What Is Beautiful?

I've been busy, dear reader. For the past few days, I have been texting everyone in my contacts, talking to people in class, sending emails, and stopping random strangers in my school hallways to answer one question: How do you define beauty? Recently, I viewed an inspirational TED Talk presented by Esther Honig. The Talk was titled "What Does It Mean to Be Beautiful?" and discussed beauty ideals around the world. Several years ago, Honig, a journalist, decided to send a photograph of herself to photo editors across the globe. She asked them to make her look pretty. The result of her little project was outstanding; not only did it clearly display how differently beauty is regarded in different countries and different cultures, but it also showed that beauty has no one definition. It is open to interpretation. So I've been asking pretty much everyone I can reach the same question: What is beautiful to you? Boy, have I received some phenomenal responses! A huge shout-out to all of my friends, my family, and the people who have put up with this annoying new girl in the hallways. I truly appreciate your contribution. Please enjoy today's post, written primarily by the folks kind enough to define the undefined for me. How would you explain beauty, my friends? Let me know in the comments below!

• Abby, my little sister: "Is it okay if I don't have an answer?"
• My mom: "In terms of people? When some is just radiating happiness and kindness."
• My dad: "Oh boy. I want to think about it, okay?"
• Grandma: "Someone who is kind, someone who is caring, someone that is just nice."
• Papa: "Gorgeous."
• My uncle: "I'm not sure."
• My dogs: "Ruff!"
• Rebecca: "I think my definition of beautiful is accepting and being proud of who you are."
• Zeke: "Has a good personality and appearance. My friend also says 'what's in the heart.'"
• Orezi: "Beautiful is like pretty but... it means more because it also applies to things like personality and music and art..."

• Gavin: "Actually, anything can be beautiful depending on how you look at it."
• Taylor: "Beautiful is embracing and accepting who you are."
• Emma W: "Umm... that's difficult. But I'll let you know when I know. Okay - Beautiful: loving yourself despite appearance. Be kind to yourself and your soul. It's not just artificial. It's more than that. It is what is inside of you... 'that's what makes you beautiful' (lol the ending quote is 1D lyrics from their song)."
• Anika: "Beautiful is being humble, beauty is being yourself, your appearance should matter as long as ur beautiful on the inside."
• Chloe: "Beautiful, to me, has just always [been] a word people have used to classify one another. I've never really thought in depth about it, but the concept 'beautiful' means (to me) to see the light, the good, the simple greatness in things. 'Beautiful' in my opinion should not be used as a tag to compare someone to what is the opposite; it should be used to see the beauty in everything."
• Janhavi: "My definition of beauty is what lies within the skin; it's really what builds up the person that define their beauty."
• Sha Sha: "Beautiful means to me romantic, lovely, good-looking, idk, I guess.

• Alexa: "I guess I would define beauty as something you see inside and out. This really isn't a good definition but it's all I can think of at the moment."
• Megan: "I guess my definition of beautiful is 'caring'...I don't know, just 'kind,' I guess."
• Brayden: "Beauty comes in many forms; everything has beauty but some might not see it."
• Anastasia: "Well I think that beautiful is defined by the kindness and generosity of people's hearts, not the way they look. Hope that makes sense."
• Maddi: "To be human is to feel the shards of society's mirror cut through flesh and bone. But to be beautiful is to bleed with forgiveness, find the strength to stitch and mend your wounds, and to embrace the scars of your imperfection, knowing that you, and you alone, will always be enough."

• Emma T: "Beauty is having confidence in yourself and in the way others view you. It is being kind and considerate to anyone and everyone."
• Aniella: "Beautiful doesn't always mean how pretty you are. To me, it means how good of a person you are. If you have a pretty face, but treat people horribly, then you aren't truly beautiful. You don't have to be pretty on the outside to be beautiful on the inside."
• Michael: "Beautiful means possessing one or more positive qualities that a person perceives as attractive. It is usually based on physical features, but it can also apply to personality, intelligence, voice, or even the way someone or something makes you feel, especially when describing a person. Beautiful is much less an adjective than it is an idea or a feeling; it is within you."
• Emma: "I guess that beautiful is seeing people really happy and knowing that everything is okay."
• Kaylen: "Beautiful is the perfect version of yourself or other people in that moment, even with your flaws.
• Daniela: "For me, beautiful means looking at ur personality instead of ur appearance."

• Hannah: "I feel like beautiful is about how you see yourself."
• Elias: "Beauty is what you feel, not what you see."
• Cameron: "Pretty... wait, did you type that up? It was a joke!"
• Clary: "Beautiful transcends all worldly definition."
• Lily: "Beautiful makes you untouchable. It's a power that can't be put into words, a light that can be composed into a single smile."
• Finn: "I'd say that my definition of beautiful is the uniquely wonderful qualities of a person."
• Leela: "How would I define beautiful? Something forever expanding, forever growing, and forever thriving within you and others."
• Ace: "A universal acceptance that there is no such things as someone else's children."
• Mr. Russell: "Beauty: well, our society makes us think that beauty is what we see on the outside, especially when it comes to people. In nature, we see that nature is beautiful. But beauty only comes to people through the qualities they possess within them like love, kindness, and how they care. Not the outward appearance.
• Zoe: "Beauty is like an interesting face."
• Julia: "Kindness inside and out."
• Angel: "A symmetrical face."
• Lily W: "Good energy."
• Zuza: "Beauty is where home is."

• Sofia: "My definition of beauty is individual to each person. It is something you can only decide for yourself. And someone else telling you that you are beautiful is less of recognition and more of confirmation."
• Edi: "Beauty is nuanced."
• Harry: "Enigmatic chaos."
• Sophie: "I would that beautiful is whatever makes you smile."
• Mimi: "The definition of beautiful is being unique. Not everyone's the same in terms of body type or height or weight but no matter what you think of yourself, you have to accept yourself for who you are. When you do that, you will truly be beautiful."
• Mrs. Kitchen: "I find beauty in connections. For example: Kindness is beautiful because it connects us to others. Sunsets are beautiful, as they connect us to the world (and perhaps loosely to others who may be looking at the same picture from a different perspective). Watching a toddler learn to walk is beautiful because it connects us to both the innocence and the struggle we've all experienced... whenever I think of the beauty of connection, this is what comes to mind--the two different worlds... experiencing the same thing in a slightly different way."

• Maddie F: "Society defines it as a perfect body, but beauty goes deeper than that. Sure it can be pretty, but it's how you act and who you are as a person that makes you beautiful. Anyone can be pretty, but if you're mean, you're just pretty."
• Sophie: "Beauty comes from within and shines outward through smiles, showing that you aren't afraid to express your inner feelings and that you're okay with who you are. Accepting yourself is a big part of beauty."
• Kat: "If you're beautiful and you have an ugly personality, it will show through. But if you see yourself as not so beautiful but have a beautiful personality, people will begin to notice."
• Ella: "I just think that taking time out of your own day to make someone feel better about themselves is a good trait. It shows you are the kind of person that cares for others and that you aren't just thinking about yourself."

• Samantha: "Beauty is being true to yourself and always being positive, smiling and supportive of others."
• Azar: "I suppose I'd define beauty as those instances when the various aesthetic, spiritual, and/or undefinable aspects a moment coalesce to create a kind of transcendence. In other words, those moments when I'm lifted from the ordinary into a fleeting but full embodiment of the extraordinary."
• Carson: "I think beauty isn't just what's on the outside, or just what's on the inside. True beauty is what strikes your emotions in a way few things can. Things can be beautiful on the outside because they strike your emotions. The same is true for the inside. If anything, beauty is what causes us to feel emotions like love, sympathy, and compassion."
• Kelsey: "Beauty is not the look on your face, but the way you act around other people and to other people... [and] to have a kind heart, and then you're beautiful. That's what I think the meaning of beautiful is."
• Wilma: "Beautiful can be something superficially pleasing to some or all of the senses or can also be something hidden that requires searching to find."
• Lizzy: I can say that being beautiful means that you're outlined with your special inner qualities that shape your attractiveness. In our media, beauty is assumed to be about perfectionism and idealistic body figures, but I believe flaws make us more beautiful <3 <3
• Mr. Fox: "The truly unique part of the concept of beauty is its subjectivity. But to define “beauty” or what is “beautiful” has been an attempt to create a repressively uniform perspective for an inherently personalized point of view. So the best definition I can provide is this… Beauty is an epic and ongoing conflict between the objective and subjective expectations of how one should look and/or behave.  It is an everlasting battle with the imperializing forces of the collective… a set of commodified and demarcated standards that are relentlessly imposed by systems of patriarchy and consumerism. The only (historically tragic) heroes of this struggle are the liberating forces of the individual… the boundless and abstracted adoration for an infinite spectrum of human qualities and experiences. As the cliché goes, beauty is always in the eye of the beholder… but until we realize the manufactured lenses through which we peer, we will only see beauty through other’s eyes… and never our own."
• Siri: "I think that 'beautiful' has many things that contribute to it. I think it less about what is on the outside and more about what is on the inside. I guess what I'm trying to say is that beauty is more on the inside."
• Emma K: "If you hold bees, you can see beauty."

And as for me? My definition of beauty is that it is an illusion. We constantly admire the faces, the bodies, the hair, the features of other people; however, looks melt away with time. Beauty is not as superficial as an hour-glass shape or long eyelashes. Beauty isn't even something that can be seen. Instead, it is an aura that radiates from each and every person in this world. As so many of the friends, family members, mentors, and strangers I interviewed said, beauty is a feeling. Once you master the art of seeing through the facade, of glimpsing behind the veil, you will find that all that remains is inner beauty, in its purest and most raw form.

What is beauty to you? Please let me know in the comments below - I would be more than thrilled to hear from you, and will constantly update this post with the responses posted in the comments. Remember that you, everyone around you, and the entire world is beautiful. There is no one definition. Beautiful is not the 'one-size fits all' shirt you can buy at the store. It comes from within you, and is present in everything you do.

Well, thanks, everybody.

Happiness looks great on you.
- Maya

Photo by Blake Richard Verdoorn on Unsplash, Photo by Jesus Santos on Unsplash,
Photo by Remi Yuan on Unsplash, Photo by Harps Joseph on Unsplash,
Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash, Photo by Dora Reis on Unsplash,
Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash, Photo by Frank Busch on Unsplash,
Photo by Huyen Nguyen on Unsplash, Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash,
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