Chapter One
Ya Gotta Love It Lord, you are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.Isaiah 64:8
Okay, let's get one fact straight right up front: Every girl has her own special
beauty.
Yeah, I know you've heard your mother say, "Well, I think you're beautiful,
honey." I also know that doesn't mean a whole bunch when some kid's
calling you "Pizza Face," or everybody's telling your sister she's drop-dead
gorgeous and then patting you on the head and saying, "You're cute, too, dear."
But really, God doesn't make junk. He made each of us just exactly the
way he intends us to be. So just like everything else God made-from blackberries
to rhinoceroses-ya gotta love it. Ya gotta love you, too.
Yeah, you may ask, but if every girl is beautiful, how come "everybody"
isn't seeing it that way?
Because-bummer!-people aren't like God. Somewhere along the way,
since the whole Adam and Eve thing, somebody decided there was only one
way to be a beautiful woman at any given time. Right now it's being five-foot-ten,
weighing about a hundred pounds, and having lips as big as the living-room
couch.
So how are you supposed to convince "everybody" that you're this knock-out,
even though God shaped you like a fire hydrant and gave you lips the
width of a pencil line?
You aren't. You only need to convince yourself, and that's what this book is
about. By the time you get to the end, I want you to be able to check yourself out
when you pass a store window and say, "That's me. Cool! Ya gotta love that!"
Here's a good way to start. From now until you finish reading this book,
try to follow this rule: NO DISSING THE WAY YOU LOOK!
That means no dwelling on the zits that have appeared on your forehead.
No talking about how fat you are. No wishing you had curlier hair (or smaller
ears or straighter teeth). Pretend you are a friend of yours, and you would
rather eat Brussels sprouts than hurt that friend's feelings. NO putting your
friend-you!-down.
That's a really hard rule to follow, so let's look at some of the things that
can keep you from seeing how gorgeous you are.
BEAUTY BLOCKER #1: TV Training
One of the reasons people think there's only one way to be beautiful is
because that's all they see on television and in magazines and movies and on
billboards. Even the Barbie dolls seem to scream, "You have to look like me!"
But you don't!
Girlz WANT TO KNOW
LILY: Those girls on the cover of Seventeen have perfect skin. How
do they get that?
They don't. Nobody's skin is that perfect. Everybody has at least the occasional
zit, freckle, or scar from when she had the chicken pox. Those magazine
photos are doctored up and retouched with computers that can remove
blemishes, make eyelashes longer, and even give people great cheekbones! If
you met those models in person, you would see that they
have pimples, birthmarks, and little scars, too. No lie!
ZOOEY: If I use those shampoos and face
creams I see in the ads, will I look the way the
models do?
Probably not. For openers, that model isn't you.
And don't you think if a company wants to sell a
product that's supposed to give you thick, shiny hair,
they're going to pick somebody who already has that thick, shiny hair?
Besides, if you were born with thin hair, there isn't much in this world
that's going to make it thick. But who says you have to have thick hair to
be beautiful?
RENI: I'm the shrimpiest girl in my whole class. How come God
even makes short girls, when tall girls are always the ones people think
are beautiful?
Actually, people's ideas of what's beautiful change over time, thanks to "the
media." Back in the late 1500s and early 1600s, plump women with rolls of
rosy flesh were considered beautiful, mostly because the better-fed you
were, the wealthier you were. In the 1950s, lots of curves were the going
thing in the movies and on the posters. By today's standards, Marilyn
Monroe would have been considered overweight, but men in the '50s
drooled over full-figured women. In the 1960s when the Beatles said on the
radio that they preferred petite girls, everybody wanted to be a short little
peanut. The Beach Boys even had a line in a song that went, "You're kinda
small and you're such a doll. I'm glad you're mine."
Does that mean somebody who was beautiful 40, 50, or 400 years agowouldn't be beautiful today? How much sense does that make? Nah, this
makes sense: Everyone has beauty-plump and rosy, round and curvy, short
and pixie-like, and tall and pencil slim-not to mention everything in
between.
BEAUTY BLOCKER #2: The Comparison Game
Come on, we've all played it.
"I don't have breasts yet, so I'm not as grown-up as Stephanie, but at least
I don't have to wear those geeky braces like Whitney, so I can't be that bad."
It seems like a harmless enough game. After all, most of the time you just
play it in your mind until you come out ahead of somebody and can make yourself
feel better, right? Well . hmm. Let's see what God has to say about that.
(Continues.)
