I’m not beautiful, she says
Ducking her head as if to hide the evidence
I wonder where anyone
Discovers what beauty is?
And even more,
Who told her she was not?
When she tells me this,
The easy answer is
Of course you are.
Of course you are beautiful.
But the harder answer is
You don’t know what beauty means yet
You don’t know how one day
Being pretty will be the last thing on your mind,
Or that your legs will someday be too weak to carry you
The person you are now
Won’t even be able to recognize your face,
And your bones will creak with effort
And not with excitement.
You don’t know how that can be beautiful
And you are not alone.
Don’t people count their wrinkles
More often then the good things they've done?
And if you have lines around your mouth from laughing
Be glad that you were laughing once.
The scars etched onto your skin
Show how well you've lived
How many times you have fallen
And chosen to get back up
And they are not ugly.
And neither are you.
When you say you are not pretty
I want to tell you that
You do not become pretty
By the symmetry of your face
But by the pretty ways in which people think of you.
It is always better to say
You are smart, you are good, you are kind
Than you are pretty.
You should look for more than that in others
You should look for more than that in yourself
You are too young to worry about the shape of your body
Worry about how well you use it
How fast your legs can run
How far you can see with your eyes
How well you can hear when you are listening.
Hearing “you are pretty”
Is an awful waste of your ears.
Staring at a mirror
is an awful waste of your eyes.
Do not let them hear and see what others hear and see.
You are better than that.
You have those things for a reason.
Your hair is beautiful and your skin is beautiful and your mind
Is beautiful
Because they are a part of you.
But that’s all they are-parts.
There is more to you than that.
Your eyes shine when they see something they like
And your mouth curves up when you talk
About something funny
And that is beautiful.
And you are beautiful because of that.
When you say you are not pretty, the easy answer is
Of course you are.
But the true answer is
You are not.
You are so much more.