Being Beautiful Won’t Make You Happy.

I’ve been thinking about this a little bit.

I recently met a woman online who lives in another country. She seemed cute and sweet, and so we kept talking. I began to notice that the photos she sent me were a little too smooth, a little too perfect.

I told her, I can’t really see what you look like because your photos are filtered. Can you send me a photo with no filters?

So she sent me a photo… again with the filters applied, but she said “ok, this one has no filters.”

I told her that I don’t want to continue talking with her, mostly because I don’t trust her. Someone who is unwilling to show their face, their true face, is not trustworthy to me. Would you date a guy who always keeps a paper bag over his head? No. It’s just really creepy.

It’s the same way with a woman who refuses to show her unfiltered face.

So I thought about it some more. Why would this woman lie to me? Why would she be so insecure that she can’t show how she really looks, even to someone who she is considering dating?

I have heard that young women are getting plastic surgery at an unprecedented rate, because they want to look like they do in their filtered photos.

I know there is a feeling of wanting to be loved and liked, but the happiest and most loved people I know are not the prettiest. In fact, the most beautiful people I know are incredibly insecure. They are used to relying on compliments from others to improve their own self-esteem, and they fear what will happen if they lose that.

I know several women who, despite being unattractive in the conventional sense, radiate warmth and love and positivity, and so are always surrounded by friends and family. One such friend always has dozens of unanswered texts in her phone from people who want to get lunch with her, both men and women.

The reason behind wanting to feel beautiful is wanting to feel valuable. You can be valuable without being beautiful, just like you can be beautiful without being valuable.

Living life without filters isn’t being brave, it’s being authentic. A lot of people will say, “I don’t care what anyone thinks of me.” If you try to hide behind filters and makeup all the time, I would argue you are doing that because you DO care about what others think.

But the problem with affirmation from others is, it’s never enough. You could spend all day being praised by people you admire and you will go to bed feeling happy and fulfilled, but just a few days later you will be hungry for more.

If you are feeling insecure about your looks, ask yourself this: why?

I don’t mean because of your ears or your nose or your body shape or whatever.

I mean, why don’t you like you? What keeps you coming back for more, needing more and more attention from others so you won’t feel horrible about yourself? It is super scary, but it is important to figure out. What chain of beliefs do you have that are keeping you stuck in a cycle of:

1. I feel bad about myself
2. I try to get other people to like me
3. People like me so I feel better
4. The feeling wears off

Repeat

If you told somebody else about your reasons for hating yourself, they would laugh, because everyone’s reason seems small and irrational to someone else… and that’s because it is.

Instead of piling on filters and makeup, ask yourself: why is it so important to me that people affirm my existence? Why do I hate myself, and why am I dependent on other people to heal my self-esteem after hating on myself has hurt me? That is the real answer to your problem.