Some days you wake up and look in the mirror and see bags under your eyes, terribly unattractive (real-life, not beauty column) bed hair and – worst of all horrors – a brand new wrinkle to be counted and you think (of course you think) ‘ah, surface beauty is but fleeing. I have more important things to cherish now. I am a mother.’
And then you find out that the most beautiful woman in the world is also a mother – a new one no less – and she features no bags, no real-life bed hair and no wrinkles (or at least they are all so minimal as to be swiftly dealt with by the airbrush).
Image from people.com
But I can’t help but love Beyonce, somehow!
This is pure shmalz, and I have no idea whether she actually believes in it or wakes up feeling like I do about herself, but God bless her for expressing what we should be feeling:
‘I feel more beautiful than I’ve ever felt because I’ve given birth. I have never felt so connected, never felt like I had such a purpose on this earth.’
Yes, B. Inner beauty, inner beauty.
I was alerted to all this on stuff.co.nz. What struck me about the article there was (a) the predictablity of all the comments: ‘why wasn’t X pretty young starlet on the list??’ ‘How could they leave out Y Victoria’s secret model’? and (b) how serious and grumpy people get making such suggestions.
It’s one of the biggest cliches out there that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It’s a can of worms to even define the term to start with – aesthetically as People does or more deeply as enlightened people including, supposedly, Beyonce does.
Are people in general not willing to take something like this at its subjective face value? There are people out there who think Beyonce beautiful, and there are people who think all the people it was a CRIME to leave off the list are beautiful, and there may even be someone out there who by some noble quirky standard of the term thinks I’m beautiful first thing in the morning, after a night in which I was up seven times feeding my (beautiful, purpose-bestowing) daughter.
Baby Blue Ivy. Is this not the cutest baby ever??? (Apart from mine???)
Ah, but the internet is such a massive seething mess of subjectivity trying desperately hard to masquerade as singular truth. Whatever the issue is, you can guarantee that people commenting about it online will get serious and grumpy expressing their own opinions. I read insightful, intelligent things about the phenomenon here recently in the context of the Samantha Brick fiasco – worth a read.
Daisy
PS the photos of B.I. are from this blog, in which the awesome Curvy Girl dresses up in blue and ivy colours in a cute lil homage! Bless!
