Who defines B e a u t y for you?

A beautiful woman.

(Source:http://www.presscluboftibet.org/upload/news/2/fa5565455a32082689178b7a763aceed.jpg)

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Elisabeth Elliot’s interaction with a missionary, Gladys Aylward:

Miss Aylward was dissatisfied with her physical appearance. But she made a wonderful discovery. Here’s what happened.

“[Gladys] told how when she was a child she had two great sorrows. One, that while all her friends had beautiful golden hair, hers was black. The other, that while her friends were still growing, she stopped. She was about four feet ten inches tall. But when at last she reached the country to which God had called her to be a missionary,
she stood on the wharf in Shanghai and looked around at the people to whom He had called her.

‘Every single one of them,’ she said, ‘had black hair. And every single one of them had stopped growing when I did.' And I said, ‘Lord God, You know what You’re doing!’”

(Source: Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be a Woman (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1976), 32)

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Miss Aylward's last line sent a chuckle down my spine. Heh. So what if Asian women are shorter? =)

Who defined that only women with golden hair and 1.71m height are beautiful? Miss Aylward's surrounding people, the society and the perceived superiority of it. Or maybe Miss Aylward herself. Probably she chose to think or believe that way.

But come on, societal and fashion trends are always changing. Don't let something which is fleeting and capricious dictate how you feel about yourself. See yourself and your beauty through the eyes of the ever constant God "who does not change like shifting shadows" (James 1:17b). =)

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A Dove film (click on image below to view) showcasing how distorted beauty was created by group of professional hair stylists, make-up artists, and photographers in cahoots with computer graphics. A very good review of this can be found here.