Beauty in Appearance

In my experience, everybody wants to look nice. They want to feel beautiful. This is a tricky issue, as it has been for as long as we can remember, and will be until the world is perfected.

There are three parts of this topic that I want to cover:

Is this desire sinful?

How can we keep our priorities straight, when faced with countless different messages about beauty?

What is beauty in appearance?

 Some people believe that the desire to be pleasing outwardly is sinful, and shouldn't be allowed to exist within themselves. They believe that others' beauty can be a sign of wickedness. I believe this is false. A want to be beautiful can help us to honor our bodies by taking care of them better, can help us feel more dignity and confidence as children of God, and can help us appreciate beauty in the world around us.

It does become sinful, though, if you start obsessing over what you look like. If thoughts of your beauty start creeping in until it crowds out more holy and truly beautiful thoughts. If it makes you feel less because you aren't perfect.

This leads us into the second part of our topic, how to keep our priorities straight concerning beauty.

Although it's okay to want to be beautiful on the outside, this should never take place of developing true beauty of character. We can do this by carving out time in our day for the things that need done, like serving others, studying scriptures, praying, education, and homemaking. 

We can do this by not comparing ourselves to others. This trap leads far too many people to be sad and upset because of their appearance, causing them to spend an unhealthy amount trying to "fix" their supposed flaws, so they can be just like somebody else.

We can do this by reminding ourselves that the most beautiful traits are on the inside. One way to remind yourself is to write a quote on a post-it-note where you will see it often, or some such thing. I like to review this quote whenever I can:

“Women of God can never be like women of the world. The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity.”

-Margaret D. Nadauld

And finally, we need to figure out what godly beauty in appearance is. There is a difference between worldly beauty and godly beauty, but I prefer to devote this blog to things of God, so that's what we're focusing on.

Not everybody fits the world's definition of beauty. Not everybody can fit that definition.

A child of God should respect themselves enough to keep good hygiene. They should eat healthily and exercise in order to be healthy. They should dress and groom in a neat manner. I, personally, wear light makeup some days, but this isn't necessary at all.
Mostly, a child of God should think good thoughts and smile. This is always attractive.