The Gift of Youth and Beauty

It's a very Catholic idea. Give God your youth and your beauty. When you see young men and women, in the prime of life, handsome, beautiful, smiling, raidiant with joy, and they give it all up to be united with God as a priest or religious, what do you think? Catholics see it as a gift of something precious and beautiful. Some folks might sigh and say, "What a waste," but Catholics see it as giving it all to God. These courageous, generous men and women have chosen to give everything they have to God. They even give the things we think belong to us alone, like youth and beauty.

Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist 2010 Aspirants (From the Sisters' Web site)

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

What do women want? We want to be beautiful. (Read: slender, with curves in the right places; some muscle definition but not too much; height without towering over men; teeth perfectly straight and pearly white; hair lush and thick with just the right amount of body, no frizz and absolutely no gray hairs!) We want to be adored (without lust, as Dante loved Beatrice) by men and envied (without hatred, just being held in awe) by other women. 

These are unrealistic goals, you say? 

Of Truth and Beauty

God made both Truth and Beauty, yet we humans have managed to confuse these two so that they’re not always clear cut and easy to spot.

Before I was Catholic I wasn’t even sure there was such a thing as objective Truth. I was more of a subjective Truth-seeker. If it seems true to you, then it must be true to you. If it seems true to me (even if my truth is different from yours) then it must be true to me. After all, who are we to claim Divine knowledge and say that we alone have the Truth, and others who are trying to follow God have mistakenly interpreted the scriptures and they only “think” their interpretations are True? But, since there can’t be multiple “Truths” and Truth can’t contradict Truth, there must be one Truth, which means other interpretations are wrong.

But that’s not really what I wanted to write about today. What I wanted to write about today is much more down-to-earth, with only a hint of philosophical edge to it. I want to write about Beauty.

God’s creation is beautiful. He has written beauty into the framework of His creation: from the celestial bodies that we view on a clear summer’s night, to the microscopic designs of a DNA strand; from the fragrant smell of lilacs on a warm spring day to the cool and soothing sounds of a waterfall splashing in a forest glade. Who doesn’t love puppies? Or babies? God’s creation is evident in new life and most of us delight in watching young puppies romp in the pet store window or children blowing soap bubbles. I doubt if we would find much disagreement among people that these things are beautiful.

But I have a problem with beauty when it is dictated by popular culture; specifically when it refers to girls and women and how we should look. Despite 50 years or more of “women’s liberation,” beauty pageants and fashion shows are still popular ways of stereotyping women’s beauty. Perhaps it’s because I’m now approaching 50 myself that I’m finally comfortable enough with my own skin to go on record as opposing these objectifications of women. Yet part of me is still imprisoned by society’s dictations. I still want to lose 20 pounds. I still wear make-up and “do” my hair. I still spend more time mulling over “how I look” than my husband does.

Some programs are trying to make inroads into this issue. Groups like Pure Fashion started out with a noble objective: Help young girls see that true beauty comes from within and that our choices in clothing should reflect that inner beauty. But I’m troubled by the amount of money these girls are asked to invest in their accessories, hair and make-up for these modesty fashion shows. I’m also distressed when I see most of the girls who are chosen to model look very similar to the girls you’d see in a typical teen fashion magazine. Once again, a program whose goal was to transform the idea of beauty reinforces the stereotypical idea of beauty. If that wasn’t enough, the spokeswoman for Pure Fashion herself is drop-dead gorgeous. Tall (5’9”), blonde, size 8 (yes, I read her comps on her website). She’s not just a former fashion model, she IS a fashion model who is married to a model and has three model kids. (Yes, I found that on her website as well).

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying it’s bad to be drop-dead gorgeous. Personally, I’d love to look like her. But that’s the problem. I want my girls to be beautiful from the inside out and not spend inordinate amounts of time or money on making a beautiful façade for the world’s pleasure. I want them to spend inordinate amounts of time making their inner-selves beautiful for God’s pleasure.

I don’t know if women will ever be able to dispose of our preoccupation with outward so-called beauty. We instinctively want to please men (and perhaps prove to other women we’re not homely). Yet, there are hopeful signs. There are young orders of women religious who shun fashionable attire, make-up and hair-dos and don simple habits that somehow transform them all into radiant beauties.

I’m still trying to figure out what true Beauty is. I know it when I see it in creation, but I’m still trying to figure out how to apply that to my life as a woman who wants to look like a 20-something fashion model even into her 50’s and beyond. I fear I may be focusing on the wrong aspect of Beauty. My husband tells me I’m beautiful…even on those days when I don’t feel very beautiful at all. He’ll even tell me I’m beautiful when I wake up in the morning and my hair is wonked up and my eyes are puffy. Maybe he sees something in me that we all need to see within ourselves.

There you have it: the convoluted ramblings of a woman who wants to look like a fashion model but doesn’t want to want to look like a fashion model or have her daughters aspire to look like fashion models.

Tasha Tudor's Garden and the Joy of Beauty

Tasha Tudor's Garden by Tovah Martin


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong century. I sometimes fantasize about living in a hand-hewn cozy cottage with a wood-fired cooking stove apart from the noise and congestion of city life. I would love to bake my own bread, raise my own laying hens, milk my own nanny goats and make yogurt and cheese. I would love to rely solely on my hardy pioneer stock and bypass technology (save for the ease with which I could obtain the basic necessities of life…and probably indoor plumbing…and central heating). Hey, it’s my fantasy world.

Yet, here I am, blogging mommy; a Twittering, Facebooking, Linkedin technology embracing 21st century inhabitant.

There are some modern pleasures to which I haven’t succumbed. We don’t have cable or satellite television or a flat-screened TV. I don’t have an iPhone, iPod, Blackberry or a space-aged looking device permanently stuck to my ear.

I do bake my own bread from time to time with grain that I grind myself (in a modern, convenient and easy-to-use electric grinder). I make my own yogurt occasionally and I have sour dough starter on my kitchen counter. I grow an excessively huge vegetable garden each summer, with varying degrees of success and I like to make jams, jellies, pickles and preserves with the abundance. I sew, knit, quilt, cut my kids' hair and in general try to make the world a more beautiful place. (I said try.)

I sometimes feel torn between the two worlds—my fantasy world, which I would love to inhabit, and the real world that I actually do inhabit.

My recent musings were brought on because I just finished reading
Tasha Tudor's Garden, by Tovah Martin, which is profusely illustrated with stunning photographs of Tudor’s Vermont hilltop home and her 250-acre botanical heaven-on-earth. (An aside for those of you who are ignorant of Tasha Tudor, as was my husband. His response when I told him I was reading a book about Tasha Tudor was, “Who’s Tasha Tudor?” This from the man with whom you never, ever want to play Trivial Pursuit. He’s got places, dates and geographic locations permanently etched in his brain. Need to know the capital of Burkina Faso? The capital is Ouagadougou. It used to be called Upper Volta, he tells me. Anyway, Tasha Tudor was a prolific illustrator whose illustrations transport you to another time and place. She was born in 1915 and died just recently, in June 2008. Although she lived in the 20th century, her lifestyle, dress, home and garden were deeply rooted in the 19th century, if not earlier).

This is a visually stunning book that transports the reader to another time and place. I would liked to have read more about Tasha Tudor, but this book really isn’t about her, it’s about her garden, and ultimately about beauty. The pictures transported me to a time and place that is so different from my own, which perhaps is why I find it so appealing. My Colorado garden could never compare to her Vermont hilltop garden. She has moisture and rich soil whereas I have dry clay and rock. She evidently relies on nature to water her garden most of the time, whereas I pay double for Arvada water since I live outside city limits. Because of this, if you come see my garden in late July or August, you’ll usually find my grass a dull green, if not brown-tinged because I’ve diverted all the precious water to the vegetables.

I was disappointed the book didn’t have pictures of her heated greenhouse. It made mention of its lovely camellias which brighten her home in the winter, but no pictures. I can only suspect the greenhouse doesn’t follow the proscriptions of imitating 19th century. It’s probably the technological reason for the stunning beauty of her flowers.

Really, the book is about beauty and not about living a certain lifestyle. Her eccentric dress and lack of 21st century technology may be about her own quirkiness, but they are also beautiful in themselves. Because she spent so much time nurturing her garden by hand, collecting and arranging lovely vases of flowers and painting the exquisite scenes before her, we, the readers, get to enjoy the many images of beauty.

Technology (like this blog I’m writing right now) has done much to spread ideas and information. But we can’t live authentic lives if we don’t allow ourselves to be nurtured by beauty. It easy to be distracted by the technology itself: flashy images, surround sound, instant access. But without beauty in our lives, we are only half-human. If I learned one thing from this charming book, it is that I need to be more mindful of the beauty around me; to nurture and protect it like Tasha nurtured and protected her lilies, roses, peonies, poppies and even the lowly pansies. She cared deeply about each of her botanicals, often calling them by name and always ready to give a history of their planting and heritage. When a frost was predicted, she’d hasten outside to cover the vines of her Concord grapes with laundry, or she’d lay a deep layer of mulch around a tender plant like a mother covers her sleeping child with a blanket at night. Tasha Tudor understood beauty and our human need for it.

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Going Gray Gracefully

Or, "It's Great to be Gray!" Well, at least it used to be, back when the alternative was death.

Earlier this week I was in the orthodontist's office with Edmund (and when I say "earlier" I mean "earlier." It was 7:30 in the morning.) As I was sitting in the waiting room, trying to pretend the instant chai in the orthodontist's office was as good as a Starbuck's Chai Latte, and wondering if I should pick up and read the skanky magazines that shrieked, "Brad texts away while Angelina has torrid affair with cell phone salesman," and "Octomom shows off sexy new bod," or just get out the knitting I brought with me, I couldn't help but overhear the three women talking behind the receptionist's desk.

"Women should never go gray. My mom is 79 and she only has a touch of gray. Whenever I see any gray hairs, I'll pull them out. If I get more, I'll definitely cover it up."

"Did you see that woman? She was too young to be gray! She had two young children. And she wasn't even wearing any make-up!"

"My husband would never stand for that. He told me so."

"Men look distinguished when they're gray. Women just look haggard."

I tried to sink into my chair without spilling my overly sweet and chemically enhanced faux chai, thinking how stupid of me to not put on any make-up this morning before our early morning trip to the tooth-straightening guy. But the longer I sat there listening to their catty remarks about other women, the more I thought this was unfair.

It's unfair that men should be allowed to go gray, nay, encouraged to go gray, for that added look of distinguishment, a la George Clooney, while women are told their looks must be perpetually youthful and glowing, otherwise they are fodder for office gossip and snide remarks.

Even some Catholic ladies are getting into the spirit of "looking good," some positing that it is the duty of the wife to look lovely for her husband after he's been slaving away at work all day. There are Purity Fashion Shows, which are supposed to promote modesty, but I think they sometimes can promote the importance of outward beauty so much that some girls may feel intimidated. Not everyone can look like a runway model, but that is the sort of look most girls crave and society reinforces.

I believe true beauty radiates from the inside. Just think of someone you know and love who might not meet all the world's requirements to be considered "beautiful." But you see that person and you see beauty, right? To be truly beautiful, we need to be at peace with who we are; be "comfortable in our own skin," as some might say. Then we need to love and accept others. I think that is the big key here. Mother Teresa wasn't ever going to make the top 100 list of the Most Beautiful People in the World, yet she was beautiful. She was beautiful from the inside out. Beauty radiated from her being and people responded to that. People flocked to her because they saw her beauty--which sprang from her Love. Because she loved, she was beautiful.

I don't know if Mother Teresa had gray hair or not. But does anyone really care? I would rather have a dose of her beauty than a lifetime supply of hair coloring at the best salon in town.