Beauty
            As I age I become more aware of the beauty around me. But while that is true, I've also become more aware of all the ugliness.
            Perhaps my definition of both words is what has changed. Since I've retired, television is my chief means of observing people, but my years in the retail trade provided an almost inexhaustible flow of interesting faces. Both sources of exposure to humanity reinforced the same conclusion: Often those who least try to affect attractiveness are the most attractive. Attempts at compensating for ones perceived shortcomings simply exaggerates their character glitches and faulty self image.
            A television example is the models displaying Victoria's Secret. Every model pranced along the runway trying to look like a sex machine, with perfect makeup on come hither expressions, and not enough flesh to conceal their skeletal structure's minute details. What Authority decreed their beauty standard?
            Yet, other TV characters rely on another beauty standard. While they may still be pretty, their true beauty lies in their intelligence, personality, and character.
            From my retail experience with the public I observed the occasional person--male or female, their sex is irrelevant to this discussion--who displayed a remarkable lack of self-consciousness. They may as well have said aloud, "I am who I am, and it is what it is." They didn't need to affect an image or appearance because they were already comfortable in their own skin--imperfect though it may have been. Though most of those unaffected individuals bore attractive features which reinforced their inner beauty, some of them would have appeared downright homely without it.
            Conversely, innumerable people, mostly women, bore physical features that should have portrayed breathtaking beauty, but their self-absorption and over compensation for who knows what perceived shortcomings negated it.
            I guess my rant's bottom line is this: God created humanity in His own image and likeness. Those who see God as beautiful and are satisfied with His beauty reflected in themselves are indeed truly beautiful, both superficially and throughout.