How to be beautiful

aruna · Dec 7, 2005

A friend sent me a slide show with beauty tips in an attachment., supposedly by
by Audrey Hepburn. A bit of research showed that only the second part is by her; the first "beauty tips" are in a favourite poem of hers written by Sam Levenson.
The second part, though, is written by her. Just had to share this! If anyone would like me to send them the slide show (with beautiful photos of Audrey) just pm me with your mail address.

Time-Tested Beauty Tips

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge you'll never walk alone ...

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived,
reclaimed and redeemed and redeemed and redeemed. Never throw out anybody. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm. As you grow older you will discover that you have two hands. One for helping yourself, the other for helping others.

Sam Levenson

Audrey Hepburn:

The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears,

the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair.
The beauty of a woman must be seen within her eyes,
Because that is the doorway to her heart,
the place where love resides.
The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mode.
But true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul.
It is the caring that she lovingly gives,
The passion that she shows,
And the beauty of a woman with passing years only grows.

Lantern Jack · Dec 7, 2005

Thanks, but I think I'll stick to Sir Francis Bacon's definition:

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

By that definition, I'm a freakin' Adonis.

aruna · Dec 7, 2005

Lantern Jack said:
Thanks, but I think I'll stick to Sir Francis Bacon's definition:

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

By that definition, I'm a freakin' Adonis.

But again, he's referring to external appearance, which wasn't the point of the poem...

scarletpeaches · Dec 8, 2005

Easy for Audrey Hepburn to say, she was a stunner. When a complete munter starts telling me it's what on the inside that counts, then I'll listen. I bet AH never had someone tell her she was ugly.

aruna · Dec 8, 2005

scarletpeaches said:
Easy for Audrey Hepburn to say, she was a stunner. When a complete munter starts telling me it's what on the inside that counts, then I'll listen. I bet AH never had someone tell her she was ugly.

OK, I'm telling you! Because it's true! (I learnt the hard way too.)

scarletpeaches · Dec 8, 2005

Well, if aruna speaks, I shall listen!

(And don't insult yourself like that again or I'll stop buying your books. So there).

aruna · Dec 8, 2005

Only if you stop insulting yourself!

scarletpeaches · Dec 8, 2005

Deal.

aruna · Dec 8, 2005

Oh, and I need to thank you for buying a book of mine. Unfortunately, you will have to buy a lot more to keep me going. I am starving in my garret!

scarletpeaches · Dec 8, 2005

You're not writing them fast enough dammit!!!

(I'll stop before this turns into an aruna/scarletpeaches love-fest).

StoryG27 · Dec 8, 2005

I was kind of enjoying the love-fest. Oh, and the poems were great too! If only that's how the majority of the world judged beauty...not basing everything on external appearances. Ah, know what...I'd be screwed either way.

aruna · Dec 8, 2005

I think that what impressed me is th every fact that a beautiful woman said those words. Because all too often, beautiful women are so enamoroed of their outer appearances that they don't even realise that beauty really is only skin deep.
My son has been noticing this. Like almost all men, he is rendered helpless by beautiful girls - he just can't help it. But so many of them have been so mean, arrogant, careless, and just plain ugly in their behaviour he is learning to look deeper.

Of course we want to be beautiful, who wouldn't! But physical beauty can lead to an awful self-obsession and shallowness, and if you put money in the pot you get phenomena like Paris Hilton.

scarletpeaches · Dec 8, 2005

Oh, Paris Paris...she's something else. She's like a...curiosity. I want to pick her apart to see how she works.

Nicholas S.H.J.M Woodhouse · Dec 8, 2005

i met a girl who was so beautiful i really could look at her forever

but i felt so sorry for her, she became a kind of public property
with a responsibility to live out oure fantasies of being beautiful

bottom line i think is that we all want to be appreciated in some way, the sad thing is usually that the world tells us the easiest way, but that aint always the best way

scarletpeaches · Dec 8, 2005

Those of us who don't feel all that confident due to past insults and abuses (they stay with you forever no matter what people say or do to make you feel better) still envy the women who can walk into a room and be thought of as beautiful though. We're told it's wrong to concentrate on what we look like physically but still we want someone to think of us as pretty. And mean it.

StoryG27 · Dec 8, 2005

scarletpeaches said:
Those of us who don't feel all that confident due to past insults and abuses (they stay with you forever no matter what people say or do to make you feel better) still envy the women who can walk into a room and be thought of as beautiful though. We're told it's wrong to concentrate on what we look like physically but still we want someone to think of us as pretty. And mean it.

Thank you! I couldn't have said it better myself.

scarletpeaches · Dec 8, 2005

I've never had a man ask me out because of my kindness, or generosity, or hospitality. You click with someone, you fancy them, it's all about looks...and I've never had a serious relationship, so what do I know about it? But men (and women) don't look at prospective partners and say, "Look at the IQ on that; I bet she could quote Shakespeare, do quadratic equations, cook your breakfast in the morning and demonstrate the very embodiment of all that is spiritually desirable in a partner."

To be honest, if a man said of me, "But she's got a nice personality," I'd feel insulted as hell.

That said, the blokes I fancy - might not be everyone's cup of tea. But I like them, and that's the main thing.

I, and women like me, I guess, still have that desire though, for public acclaim almost. To be the Ava Gardner who walks into a room and have men go weak at the knees. Or the Vivien Leigh who make men swoon with desire. Having a collection of abuses hurled at you, it seems, can only be cancelled out by collective adoration.

aruna · Dec 8, 2005

scarletpeaches said:
I, and women like me, I guess, still have that desire though, for public acclaim almost. To be the Ava Gardner who walks into a room and have men go weak at the knees. Or the Vivien Leigh who make men swoon with desire. Having a collection of abuses hurled at you, it seems, can only be cancelled out by collective adoration.

I know exctly what you're talking about. When I was a teenager I was fat and felt so horrible and ugly. Boys used to call me the Brown Bomber - Bomber for short. I think that was supposed to be Cassius Clay or something. It hurts terribly, especially if you're in love with one of them. It took years to get beyond that hurt and learn to seek and find beauty in myself. Now, I would genuinely like to be appreciated for things other than physical beauty.

scarletpeaches · Dec 8, 2005

Oh, I agree entirely aruna. To be seen as someone who is beautiful inside and out, would be wonderful.

It's not true that looks don't matter though - after all, someone's face is the first thing we notice about them, under normal circumstances of meeting them face to face. Whatever you look like, it's still vital to work on good qualities on the inside too, and I hope I do that. It's always a journey, you never arrive at a final destination of having a 100% rounded out, desirable personality - there's always more work to be done.

However, given my own personal insecurities, it would be nice to be told (genuinely, and not to make me feel better) that I was beautiful, and preferably not just by one man, who would be biased if he was my partner anyway.

I think what I'm saying is that neither personality nor face is the more important; they are both vital for self confidence. But - only one is dependent on your own choices and free will. You're stuck with the face God gave you*, but your character is up to you.

*Unless you're Jocelyn 'Bride of' Wildenstein

StoryG27 · Dec 8, 2005

scarletpeaches said:
I, and women like me, I guess, still have that desire though, for public acclaim almost. To be the Ava Gardner who walks into a room and have men go weak at the knees. Or the Vivien Leigh who make men swoon with desire. Having a collection of abuses hurled at you, it seems, can only be cancelled out by collective adoration.

Do we share the same brain???? This is scary.

Here's the thing with me though. If I walk into a room and get a few looks, I figure there is something wrong with my clothes or I've got something hanging out of my nostril. I do get compliments, I get hit on (I guess you could say) often but it still does nothing to make me feel any different about myself. Even collective adoration can't undo some things of the past. I've got a great husband, and still, some scars take longer to fade, and some just never will.

Yet still, like you, I think, wow, wouldn't it be great to be that woman that everyone looks at when she walks into a room. Maybe it is her confidence rather than her looks I am jealous of (though I would LOVE to be as beautiful Ava) and still I have this little part of me that thinks things would be so much better in my life if I could be that gorgeous. What is wrong with women like us??? No really, I wish I knew.

scarletpeaches · Dec 8, 2005

Like that line in Pretty Woman - "If someone says bad things about you often enough, you start to believe it." (Or something similar).

I reckon if you have something drummed into you during your formative or adolescent years, Heaven and Earth can't get that belief out of your brain again. Yeah, I have that 'inner little girl' as well. Even when my skin clears up and I get male attention and things are going great, I can look in the mirror and hear her say, "They're all laughing at you, you know. You're ugly and they feel sorry for you."

Sometimes I refuse to listen to her, but when she's quiet, she's not gone, only sleeping.

aruna · Dec 8, 2005

scarletpeaches said:
Like that line in Pretty Woman - "If someone says bad things about you often enough, you start to believe it." (Or something similar).

I reckon if you have something drummed into you during your formative or adolescent years, Heaven and Earth can't get that belief out of your brain again. Yeah, I have that 'inner little girl' as well. Even when my skin clears up and I get male attention and things are going great, I can look in the mirror and hear her say, "They're all laughing at you, you know. You're ugly and they feel sorry for you."

Sometimes I refuse to listen to her, but when she's quiet, she's not gone, only sleeping.

This thread has gone deeper than I thought it would. I think there's the beginning of a novel here - On Beauty. No wait, Zadie Smith already wrote that...
Actually, I love the Ugly Duckling theme in books and I've used it in at least one novel - the second.

StoryG27 · Dec 8, 2005

scarletpeaches said:
Like that line in Pretty Woman - "If someone says bad things about you often enough, you start to believe it." (Or something similar).

For me, it was more things that were done than said. Verbally, I really was never insulted repeatedly. But I think that's why I hold so little stock in words, people can talk, but it is what they do that speaks volumes.

scarletpeaches said:
Yeah, I have that 'inner little girl' as well. Even when my skin clears up and I get male attention and things are going great, I can look in the mirror and hear her say, "They're all laughing at you, you know. You're ugly and they feel sorry for you."

Yup, similar with me. Except my 'ilg' is more of an angry cheerleader. "Why are you getting nervous? Who gives a crap what he/she says? Why do you want to cry, you're stronger than this! Don't be weak! Don't fail. Don't fall. Don't show an ounce of weakness or they'll pounce. Why are you so stupid? Use your brains. You can do this." That's the basics of the voice inside my head, not all negative, but not all positive either.

You know, I wonder if you and I are just really weird, or do a lot of women have similarities like this? Do men? Hmmm, this is opening up a whole stream of questions.

Nicholas S.H.J.M Woodhouse · Dec 8, 2005

i'll be back to this thread on the 14th.

aruna · Dec 8, 2005

If you've ever watched Extreme Makeover, you'll know that the feeling is just about universal. All those women say they want to feel that admiration, those eyes on them, to feel like a queen for a day. And when you see the results, when you see the joy their makeover gives them, it's really hard to argue that beauty is only skin deep. Those makeovers, you feel change the way they feel about themselves as to actually change their lives completely. But how long does it last? How deep does a change go, that's based on such a superficial foundation?
I know that the concept of "inner beauty" is so overused as to be a cliche but I believe in it, not just as a wishy-washy idea but as a profound and real experience that we can know and feel and take comfort in; and that the lack of physical beauty may be actually an advantage ... though not an easy one to deal with!

How to be beautiful

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swooping after you

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Miss Behave

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Miss Behave

swooping after you

On a wing and a prayer