True Human Beauty and Cliches

I was much younger and living in what seems now like another lifetime, when I learned the truth about human beauty. There are no pictures with this blog post, because I'm going to try to paint you a word picture, or two:

The students in the photographic college where I worked had been given an assignment to use their cameras to create an artistic nude. The resulting photos were used to construct a mid-term art show. I took the time to go see what the students had created.

Of course, there was photo after photo of pretty girls on the wall. There were some interesting poses, some partial nudes where the human body was made to look like some sort of landscape. Some of these were inspired and very artistic. Then, there amongst the pretty, young, mostly white women, was this older, very overweight, black woman, photographed in a frontal pose, sitting on the floor, leaning on one hand, her huge breasts hanging low like large sacks of dried peas. At first I was perplexed by the student's choice of model. She seemed incongruous amid all the pretty girls.

Then it clicked. Of course she was going to stand out ~ that was at least part of the idea. All the other photos could well have been of the same model for all I was aware. This photo was certainly going to get more attention than the others. It's the one that made me look again. And when I did, I saw something quite unexpected that I hadn't noticed at first glance ~ her eyes. This woman's eyes shone from the photo. They were so expressive, revealing her very life ~ her hardships and triumphs, her sorrows and joys, her hard work, her disappointments and heartbreaks, and the depth of love in her soul. It was all there in that photograph, and in that moment, I suddenly realized what human beauty was really all about. It had nothing to do with the pretty girls. True beauty is all about what is inside us. It was a lesson that certainly helped shape my view of life over the years.

This brings me to what I've learned about cliches. We hear them when we are young until we become quite bored with them. We yawn or wave a dismissive hand when someone speaks them. Calling something cliched is not intended as a compliment. When pondering this lesson about human beauty later, that cliche about beauty being only skin deep seemed limited and misguided forever after. Another about the eyes being windows to the soul took on fresh and profound meaning for me. I realized that many cliches became cliches to begin with because they contain a glimmer of truth, or at least something to make us think. It isn't enough to hear them. One must understand a few things about life before they have much meaning. If there was anything cliched in a bad way about that student art show, it was all the pretty girls. Regardless of the pose, the use of pretty models was merely predictable.

This happened 30 years ago, and now when I look at how our society has developed, I'm seeing this shallow rendition of skin-deep beauty take up more and more of our consciousness, with ads enticing us to hang on tenaciously to our youth by getting our breasts lifted or our kissers fixed, or "news" about what this beautiful person is doing, and which beautiful stars split up or got caught high/drunk/raving/cheating ~ all of this "news" taking the place of world events on our news channels. The world, far from becoming more beautiful, is becoming increasingly shallow, with the true beauty of humanity buried deeper and deeper in human tragedy, such as earthquakes, hurricanes and other hardships that scarcely interrupt news of who's been put in rehab lately. It makes me feel grateful, and privileged, for having even seen that photograph by an inspired young student. I never even thanked him or her for the lesson in beauty. So, if you're out there, thank you. When I got up this morning, I peeled off my jammy shirt, threw it into the laundry and walked into the bathroom naked. There in the mirror was an older woman, her breasts hanging low like sacks of dried peas.... but in her eyes, a life very much lived. I might have missed that and felt sorry myself, but for that photograph so long ago. Thanks again.