"Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical."

-Sophia Loren

A couple weeks back I had the opportunity to photograph six lovely young ladies in dresses that they’d made themselves. Each girl, assisted by some adult women leaders, spent approximately 70 hours on her dress and each one was unique and lovely. Even more unique and lovely were the girls themselves. They simply glowed as they received one well-deserved compliment after another at an open house to showcase their handiwork.

I arrived before the open house began and was invited to photograph the girls getting ready. Some were more shy about having their picture taken than others, but I was able to get some nice shots of each of them. The only thing that bothered me about the whole event were comments I heard from some of the girls.

“Make sure you don’t take a picture of my fat roll, ‘kay?”
“I really need to start a diet soon.”
“Don’t take my picture!”
“I look awful in pictures!”

It broke my heart. Couldn’t these young ladies see the true beauty of their youth? I finally had to give them some kind of response.

“Girls, one day you will look back at these pictures and say, ‘Man, I was hot!’” I told them. The other ladies there agreed with me. “Yes girls, you must realize how great you look!”

And then I stopped to think. Here I am on my blog lamenting about how fat I am and how I want to lose weight. Why can’t I take my own advice and really look and see that I am beautiful right now?!

This topic has been on my mind especially for the past 24 hours and that has been caused by several things.

1 – Tonight I am photographing these young ladies again as they are escorted by their fathers to a dinner with some young men.  I hope they can see their true beauty - that is one of my true purposes in taking these photos is to help them form a positive self-image. 

This also reminds me of something one of the adult leaders said that first night I photographed the girls.  She told them to make themselves as beautiful as possible and then forget themselves and try to make others feel comfortable.  That only adds to true beauty. 

2 – I had a conversation about self-esteem and body image with my sister-in-law last night.  When we were visiting them in January and when we went out to eat, she came down the stairs looking like this (GORGEOUS)

and I went to dinner looking like this.  (TIRED!)

I'm not glaring at my child - just being tired.  She is not that great of a sleeper and especially not when we travel.  Zzzzz.  But to say the least all I could do that night was look at my lil' sis (we're more like sisters than sis-in-laws anyway!) and think how awful I look and how gorgeous she is. 

I told her what I was thinking and she was devestated...for two reasons.  First, she never wants to make anyone feel inferior; and second, she didn't feel that she was more beautiful than anybody.  Don't you love her already?  I have the three best sisters-in-law (and best bio sister too!). 

3 – I read a fellow blogger’s post about Carrie Underwood’s song “So Small”. Why make these things bigger than they are? Why can’t I just enjoy life as I am? It will go by so fast and I can’t get the time back.

4 – Last night on “Glee” (Yeah yeah, I know, it’s a guilty pleasure.) they had something on this topic and at the end Mercedes sang Christina Aguilera’s song “Beautiful”. The lyrics are beautiful. Listen to them here:



I can't really seem to formulate my thoughts on this subject as I'd like to, but I suppose I will be adding to this as I go along.  This is just so important to me now because I want my daughter to grow up with a healthy self-image.  I want her to realize her individual beauty for what it is and to feel at home in her own skin.  In addition to my random thoughts here, check out THIS POST by Mama Cas (hope that's okay with you, Mama Cas!!) about self-image.  It's a good reminder to me to not make fun of my daughter's mother.  I owe her that.