You Don't Have To Be Pretty

I was trolling through my old Pinterest boards last night looking for Valentines craft inspiration (one of these years I'll come up with something, right?) when I came across this Pin:

It jumped out because it was on my "Girly Grins" board - a place I normally reserve for funny cat pictures and watercolor tattoos.

So I clicked through to the article, and wow. I was unprepared. It was written over ten years ago by Erin McKean of A Dress A Day, and I recommend reading the whole thing (it's not long), but here's the bit that packed the biggest sucker punch for me:

You Don’t Have to Be Pretty.

You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general.

Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.

McKean goes on to say there's nothing wrong with "pretty", of course, but how our emphasis should be on health and happiness. Click on over, give it a read. I'll wait.

Back? Cool.

Some thoughts:

In a world where every "empowering" pop song assures us that we're beautiful, and where expressing any dissatisfaction with our looks is seen as a cry for help or attention, I actually find it comforting to be told it's ok to NOT be pretty. That maybe looks can just be looks sometimes; a thing we have little control over, and that ultimately have no bearing on our true value.

I'll go even further, and say maybe it's ok if I don't think *I'm* pretty. And that maybe rushing to assure our friends and humanity in general that we're all beautiful is a bit, well, stupid. Insulting, even. How can we say a person we've never seen is beautiful? How can everyone be beautiful? And be warned: if you give me the "beautiful on the inside" speech, I WILL roll my eyes at you.

You know what's beautiful on the inside? Kindness. Courage. Empathy. Loyalty. Self-sacrifice. If those are the things we see in a person, if those are the things we mean, then shouldn't we use those words? Call out some specifics? Instead of reducing so many amazing qualities to something as trivial and fleeting as "beauty"?

Hey, I get it. This is one of those areas where we mean well, but we've been preconditioned to A) contradict anyone who says they're less-than-gorgeous, because B) we associate beauty with goodness. So she may not be beautiful, but she's a beautiful person. (I know, I know; I've said it, too!)

I would posit that in the process of trying to make people feel better like this, though, we're really enforcing the societal mandate that unattractiveness will not be tolerated. That of course you're pretty, because you have to be pretty.

But you guys, we don't have to be pretty. As McKean said, we don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not even ourselves.


I don't have any answers here, but I like these thoughts. I like being reminded that I don't owe chasing some impossible standard to the world. And I need reminding, because that's not how it feels, right? Right now I think I owe prettiness - or my best attempts at it - to every person who has to look at me. I feel like I should apologize for my face if I'm not wearing makeup, or for my clothes if I'm wearing something comfortable, or for my figure and weight, period.

Sometimes it's fun, the makeup and the clothes and the sparkly nail polish. But like everything, the fun fades when you have to.

So I don't know about you, but I get tired and resentful of the effort. Then I get tired and resentful of being told I'm beautiful just the way I am by commercials and songs and even my overly enthusiastic hubby, who has a knack for picking the worst possible times. If John would save it for when I'm tucked and plucked and actually feeling pretty, it'd be different. But noo-ooo. It's when my unibrow is coming in nicely and I'm propped up on my triple chins in a heap of frizz wearing cat-hair-covered yoga pants that John decides I need to be told I'm gorgeous. Which is sweet, but c'mon. If that's gorgeous, then somebody better bust out the heavenly chorus line when I brush my teeth and put on a bra, is all I'm saying.

 via

Again, no answers here, just thoughts. And I'm curious what you guys think. Do you struggle with "owing" prettiness to anyone, or do you enjoy the effort? Do you care what your favorite people look like? Where's the line between being true to ourselves and presenting a well-groomed, self-respecting image to the outside world? And most importantly, do you ever fantasize about a society where everyone wears pretty masks in public, or are turned into giant cats with lustrous fur coats that hide all their zits? (Asking for a friend.) (Who is me.)

Let's chat. Let's think some new thoughts.

And hey, for what it's worth, I don't care if you're pretty, because I know you're already something so much better: you're you. You are what matters, you are what lasts, and twenty or fifty or a hundred years from now, your impact on the people and world around you is what will be remembered. Not your good hair days, not your pore size or your waist size or your fashion sense. Just you. 

And you know what? That's pretty darn cool.