My Beautiful Walk

I have been in only one Beauty Walk in my life and I didn’t even make the top 20. How well I remember the curtain dropping in front of those of us whose names weren’t called; separating and discarding us like chaff from wheat;  the beautiful ones disappearing as it fell.  Appaluse, thundering and unmuffled by the velvet wall, was for them, and not us.  Losers all, we made our way out the back of the stage, dresses ruffling and heels clacking, our final walk of shame.  I consoled myself at the time that there were over 120 girls in it.  That makes at least 100 girls as ugly as me.  

But now I know, after all these years, the whole thing was my mother’s fault.

Good mothers, who truly love and want the best for their daughters, see to it that they are exposed to the one and only thing that will not only give them their self worth,  but will measure it for them, too.  Pageants.  Any pageant. Often and early.  You’re a veteran at age 2, and it may be too late, even then.  The best mothers have already paraded their diapered beauties across the stage weeks after birth; assuring they are properly judged and scrutinized by those who know what real poise and beauty should be at  8 weeks.  I was 15 when my homeroom chose me and my friend Yolande to represent them.  Tragically far past my prime.  It was far too late for me.

My mother never waxed my eyebrows, teased my hair, put make up on my face, or glued lashes to my eyes.  She never lovingly pointed a tanning gun at me and fired it, or hired anyone else to do it, either.  I never had a glamour shot made, and I never got to choose which part of me needed to be re-touched, fixed, or completely removed so that my image might pass for acceptable. I was never given an appliance to wear in my mouth after losing a baby tooth in an unattractive and untimely manner.  I was never taught to strut.  I received no instruction in “shake it baby.”  I did not know how to “work it, girl”  And my mother never allowed me to wear things which showed my belly, hiked up my leg, or passed for underwear unless I was in my own room at home getting dressed, with the door, and my modesty, shut and locked in tight.  

And so I blame my mother for this empty tiara closet. Instead of prancing behind the judges table as I performed, she was on her knees, my entire life, in prayer for me.  I have had to look outside myself for my value; and I have had to find beauty in the world beyond my own face and body, beyond what I think or believe myself to be. Beyond what others judge me to be.  I have had to face the mirror on my ugliest days, without retouching my picture or altering it with paint.  I’ve had to search myself, and then lay it at the feet of the One Who truly sees. 

He says I’m beautiful. Sometimes I even believe it myself.

       You go girl....

“ ...The Lord does not look at the things man looks at.  Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” ~ 1 Samuel 16:7

Comments

[Vicki Sanford]

AMEN! Sister!!