as small as a world and as large as alone, I am in awe of the way you can find beauty in what...

7:42am February 21, 2015

Anonymous asked: I am in awe of the way you can find beauty in what others define as ugliness. Can you describe your process for how you came to be able to do that? I'm sorry if this is a weird ask. I had really bad skin in high school, and I have horrible scarring and I still have chronic skin cysts. I'm a girl, and when I lived at home my mom (who was a makeup saleswoman) was all about 'you'd be so pretty if...' I just want to know how you see things as beautiful, and then maybe I can see myself as beautiful.

phemiec:

The thing I think I’ve just come around to is that…”Pretty” is such a boring thing to aspire to be. It has no value, it’s not useful or interesting or daring or brave, it’s not real. And when I say “pretty” I mean the theory of homogeneous beauty, the idea that we have to look pleasing to everyone at all times to have worth. That’s a ridiculous standard to meet and it’s completely destructive.
I think a lot of people, especially girls, don’t think of their bodies as belonging to themselves, not really. We’re raised to see ourselves from everyone else’s eyes and never our own. So what I always advise is to take away everyone’s expectations from the mix and look at yourself.
Look at your face stretch and change when you smile or frown or cry or laugh, look at your eyes light up, you are alive and present within yourself. Trace the lines of your veins, the constellations of your spots and scars and notice the organic and seemingly random patterns they create are not dissimilar from the patterns of spots on a cheeta or ladybug, or like the collection of trees in a forest when viewed from high above. This body you live in is a natural, powerful presence, and it is yours, forever, it is a gift that lets you experience existence, love, joy, passion, warmth, and it is unique to you just as your life is unique to you.
That is where you find the beauty.
Notice the details of yourself that others would shame you for and accept them, without judgement, just as they are, just existing, just as valid and as deserving of space as anything else. Notice the patchwork of your skin, how it changes colours and textures from one area to the next, the lightening and softening of the palms, the darkening and rough crinkling of elbows and knuckles, the bumps and ridges and planes of your body are as varied and necessary as the jutting ridges of mountains and the smooth, dry deserts and the porous swamps that pepper the very Earth.
Why do we fear blemishes? Why do we fear “imperfections”? These aspects are our most human, they are worthy of love and admiration, they are so beautiful in so many ways that they took millennia to evolve. You were not made in a factory out of plastic and glass.You were formed of cells dividing in an impossibly improbable, messy, chaotic act of universal chance,and there is more worth in a single pimple on your face than in all of the makeup in the world.
Respect and be patient with yourself as the natural and devine being that you are and allow yourself the freedom to exist, and to change, and to stay the same, and to be both beautiful AND ugly because really they’re just words. No matter what you look like you will always be both, and neither, and one or the other to SOMEbody, so try to just look at yourself, for yourself, AS yourself, and decide what’s beautiful to you. <3