Beautiful People

Her mind is Tiffany twisted; 

                                       she got the Mercedes bends.

            She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys; 

                                        that she calls friends

—The Eagles

I ambled into Sun Valley the other day and looked at all the beautiful people. I must confess that my mind works in strange ways, but it came to me that I’m glad I’m not a woman, cause if I were a woman I’d be ugly and ugly is out in Sun Valley. 

I was reminded of an old Janis Ian song:

I learned the truth at seventeen,

That love was meant for beauty queens,

And high school girls with clear–skinned smiles,

Who married young and then retired.

The valentines I never knew;

The Friday night charades of youth,

Were spent on one more beautiful,

At seventeen I learned the truth.

And those of us with ravaged faces,

Lacking in the social graces,

Desperately remained at home,

Inventing lovers on the phone,

Who called to say, “Come dance with me,”

And murmured vague obscenities…

It isn’t all it seems at seventeen.

Nor at twenty–five or thirty-five, it seems…

The problem, C. S. Lewis says, is that people read the wrong books—literature full of terrible lies that fix on beauty of face and form as though that’s all a woman is meant to be. It can only lead to deadly comparison and despair. 

The Wise Man, on the other hand, insists that glamour is evasive and beauty ephemeral, “but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised up and down!”

 (Proverbs 31:30). Put another way, the meaning of a woman’s existence is not found in being outwardly decorative, but in adorning the “hidden person of the heart” (1 Peter 3:4). Therein lies a her true beauty. 

Some years ago a friend of mine told me of a conversation he had with a lovely, self–assured young woman. 

“You’re very self–confident,” he observed, “Can you tell me why?” 

“Yes,” the young woman answered, “I’m pretty.”

 “Oh, I’m sorry,” my friend said with great wisdom.

 “Why?” she responded in surprise. 

 “Because,” he replied, “You won’t always be pretty.” 

That’s something to keep in mind. 

DR