Good evening! Thank you for joining us and I hope you will enjoy tonight's KTK.
The other day I was at a large, downtown department store, feeling very frustrated. I had found a spring coat that I really liked. It looked good on me too, except that it was a bit snug. Those extra pounds I put on over the winter were keeping me from buying a coat I had fallen in love with. I felt discouraged and ugly when I looked in the mirror at the buttons which didn't quite meet.
I looked around a bit more and then decided to head home. Before leaving the store, I went into the ladies' room and as I left, I noticed a full length mirror by the door. I glanced in it and noticed that my scarf was askew so stopped to adjust it. As I stood there, trying to ignore those extra pounds, I noticed that someone had written, with a fine brush, in white paint, along the top of the mirror
"you are beautiful"
I was amazed. What a lovely thing for someone to do. Did they know, perhaps from personal experience, that people often dislike what they see in the mirror? Did they write those words in the hopes that the message would resonate with someone who needed to hear it? What a wonderful gift.
It got me thinking about our society's standards of beauty and how impossible they are to achieve. We are only human, and without photoshopping and airbrushing, most of us will never attain today's definition of beauty.
So let's redefine the word. What do you think makes a person beautiful?
Do you agree with any of these ideas?
Beauty is not the face. Beauty is a light in the heart.
— Kahlil Gibran
You define beauty for yourself, society doesn’t define your beauty. Your spirit and your faith defines your beauty.
— Lady Ga
When you seek beauty in all people and all things, you will not only find it, you will become it.
— Unknown
To me, beauty is about being comfortable in your own skin. It’s about knowing and accepting who you are.
— Ellen Degeneres
Or maybe you agree with Miss Piggy:
-Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.
Please share your thoughts on this, or any other topic and feel free to post links to diaries on the tip jar.
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, and interesting videos, as well as links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate. Readers may notice that most who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but newcomers should not feel excluded. We welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
Just as I was finishing up this diary and preparing to publish it, I saw an item on CTV news about a Facebook site called, "This is my skin". It was started as a place for people to discuss their frustrations with today's unrealistic standard of beauty and to share stories about body image.
Here is a link to the FB page:
https://www.facebook.com/...
And a link to the CTV news item:
http://www.ctvnews.ca/...