Beauty is in The Eye of The Beholder

I watched a movie this weekend called A Month by the Lake. It wasn’t the best movie I have ever seen but I have a fondness for period pieces and romances so I figured I would enjoy it (and I did). But one thing I noticed while watching it was how very beautiful Vanessa Redgrave is even though she is an older woman. I started thinking about it and I realized that as I have aged, I have started really seeing older people as beautiful. I figure that is a good thing since I am heading in that direction myself.

I can remember when I was a teenager, I wouldn’t have thought for a second that someone in her fifties or sixties was beautiful. I remember thinking that forty was old as the hills and I couldn’t imagine ever actually being 40. But I knew I would hate it, of course. Ahhhh I think the thing I miss the most about being a teenager was knowing everything.

I have a friend who once told me that she tries really hard to find the beauty in every single person she sees. If she is on a bus, she looks at everyone else on the bus and tries to find something about their looks that she likes. She told me that a side effect of this habit was that she found herself doing the same thing whenever she looked in the mirror: always trying to find something about herself that she liked. So, other than possibly creeping out strangers on the bus, this seemed like a good idea to me and I decided to try it too. I spent some time always trying to see something good in everyone’s appearance rather than focusing on what I didn’t like about them like how they are dressed or move or their age or their weight or whatever. I think Kathy Bates and Judi Dench are two of the most beautiful actresses Hollywood has ever seen.

It turns out that little mental exercise works! I have noticed in the past few years that I have really changed how I look at people. I have noticed that has really changed how I look at myself. Most people are their own harshest critics especially in the beauty department and I certainly was no exception. Oh I still have my bad days but I have to say that even though I am really fat and pushing 40, most days I am able to look into the mirror and like what I see. How many women out there can really say that?