Divine Beauty

     So this term I am in a sociology class, and I love it.  It is so very interesting, with all of the theories and the different social problems that we are studying.  Thus far we have talked about poverty and gender roles and I am learning so much!  Now I am not some super feminist, like I think women should be treated right but I am not going to pretend that women and men are the same.  We are very different and because of that, we can be better at some things than other things and I think that it ok.  Variety makes life worth while.  Yet I am also not going to pretend that society has not influenced how girls view themselves and the effect it has on both genders.  In class we watched this short by the Dove Real Beauty Campaign that compared how women view themselves.  They had a sketch artist come in and sketch how the women viewed themselves and how a total stranger viewed them.  In all cases the total stranger gave a more accurate, more beautiful description of the woman, than they themselves gave.  When describing themselves, the women were so harsh on their different features, seeing themselves as old and ugly, not a thing of worth.  When watching it, all I could think of was the Young Women theme, how that Individual Worth was one of the pieces of the theme.  In young women's we would have activities geared towards increasing our feelings of worth and our esteem.  Low self-esteem is such an epidemic in our world today.  It seems like all the girls hate how they look, or wish (and in some cases succeed) they could change how they look.  It really makes me so sad.  It makes me so sad how that girls will look in the mirror and hate how they look, truly despise their appearance.  Watching that video really made me realize how real of a problem it is in our world today.  We should love how we look, not tear ourselves apart every time we look in a mirror.  When we read about the Creation, it says that we are created in the image of God.  We are made to resemble divine creatures, and we should feel that way, divine.  In the beauty industry of today, it does not help that plastered all over is the worlds image of “beauty”.  It is an almost impossible thing to accomplish, and many a girl will put so much time and energy into trying to become that, and in some cases, hurting themselves in unhealthy ways to meet that mold of beauty.  I cannot express how truly sad this fact makes me.  When I hear about friends who criticize themselves it hurts so much because I do not see the imperfections they see, I just see how great and beautiful they are.  We all need to strive to see ourselves for what we really are, for how our Heavenly Father sees us, as His beautiful children.  We need to have our beauty shine forth from the the inside and be reflected in our works.  We need to be confident and know of our divine worth, know that we are reflections of divine creatures.  Dove Real Beauty Sketch