I began this blog as a way to redefine, or perhaps rediscover, the beauty of ME after losing all my hair to alopecia universalis over 5 years ago. Join me in the movement to see ourselves and our world through a lens not offered by our culture.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

And the winner is...

MamaSoProud!!!

Thanks, MSP, for a lovely comment about the beauty you found in a flea market:

 "I was at a flea market where all the items were tarnished, cracked, bent and broken in some way; yet my eyes took in the beauty at each and every item while my heart filled with a certain peace of times gone by. The wooden rocking horse with a missing ear had me wondering what fun the child must have had riding this toy when it was new. I picked up a clay pot that was chipped along the edge, but I could smell the dirt that had once been there and in my mind saw beautiful flowers. Several years passing had caused the newborn baby bib to turn from white to yellow, but the ladybug design still made me smile. The old shoes now tattered and torn had once held a person while they traveled, laughed and loved. I look out at the world today and see hunger, financial fear, lack of faith and belief... I wish for the world to step back and take a tour thru the flea market around them. Take time to see the beauty in all things around us, and bring back memories of those cherished moments as we're taken back to better and more peaceful days. After that walk thru history, I was able to open the door and step into the world of Now - and I still find beauty!"



Also thanks to Lee for a moving story about the beauty of hope:

A coworker spoke with tear filled eyes of a daughter who had left home in a drugged stupor and hadn’t returned. She had heard that I worked as a 12 step recovery facilitator for many years and she wondered if I had ever had any positive results. She was grasping for a straw of hope in a very devastated environment. 
Outside her office window was a young man who she had pointed out earlier as a model employee. He is always smiling as he works and goes out of his way to help others. 

I smiled as I remembered the broken lives that he and his wife had when they first came to me. They had been deep in the Meth culture for years and wanted out. And though it took a few years they are now both doing well, building lives that are full of joy and contentment. 

The hope of beauty that a parent sees in their child may be lost to poor choices for a time. Tragedy strikes in many forms that can cause physical, mental, or emotional scarring that will last a lifetime. Yet, that which mares us can also shape us into stronger, more caring individuals. None of it happens over night. Learning to see beauty in broken lives is difficult, but essential. We must see the beauty in them in order to move them past the brokenness to where they can see themselves as the beautiful person they were created to be.
And yes, when I pointed him out, more tears flowed even as hope grew."

Congratulations MamaSoProud! Your prize is on its way. 

Keep watching for those beautiful moments and letting me know about them. :) 

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Ben's Thoughts

So that little contest of mine has produced some great and thoughtful comments, stories of people recognizing beauty in places where it often is overlooked or disguised. (The contest closes on May 26th--you still have time to enter!) One of the comments turned out to be a post in and of itself--so I am taking it out of the "comments" box and posting it here. These are "Ben's Thoughts"--a man's perspective on how beauty is defined. Enjoy--and thanks for agreeing to this, Ben!


“Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.”

This near-hackneyed phrase indicates that our environment shapes how we see beauty. Indeed, our state of mind influences our ability to identify beauty and our propensity to seek it. To demonstrate this, the Washington Post did a social experiment. They had Joshua Bell, a world class violinist, play for 43 minutes in a crowded train station in Washington DC during the morning commute. Over 1,000 people passed by. Only seven stopped for longer than a minute. The author of the Post article claimed that beauty in an unexpected place isn’t recognized as beauty. The presentation matters.

However important presentation is, the content matters more. In my life, I’ve discovered that, given time, content overrides presentation. When I first went to college, awash in hormones, I was confident I’d find a wife among my classmates. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was expecting, but it was more or less what the media had promised – a gaggle of cute, bright eyed young women to get to know and, eventually, choose a wife from.

But I must admit that after looking around the room during freshman orientation, I felt slightly betrayed and a little disappointed. Where were the beautiful women I’d anticipated? (Little did I know, my future wife was actually in the room at the time.) As it turns out, nearly every female classmate in that room became more beautiful the better I got to know them. And let’s face it, judging someone’s looks on a day after they’ve changed time zones, driven or flown many miles, and lugged heavy boxes up a few flights of stairs isn’t completely fair.

The beauty of these women grew on me because a large part of a person’s beauty is beyond skin deep. I had fallen into the trap our advertisement industry has been setting for decades – I judged based on the surface (what I could see immediately), not on what was deeper. (I’m working on overcoming that shortcoming.) Only time reveals what’s deeper, which as it turns out, is much more substantial and important. Wrinkles form, makeup smears. A person you can have fun with, one who looks on the sunny side of life, is irreplaceable. To me, beauty relies significantly on personality. Someone who stops to notice the violin player – that person is beautiful. A mother who diligently and without fanfare drives her kids to school every morning – she’s beautiful. A homeless man happily greeting everyone and genuinely trying to elicit a smile and not spare change – he’s beautiful.

As our first quote reminds us, beauty is somewhat subjective. It’s not necessarily the same to me as it is to you. My friends became more beautiful the more I got to know them. I’ll apply beauty as an adjective to certain sports moments – others may find that desecrates the term. Perhaps knowledge of the underlying complexities of an ecosystem makes a forest more beautiful to a botanist. This is a paradoxical aspect of beauty I’m not sure how to wrap my head around. How can we talk about things that “everyone” says is beautiful? Can someone actually be in a state of mind that makes a sunset not beautiful? That they find a rainbow repulsive? I could certainly see depression lending itself to those feelings. Perhaps beauty also implies a sense of wholesomeness – again, something that is beyond skin deep.

I’ve heard it argued that beauty is a quantitative trait – something that can be measured and algorithmically improved. For instance, it’s been shown that the more symmetrical something is, the more we like it. The more complex something is, the more we like it. (Symmetry beats complexity, though). Patterns that reflect these traits can be predictably ranked according to “beauty.” In fact, prettier people tend to have more symmetrical faces. But counter to this, isn’t it the quirks we appreciate and find endearing? The dimple on just one cheek, the slightly crooked smile, the not perfectly straight teeth. I appreciate realism, an earthy, natural, this-is-my-raw-state type of beauty because that beauty cannot be manufactured, cannot be surgically improved, and cannot be fleeting. If you love the quirks, you will have a lifetime to appreciate them. If you love young, unwrinkled skin, you either fight a constant botox battle or give up and declare yourself (or your mate) less beautiful. Why can a person not be just as beautiful at 70 as at 17?

A natural beauty is more permanent and, in my opinion, more real than a manufactured one. The manufactured beauty has a shelf life. The iPhone4 is ugly as soon as the iPhone5 comes out. Pictures of supermodels without makeup or photoshop are a little startling. They look so average, mundane, uninteresting. But if teams of people work on their makeup, hair, wardrobe, lighting, touch-ups, air brushing, and put them on a billboard, men will drool. Are the women in the photo different than the women in real life? Would they be nearly as appealing with morning breath and bed hair? A fleeting beauty flimsily propped up is not something I’d like to build a relationship on. And if I compare my wife to supermodels, actresses, and people with plastic surgery, that’s not only unfair, but it’s setting me up for disappointment. If I look at her and see only her, seeing her beauty instead of her comparative beauty, that’s when I feel I have the most beautiful wife in the world.

In college, I wrote on my facebook page that there is no face so homely that a genuine smile doesn’t make it instantly beautiful. To me, the key word there is genuine. When joy is felt in one’s soul and is displayed in a way that make it evident to those around, that is beautiful. That’s what makes kids so beautiful – the wonder, excitement, and joy they see in the world is plainly written all over their faces.

Beauty is different things to different people. To me, beauty is impressive and authentic. And takes a lot of time to appreciate.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Instabeauty

Everyone's a photographer these days. Thanks to applications like Instagram and Photo Shop, we can all pretty much look like pros. Our phones take amazing pictures, and there is no end to the effects and filters we can apply. It's great fun. I have found Instagram to be a wonderful creative outlet. I can't draw, sculpt, or paint, I get bored with my own poetry, I can't sit still long enough to write a song, and I generally don't do well with handicrafts.

But I have visions of beauty, like everyone else. And I always assumed that "art", whatever that term includes, belongs to people with innate talent for creating it.

Instagram has changed that for me! Now I can recognize that art and beauty are not exclusive or elite. They are pervasive. They belong to all of us.

No, Instagram is not paying me to say this. I'm really just having fun with a tool that has allowed me to see beauty in the everyday. And I'm discovering that I see my world differently now that I am intentionally looking for opportunities to capture beauty.

When I first signed on to Instagram, I would chuckle at the photos of shoes, dinner plates, and other little mundane details of the photographer's life. I thought "Come on, we don't care what you're eating for dinner tonight". But then one day I made a breakfast sandwich for myself, and I looked at it on my plate. As I looked, it became more interesting. And I decided to share the image with people on Instagram.


Suddenly I had become one of those people. An amateur iPhone photographer who thinks her photos are so interesting they must be shared with the world.

As it turns out, I have changed my mind. I think we should all be photographers. We aren't all good, but we should all try. Not to get followers or feed our egos, and not even to create interesting works of art.

We should all be photographers because the search for a good photo forces us to stop and look at our world, to see beauty in the details, and to feel connected to what's around us. Instagram, and tools like it, are just ways of helping us to see the beauty that is all around us. I mean, who knew a sandwich could look so interesting? Who knew a plate of edamame could be so beautiful?


Interestingly, I have gotten more "likes" and comments on my picture of edamame than I have on pictures of trees or the lake, the scenes more commonly thought of as "beautiful". But truthfully, I think we are all excited about seeing beauty in everyday details. Colors, textures, shapes--I think it's great that we are seeing and sharing these elements in our human community. It's drawing us closer.

Professional or semi-professional photographers out there, we still need you. You have an eye for placement, framing, shading, energy, etc. You are artists. The rest of us are simply learning to capture and appreciate beautiful moments in our lives. There is room for all of us. There is space for all of our pictures to hang side by side.

There is, of course, another life lesson to be taken from Instagram. Seeing a photo opportunity and recognizing something interesting is just the beginning. From there, we literally decide what to focus on within the frame and what filter to put on the picture. We take an objective scene and choose how to view it. That's where our individual stamp comes in. Instagram photos (and any photo, for that matter) are interesting because we try to imagine why the photographer chose a particular finish for a photo. That process can be just as telling as the actual details the photographer chose to shoot.





What can you tell about me based on these pictures?

If you haven't tried photography yet, give it a try. It doesn't really matter what tools you use. Just look for opportunities to see beauty in places you would have taken for granted before. Enjoy.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Beauty Contest!

Okay readers, this is my first attempt at holding a blog contest. I need lots of entries to make it successful!

Let me tell you up front, this is a beauty contest. I want to see how you all are redefining what "beautiful" looks like. I want to see your world through your eyes. Find someone or something that strikes you as beautiful and tell me why!

A comment alone will be worth one entry, a picture plus a comment will be worth two entries. If you can't post a picture in the comments, email one to:
redefinelabelleza@gmail.com.

Since I know so many of my readers personally, I will be using Random.org to pick a winner.

I will close the contest and choose the winner on May 26, 2012 at 10 pm (central time).

The winner will receive a copy of the book Turning Heads: Portraits of Grace, Inspiration, and Possibilities by Jackson Hunsicker (2006).



I will announce the winner on May 27. If you are the lucky winner, you will have 5 days to respond with your mailing address (you can send it to redefinelabelleza@gmail.com). I will ship your prize via UPS ground unless we need to make other arrangements.

Any questions?

Have fun! I can't wait to see the entries.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Uncommon Beauty

The photographer who took my pictures is featuring me in her student show this week for her Art and Spirituality course. The theme of her show is Uncommon Beauty. She asked me to share some thoughts with her class, and this is what I came up with:

We all search for beauty, constantly. And most of us know that beauty exists in uncommon places, places that are not advertised or exploited. No, finding beauty in uncommon places is not our problem. Our problem is that we often can't see the beauty in the one place that is more common to us than anywhere else--within ourselves. We fail to see the beauty in our faces, bodies, hearts and minds. I think this is precisely because we are constantly searching for beauty. But, being the physical beings that we are, we can't help but conjure up some "other" ideal in our minds that we seek to match. We form these mental standards based on our own experiences/cultural norms/imprinting, so they look different perhaps for different groups of people, but we all have something that, to us, represents "true beauty". And for whatever reason, that ideal is never a reflection of ourselves. We look outside of ourselves for beauty. It feels natural to be propelled outward.

We fail to turn inward and look at ourselves as the standard of true beauty. But we are the standard. God made us in His image as the crowning glory of His creation. And since we all look so different, He must not have been talking about looks. When will we get that?

Paradoxically, I have always had an image in my mind of what I look like. It's idealized--the magazine cover version of myself. Looking at my photos was hard for me, because they didn't match the image in my head. The image in my head had no "flaws". In my photos, I'm just me. I have had to step back and look at them the way others are looking at them (based on what they tell me). Instead of looking at individual features that don't look perfect because they're not airbrushed, I had to face my flaws and realize that, when taken as a whole, they actually add up to a beautiful person. As they do for all of us.

So, uncommon beauty turns out to be the beauty we have failed to recognize in our common, everyday selves. Maybe if we could really get this we could stop striving to find perfect beauty elsewhere, thus causing people who don't fit our standard to be pushed out to the margins and made to feel inferior.

I'm grateful for this experience. I'm so glad I have these pictures of myself in a place I love. I'm still on the journey of defining myself as beautiful, but this was a big step--if only to show me that a lot of people see me as beautiful and to force myself to normalize my actual appearance, not the idealized version.

Does that make any sense, or am I just contradicting myself? Let me know.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

The Unveiling

Well, I did it. The Great Bald Photo Shoot. I just got my pictures yesterday.

Wow, was it hard to pop that disc in my computer. I was so nervous that I wouldn't like the pictures.

And honestly, I didn't.

At least not at first. I was having a rough night anyway, getting irritated at every little thing at home and not feeling very lovable. On an impulse, I decided to look my pictures. Wouldn't you know, the first image that opened made me cry.


I hated it. I hated seeing the color and shape of my bald head, my funny mouth, everything. I kept scrolling through and every picture made me go deeper and deeper into my pity pool.

I guess I had some kind of image already in my mind of what I thought I looked like the day of the shoot. And the pictures were not what I was hoping for. I was hoping I would gasp and say "Wow, I'm beautiful!".

I did gasp, but it was more of a "so THAT'S what I look like?", horrified and embarrassed kind of a gasp.

But then I found a picture I liked.


With hope, I kept scrolling through. By the end, I was happy with what I saw, more or less. So I decided to start from the beginning again and delete the ones I didn't like.

Funny thing was, the pictures looked so much better the second time around!

Some switch had been flipped in my head. Instead of being prepared to hate them, I had found beauty and was prepared to like what I saw.

So then I invited my husband in to see. And I found myself hating them again.

The pictures didn't change--only my paradigm did. With my husband in the room, I was imagining all the ways these photos didn't quite do enough for him. I was aware of the fact that he sees my bald head all the time, so it was nothing special. I saw all the flaws, freckles, and irregularities in the pictures.

Our minds are so powerful. They are filters that color and warp everything we see. I literally looked through my album three times, with three totally different perceptions of myself each time.

So I realize that I had unrealistic expectations from this shoot. I was imagining a total revelation of how beautiful my bald head really is. As it turns out, I'm still me in the pictures. I'm not a more glamorous me, I'm the me I see every day. The camera didn't hide my crooked nose, freckles, white head, or gummy smile.

But I took the step to sit and look at 150 pictures of myself bald. And I'm sharing them. This is a huge step. And I think it will lead, eventually, to me redefining my own idea of what beautiful looks like on me.



Find more photos like this on Alopecia World