Loveliness (It could be yours!)

Oh, now, don't jump to conclusions. I didn't put these pictures under that title to imply that I was loveliness. Just hear me out.

Look, I have freckles! I never knew.

I read a blog, sometimes, which tells about events going on in Salt Lake and Utah County, and this blog occasionally hosts "giveaways." Recently, there was one for a haircut and color by some lady, which you could leave a comment to win.

So, I was reading the comments. There were like 300 of them. And all of them said this:
"Oh, pick me! I neeeeeeed this soooo bad!"
or
"I am in serious need of a cut, my hair is AWFUL"
or
"My hair is a disaster, I really need some help"
or
"I need a new look SO bad!"

Repeat 300 times.

Well, I'm not trying to criticize here, since my first thought upon reading the post was, "Oh man, I need this, my hair is horrible these days."

BUT.

After skimming through 300 comments saying the same thing, I felt sort of weird. (I didn't even feel like leaving a comment anymore.) I just kept thinking, "Really? Do we really 'neeeeed this so bad'?" It made me kind of sad, to see that nearly every woman there, including me, a.) hated her hair and b.) thought a new cut-n-color was a necessity. It made me want to be a little less self-centered, frankly, and less worried about all these wants I have somehow made into "needs." I'm all for cute haircuts, of course. A cute haircut can make such a difference in how you feel from day to day, especially when you have had a few more kids and a few more brownies and a few less days of running and several hundred fewer hours of sleep than would, technically, be desirable for someone who wanted to have a cute body. But really. Don't you want to be the kind of person who is happy no matter what you look like? I do. I'm not there yet. But I want to be.

Here is a quote I love (from a talk by Elder Holland several years ago)(and perhaps a better authority on such matters than this person):

"A preoccupation with self and a fixation on the physical . . . is more than social insanity; it is spiritually destructive, and it accounts for much of the unhappiness women, including young women, face in the modern world. And if adults are preoccupied with appearance—tucking and nipping and implanting and remodeling everything that can be remodeled—those pressures and anxieties will certainly seep through to children. At some point the problem becomes what the Book of Mormon called “vain imaginations.” And in secular society both vanity and imagination run wild. One would truly need a great and spacious makeup kit to compete with beauty as portrayed in media all around us. Yet at the end of the day there would still be those “in the attitude of mocking and pointing their fingers” as Lehi saw, because however much one tries in the world of glamour and fashion, it will never be glamorous enough.

"A woman not of our faith once wrote something to the effect that in her years of working with beautiful women she had seen several things they all had in common, and not one of them had anything to do with sizes and shapes. She said the loveliest women she had known had a glow of health, a warm personality, a love of learning, stability of character, and integrity. If we may add the sweet and gentle Spirit of the Lord carried by such a woman, then this describes the loveliness of women in any age or time, every element of which is emphasized in and attainable through the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ."

Nice.

And since there were so many who didn't win the free haircut, if you really need one, you can come over and I will give you one. I have some very serviceable electric clippers. AND attachments #2, 6, and 3. Except #2 is broken. But I can easily just use my fingers to get approximately the right length. So I'm sure it will be fine.