A couple of days ago, on the BB that I frequent most often, someone posted a topic about a billboard that's out there. The billboard states the following:

Ugliness demeans us all, invest in your face

I find that horribly offensive, as did the poster in question.

I think all about the years that I had people telling me my looks were "unique"... my mom and my paternal grandmother (neither of whom were anything much to look at themselves), a psycho ex-boyfriend, and others... Being told you're "unique" and leaving it at that sometimes doesn't help someone out who has low self-esteem or is down on their looks. Sometimes even the physically prettiest people don't think they're pretty at all.

And sometimes, they're dead right.

Beauty is from within. It's an intangible about a person, not the image that's on the outside for everyone else to see. After all, the most physically beautiful woman (or man) in the world could be horribly vain, self-centered, and mean. Is that really a beautiful person? *I* think not.

Society's view of what's beautiful changes over time too. Anyone remember who Botticelli was? Anyone else remember who most of his models were? Very 'fluffy' nudes. Even the slimmest of them would make me look like Kate Moss, and I'm no lightweight myself. They were considered gorgeous at the time, but we wouldn't give them a second glance in this society. Shame. They also had very pretty faces.

Society has placed way too much importance on the physical appearance of individuals as opposed to what makes the individual up as a person. Is this really the image that we want our sons and daughters to grow up with too? That our daughters need to be looking exactly like the models do, and that our sons should marry the prettiest girl he can? There are an awful lot of wonderful people who could suffer heartbreak as a result.

And such a shame too, because the biggest hearts can shatter the most irreparably.

That's another thing I hate.... "she's got such a pretty face if she just did something with..." Insert your favorite here: weight, hair, makeup, clothes... All of those things are superficial, including the pretty face! The true beauty of the person is inside... but it gets chipped away at every time someone says something like that to them, or where they can overhear it.

Should I invest in my face? Absolutely!. I'll invest it in every time I smile at my daughters. I'll invest every time I laugh with them and deepen those little lines around my mouth and eyes that I've had for a few years - oh yes, they're faint, but they're there. I'll invest every time I get a pimple and ignore it. I'll invest every time I get up in the morning, wash my face, and face the day without makeup - maybe a little chapstick to keep those lips from cracking, but that's it.

Yes, I'm "unique".... I don't care about the wrinkles I'll eventually get, the little lines I'll have to battle. I don't care about the clothing styles, or my weight (but I do want to be fit so that I can live to have those wrinkles and afford to sit and stitch for long periods of time). I don't care about my hair, other than running a brush through it so it's not a tangled rats nest when I go to work.

I have a bump on my nose that's a bone spur from having heavy glasses with glass lenses when I was ten. I could easily get that fixed with minor surgery. Why? So I could look like a raccoon for 3 weeks and have people whisper that I had my nose done? I'm not a model, so what would it gain me? Nothing. I've lived with it for 20 years so far, and it's not harming anything.

And why should I risk anything to surgery. In a most timely development, I found while taking a break from writing this that the author Olivia Goldsmith (author of "The First Wives Club") has passed away. How is that relevant you ask? Well, she was undergoing cosmetic (elective) surgery to remove the loose skin under her chin, fell into a coma and has just passed. People have reactions to anesthesia, a scalpel can slip from the steadiest hand, or other complications can arise. Why should I bother to do something that time and gravity are only going to ravage further?

I have way large brown eyes and long eyelashes. Thick ones. Sometimes they make me look the wide-eyed innocent in meetings when I'm trying to convey serious points about infrastructure changes. Oh yes, they can work to my detriment and help make me look younger than I actually am. There's almost nothing I can do about them... that's probably a good thing, since they can also work to my advantage when I need information from someone and approach them blinking those wide open eyes.

My teeth are crooked. 4 years of braces and retainers helped a bit, but they're not perfect. Big deal. I have a small mouth that opens into a very wide smile and my eyes squinch up when I do - nothing I can do about that either.

And who cares? Those who know me well know that I'm a caring person, a mischievous elf, a vivacious personality, a talented craftsperson, and an analytical thinker....

... and those who know me, love me for who I am. I could ask for nothing more.