Feeling Beautiful versus Looking Beautiful

As anyone on Facebook is aware, there is a new thing going around where people are challenged by their friends to post at least five pictures in which they feel beautiful. I am 100% in favor of encouraging people to view themselves in a positive light rather than negative, but I did notice something interesting while I was looking at the posts others had made… almost everyone was posting pictures of themselves on special occasions, when they put extra effort into hair or makeup. Very few of the collages I saw included everyday snapshots, and that got me thinking…

While I certainly have a decent number of pictures where I look beautiful, I have very few pictures of the moments where I feel the most beautiful. I feel most beautiful when I am doing things that I am meant to do. I feel beautiful in my yoga classes, standing in Mountain Pose or Goddess Pose. I feel beautiful when everything clicks with a new move in bellydancing. I feel beautiful when my son’s face lights up as I walk through the door. I felt beautiful the night that the whole cast was in sync and we had a stellar performance of Doubt, despite the fact that I was in an extremely unflattering nun’s costume at the time. I felt beautiful while meditating in the first room of Turkish hamam, as I sat ladling water over myself to prepare my skin for a scrubbing. I felt beautiful breastfeeding my newborn son for the first time. What I realized was that I feel beautiful in those moments where I am feeling strong, alive, happy, creative, loved or spiritual, and that may not always be something that would come through in a photograph.

My little sister got married this past March in the Florida Keys. Because we are inundated with societal images of what we are supposed to look like, and even though I have reasonably good body image in general, it usually takes a Herculean effort to still feel beautiful looking at pictures where I am surrounded by her tan, thin, athletic friends. It was particularly difficult this time because I had lost almost 30 lbs in the months prior to the wedding. Adding to the difficulty this time was that I was three months pregnant, and was already starting to show a little, but only in that way where absolutely no one is brave enough to ask if you’re pregnant. When I look at the pictures, I see the sister that’s twice the size of her other sisters. During the reception pictures, I see the ruddy cheeks from the salt air (and copious amounts of crying during the Father-Daughter dance, but I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house on that one). But the truth is, what I remember is that I did feel beautiful that day. I had an amazing dress, I was there with my family, the weather was sheer perfection, and I was watching my completely blissed-out little sister marry an absolutely amazing man.

So, I carefully considered all this while choosing my pictures. I decided to go with pictures where I remember feeling beautiful at the time, even if they weren’t the most flattering pictures in my collection. Here’s what I chose:

1. This picture is the one dolled-up shot I chose. This was for the wedding of my dear friends Peter and Cheryl. It was a beautiful November day, and the truth is, my hair turned out amazing.

2. This was taken during our second trip to the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, Ireland. On this particular trip, we hiked out along the Cliffs well past the “do not go past here” sign, and discovered a spot so filled with ancient energy that we’re sure was once a temple. I’m also completely obsessed with the cave that you can see in the background, for reasons that I cannot explain. What I do know is that I feel more free and peaceful in Ireland than any place on earth. So does my husband. It’s been five years since this was taken, and we both hear her siren song calling us back home.

3. This was when I was one month postpartum after having my first baby. With the help of an excellent dietitian, I had done extremely well with weight management during my pregnancy, and actually wound up losing weight while the baby grew. I walked out of the hospital at my pre-birth weight, and thanks to the glorious side effect of breastfeeding, I was down another 10 lbs when this was taken. Delivering a baby is one of the most physically intense things you can do, and every day after that I did this amazing thing where I nurtured my child with my own body. I felt so confident about the way I looked that I donned body-skimming shirt and pants and went as Catwoman for Halloween. Having the cutest little Batman you’ve ever seen didn’t hurt, either.

4. I can’t deny that I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie. I can’t bring myself to do anything really crazy, like extreme sports or skydiving… but I do love roller coasters and things that go fast. This was my son’s first speedboat ride. Being out there on the water with him, feeling his joy as the wind whipped at our faces while we bounced along the water, I just felt so very much alive.

5. This final shot was also a joyful day with my son. In the summer of 2013, my husband received orders to ship out on a no-notice deployment. The orders were cut and he was gone within 48 hours. He was away for two months, which is not much in the grand scheme of deployments, but it was the first time since my son was born that he’d been away for more than a week, and it was one of those “I’ll be back when I’m back” deployments, so we had no idea when he was coming home until about a week before he came home. We celebrated his return by using the extra money he made on the deployment to go on a family cruise. The photo below was taken at Magen’s Bay in St. Thomas. My husband wanted to ride underwater scooters, but my one and only attempt at scuba diving had been an all-out disaster, so we decided to split up for the day, and my son and I went on the beach excursion instead. We had a wonderful picnic on the beach, then played in the water for several hours. “Slooshing” Momma was one of his favorite games, and I felt positively radiant to be the source of his joy.