The Sh#% Your Parents Should Tell You

You Are Beautiful

You are beautiful.

It's true. Even if no one tells you. Even if you don't look like celebrities or models or influencers. Even if that popular someone in English class gets all the attention, and you're treated like a discarded gum wrapper. Even if someone straight up says you're not.

You are beautiful.

Like many of us, you may have a hard time accepting the fact that you're beautiful. We exist in a world that over-values particular manifestations of beauty, that insists beauty requires certain skin tones, certain hair types, certain body shapes and sizes, certain gender expressions. We are told to doubt our beauty if it isn't recognized by others, if it doesn't match socially accepted parameters, if it is flawed in any perceptible way. We are encouraged, even expected, to conform to these standards, regardless of whether they are attainable, realistic, or even healthy. Rarely are we asked to question them. We should question them. We need to question them.

Because you're beautiful.

As you likely know at least on an intellectual level, beautiful is subjective. Is a rose more beautiful than a dandelion? Is a dandelion more beautiful than a blade of grass? Is a blade of grass more beautiful than the soil that nourishes it? Is that soil more beautiful than the puddle of water that moistens it? Yes? No? It depends on who you ask, right? But if you really see and understand them - the flower, the grass, the water, the dirt - they're all beautiful in their own way. So it is for us humans. No matter who you are, where you are, when you are

You are beautiful.

I'm telling you this because we don't tell each other this enough. We hold back these words I suspect because we're afraid of how they'll be received or how we'll be perceived. We don't say them because, perhaps, deep inside we think only those who meet those impossible standards deserve to hear them. Or is it possible we don't say them because we forget we can? Ultimately, the why doesn't matter. We need to say it. You need to hear it.

You are beautiful.

Remember you're beautiful when you go out into the world and interact with others. Remember you're beautiful when you stay at home alone in your room. Remember you're beautiful when you're with family, with friends, with coworkers, with strangers. Remember you're beautiful so that you behave beautifully, create beautifully, love beautifully. Treat the world beautifully. Treat yourself beautifully.

In short, always be the beautiful creature that you are.

Because you are, without a doubt,

Beautiful.