretty please,

If you ever ever feel

like you’re nothing,

you’re fucking perfect, to me.”

– Pink

All my love,

Ntha