Accept It. You Are Beautiful.

The moment I knew I was going to be a mom to a girl, I told myself I would raise her in a way she would respect herself more than I did when I grew up. I want her to celebrate being herself no matter what. When we discovered she had one hand, I realized how much more important it would be. I always believed in the saying that beauty is skin deep. A lot of that comes with the help of self confidence.

Earlier this week, my online friend and author of Don’t Hide It, Flaunt It, Meg Zucker, shared a link from CNN about a woman named Penny Loker. She was born with two different genetic facial differences and Penny explained her experiences from living a life looking different. Her article is beautiful. And heartbreaking. Just because of her differences, she’s been shunned, ignored and prevented from experiencing some pretty wonderful parts of growing up and adulthood. Take the time to read her story. Leave a comment to encourage Penny. She should not have to hide just because some people don’t know her beauty.

And then I stumbled into a video produced by Dove. Yes, the soap company. But they’ve led a real beauty campaign for quite a while. The latest project challenged women to explain how they see themselves to a sketch artist. Then people who met them offered their explanation of what she looks like. This is what happened:

I think videos like these are a wonderful reminder to all of us to stop and think and really look at ourselves and the lessons we are sharing with our daughters (and sons) if we don’t appreciate our personal beauty. You are beautiful. Each and everyone one of us. I celebrate you – every reader and supporter of Born Just Right and other communities focused on helping our society learn to honor differences. Helping our children build self confidence is really hard to do without having confidence in ourselves. So accept it! You are beautiful. No, really.

UPDATE: I highly recommend this alternate perspective of the Dove video… It’s a Tumblr post that has some valid points. The last sentence is what really gets me: “You are so, so much more than beautiful.” Although when you think about it, I think she means the same thing I do… I just said it differently. 😉