A Beauty Glorious

“Shed thirty pounds in just thirty days!”

“Luscious lips with color that lasts.”

“Extend, enhance, and beautify those lashes!”

“It’s so easy—perfect curls every time!”

“The perfect foundation for smooth, flawless skin.”

We’ve seen it, we’ve heard it, we’ve probably even bought the products. The right mascara to magically extend and thicken your eyelashes. The right lotion to smooth and soften your skin. The right hairspray to give you full, bouncy tresses. And countless procedures and miracle diets to make you that ideal 110 pounds, all so you can look just like the dazzling girl in the commercial with perfect skin, perfect teeth, perfect hair, and of course, perfect weight.

The Dove Corporation—yes, the cosmetics company—has put together a video that offers an inside look at what might go into creating such an advertisement.



Thinner, smoother, softer, tanner, longer, brighter, bigger… The advertising industry is making a fortune by convincing us that we aren’t something enough. And we believe them, detest all mirrors and cameras, and go buy everything on the shelves, only to start the cycle over again. This notion of "flawless beauty" is killing us.

And the crazy part is—most of what they're presenting is a lie. No one can possibly be that perfect, not even the supermodels. I bet you a pound-sized dark chocolate bar that if you could ask those models what they wish they could change about their appearance, they would be able to tell you a whole list of things right off the tops of their heads.

We live in a world that hypes up plastic beauty. And somewhere along the way, in between the Barbies and the magazines and the TV shows, we’ve forgotten what it means to be truly beautiful.

The truth is, genuine beauty comes from within. I know, I know, it’s cliché, but it’s God’s honest truth. When you carry yourself with a confidence that says you respect yourself and others, when you live life with love and joy, you can’t help but be beautiful. It’s a beauty that isn’t painted or photoshopped or dieted into you, but a radiant, glorious beauty that explodes from the inside out.

I can hear you now: “I know all that, Caitlyn, I’ve known it all my life! But it doesn’t exactly help when I see Tyra Banks in all the magazines, and then I look in the mirror and all I see is what’s wrong: wrong hair, wrong clothes, wrong skin, wrong teeth, wrong everything!”

I get it. Trust me, I do. I’ve been there thousands of times. It’s the curse of being a female in the modern-day Western world. Heck, it might be the curse of being female, period. Even when we know that we should be focusing on inner beauty, still we crave after this flawless magazine image. Still we think that we don’t measure up.

Can I share something with you that absolutely blew my mind?

Song of Songs 4:7 “You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.”

Wait a minute.

Back up. Read that again.

“You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.”

Wow.

The God of the universe, the God who created me, the God whose opinion is the only thing that matters…says that I am flawless. He doesn’t see any of the things I wish I could change about myself. He sees only perfect beauty.

Don’t believe me? Can you imagine God looking at you and shaking his head, saying, “Well, I tried, but I guess I ran out of Pretty n’ Perfect Powder that day. I must have used it all on Tyra. It’s really too bad about that face.”

NO! God looks at you and says, “Look at her! That one right there, look at her! She is perfect! Perfect! She makes my heart beat faster. Breathtaking, stunning, captivating… Beautiful. Flawlessly beautiful.”

Barbie’s got nothing on you, sistah. The King of the universe has called you beautiful. And it has nothing to do with makeup or skin care or fashion sense. It has to do with you. Because he made you in his image and he loves you exactly the way you are.

Flawless.