What is beauty?

“You’re beautiful,” I tell my 10-year-old daughter. “Not because of how you look, but because of who you are.”

“Huh?” She replies.

“Beauty is something you feel. Like energy. Beauty on the outside of an unkind person isn’t beautiful.”

“I get it,” she says, and I wonder if she really does. 

As I move through my 40s, a costume of physical attractiveness slips off my shoulders. The dated fabric thins. Beneath it I am less naked, more translucent. If invisibility is a superpower, consider me a superhero. I am disappearing amongst Daisy-the-Cow lashes and duck lips.

No judgement. It’s observation.

I am not the object of a man’s lust. But this is not a marker of beauty. I think we’ve got that wrong.

I was the usual silent witness in a group zoom chat, when my screen televised a commenting face. It spoke with articulation. We listened. I didn’t speak. I was not able to contribute to the conversation because I am not brave, like the face.

Later, the face wrote a post. She shared how it felt to see herself on the screen. How it felt to be exposed to the rest of us. She acknowledged her personal progress. She didn’t acknowledge her beauty.

“Dear face,” I whimpered at the post, wanting to reach in and squeeze her shoulders, “You are courageous. You are powerful. I wish I was as brave as you. You don’t see it; just how truly beautiful you are. Beauty is vulnerability. Beauty is feeling fear and standing up anyway. Beauty is having a voice and the conviction to use it. Face, you are the epitome of beauty. You are the beautiful I wish I could be.”

As the fabric falls from me, may it reveal vulnerability, not translucency, because then I will be beautiful too, just like Face.