Beauty

“Ugly,” she says. “Jessie you are ugly now. You were beautiful when you came but now your skin is dark like ours. You are ugly.” I laugh first at the irony of the situation. I think of all my peers back in chilly Canada who pay hundreds of dollars each year to artificially acquire the tanned skin that eight months of tropical sun have given me. When I describe tanning beds to my Lao friends their mouths gape open in disbelief and disgust. Forget J-Lo and Angelina Jolie, Lao girls crave nothing more than to look like the pale skinned, rail thin, delicately featured, silky haired Thai pop stars they see on TV.

But later that night, when the conversation runs through my head again, I’ll admit, I start to cry. No, my host sister’s comments have not offended me (such matter of fact statements about appearance are an every day occurrence here), but it suddenly hits me hard that our world has taken the concept of beauty and twisted and contorted it until it has become an instrument of torture. Why is it that young Lao girls smear bleach based whitening creams on their faces and hide behind thick layers of clothing every time they step out into the sunshine? And likewise why am I tempted to suffer severe sunburn and skin damage in the hopes of maintaining a golden glow? (Tempted dad, only tempted.)

When I begin to compare and contrast the characteristics of beautiful people across cultures, it’s easy to see what a social construction the whole concept is. Somehow, beauty has evolved over time away from the appreciation of the exquisitely, intricately and uniquely Created beings that we are and into a Platonic Form (represented by the “beautiful” people we see in our society’s media) of which we will always fall short. We will never be light enough, dark enough, thin enough, fat enough, tall enough or short enough to be beautiful, so why not love our bodies just as they are right now?

I should make a confession: it’s easy for me to say these things in writing, but somehow this Form of beauty seems to be stamped into my brain in permanent ink. Even here in Laos, when I should be worrying about the very real issues of injustice rather than wasting mental energy fretting about my appearance, there are still days when I wake up feeling that my zits are too big or my hair too frizzy. I’ve come a long way in the last few years in the journey towards loving myself but I’ve still got a long way to go.

As I walk alongside young people in this country (and in Canada), on our shared path towards a more peaceful world, I realize that we will be able to do very little to build peace with the people around us until we gain the sort of confidence and inner peace that comes from accepting and loving the person we are, frizzy hair and all.