After helping a woman at my desk recently, she pulled a business card out from her wallet, saying, "I give everybody I meet one of these." She put it down on my desk, facing me, and I saw that it simply said, You are beautiful. "Now doesn't that make you feel good?" she asked.
Taken aback, I said that yes, it did. A girl can go a long, long time without hearing that from someone. In fact, I started to get a little embarrassed, and felt my face grow warm. A part of me--and isn't this sad?--was already wondering what her angle was, while the rest of my mind was devoted to getting itself around the idea that someone might merely be involved in a crusade to give women a compliment in a form they can carry with them for the rest of the day, and take home and tack on their bulletin board and look at every now and then. What a brilliant idea! I thought.
Turns out, she did have an angle, which I found a little disappointing. She was selling spa treatments. As she left my desk, I brushed off the card and the coupon for a detoxing body contouring treatment and my cynical side took over. What kind of message is that? I wondered. 'You are beautiful, but you could be more beautiful without cellulite and loose skin?' It's not just the facial hair we have to worry about, it's everything else, too. It's tragic that it is so hard to be happy with our physical selves.
I paused before I got too worked up, though. This spa lady was a pleasant customer and a nice person, and I'm sure she meant well. A gal could do worse than offer body treatments to other ladies, and in a way, isn't that kind of what I do here? Offer my experiences and recommendations for disguising what I don't like about my body? So I kept that business card, with the You are beautiful side facing up. It's sitting beside me now, on my desk, as I type.
After all, why not focus on the positive side?
It inspired me to tell each and every one of you reading this right now that
You are beautiful, too.
2 comments:
First bit - I smiled and my mind started tick tocking about everything, including: i could do it, too! Then my mind got taken over by: what is her plan? or - is there something wrong with her?
Then I got to the explanation bit - ah. Ouch. Thats how it made me feel. Like an "ouch".
Hm...
("hm" here replaces all the thoughts i have but cannot verbalise cause they are all contradicting each other too much ;) )
That's totally what I thought. "I could do it, too!" I mean, why not? It might actually make someone's day.
I'd have to get over a lot of shyness to hand things to random strangers, but it might be worth it, hm?
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