Pretty Is as Pretty Does

Beauty. What exactly is it? Am I beautiful? What girl doesn't ask herself this on a regular basis? I’m asking myself this as I look back on some pictures of me that I have finally recovered after my big ol’ hard drive crash. It was back when my hair was down to the bottom of my back. It looked so awesome! I always got so many compliments on it. I remember now how much I loved my hair and wonder why I cut it. It was because it started feeling too long, unhealthy, and it would get stuck in the window when I rolled it back up—also in the seatbelt case as it wound back in when I took it off. I thought I would feel younger if I cut my hair like it was in my early 20’s—ya know, “the Rachel?” That layered bob look Jennifer Aniston made popular on Friends? But now that it is cut, I’m having haircut remorse. I also thought it would be easier to do (knowing better it wouldn’t be) and it isn’t. I thought it would be fun and bouncy-short. It’s not. It’s just short. Not really short, but the shortest it’s been in about four years. So now I have this oddly grim feeling that I sort of cut off my beauty. Is that possible? Every boyfriend has urged me not to cut it and with one, I would cut it when we were in a fight, just to spite him. (My last boyfriend didn’t make me made for four whole years which is why it got so long.) Even if I got a few wrinkles or didn’t dress as hip, my hair somehow made up for it. It would turn heads and elicit comments from even women. People were always asking me if it was “real” …whatever that meant. (Extensions, maybe? But no. All mine.) So now I feel like I have lost my greatest asset. And now being boyfriend-less, I feel especially vulnerable, like what am I going to play up now to turn some heads?

But as I look at those old pictures, I also see something else. Probably something no one else would notice. I actually see a PA (pre-accident… sorry, Dad) version of myself. It makes me feel like I was so naïve as I look at my expressions. It’s almost like I was soul-less. I mean, of course I had a soul, but it has been enlarged and expanded in ways I could have never imagined, making the previous version of me seem so much more deficient in wisdom and experience than the current version. I was so invincible. Like I look back and think, gosh, I had no idea then of what I would have to face—if I had, I would have looked terrified and concerned. Yet now that I’ve been through it, I would do it all over again. It has added a sort of depth to me that I didn’t know existed. Almost an inner, soulful beauty… strength, wisdom, confidence, compassion… things I thought I had, and did, but comparably so much less.

My point is that I see beauty differently. Right after my accident, I would ache and even cry when I thought of my physical scars. Sometimes I still get emotional. But they’re like my reminder that no only did I survive, but I conquered and became a better person for it. Though my body has been damaged in the excavation, my soul has been enlarged. In a way, I feel more beautiful, but in a way that only I know. My best friend Jen always says (because her mother always did) that “pretty is as pretty does.” And though I may not outwardly act more beautiful, I have this quiet sense of peace and strength that I didn’t before… The kind that makes you feel like you never have to apologize for who you are. I have an immense sense of love and gratitude for life, for people, for relationships, for each day and every little detail in it. I see everything differently, with new eyes and a new heart. And that makes me feel beautiful.

But I’m still going to grow my hair back out.