Contents
What is Inner Beauty?
Inner beauty is the beauty that is not visible. It is beauty that can only get fathomed and gets appreciated as inward qualities such as kindness, generosity, good intent, patience, stewardship, honesty, and love.
How to be Beautiful Inside
To be beautiful inside, one has to have a light to them. That is, the grace to appreciate life, people, and nature. Appreciation entails caring for and nourishing life, people, and nature. Inner beauty has been somewhat politicized as a metric, and this is wrong. Inner beauty cannot be measured, and it is either there or not there. It is a boolean value as appreciated in technology.
The Desirability of Inner Beauty
Beauty is a strong word and speaks to everything desirable, wanted, or appreciable. For instance, a lady with an effect on others in terms of kindness, grace, and gratitude is termed to be intrinsically beautiful. Gentlemen can also get seen to have the gentlemanliness or chivalry expected of them by possessing the same qualities.
We all seek to have an impact on the world, and the extent of this impact can only be limited by our traits. As such, an individual can have an immense effect on the world when they have the beauty or gentlemanliness to inspire others to effect change.
Activism as a Sign of Inner Beauty
Think of figures such as the late Wangari Maathai and Greta Thunberg and the impact they have had on the world. These individuals have shown grace, kindness, generosity, and stewardship on a massive level. They have given their lives and time to ensure that the world is a better place. They have sought to inspire all of us to take care of the world and all life as we would our own.
Wangari Maathai’s Fight for Trees
Through activism and self-belief, Wangari Maathai was able to fight against the exploitation of forestry. She fought vehemently to ensure that we would all realize the importance of tree planting and forestry as a whole. Through her work and that of her counterparts, Kenya is today one of the countries that still have sufficient forest cover. Such action has helped us minimize the impact of climate change and global warming on nature and human life.
Greta Thunberg and the Friday for Future Protests
Today, Greta has taken up the mantle and mobilized millions of school-going children and teenagers for the Fridays For Future protests. Her efforts have helped to ensure that the leaders of the world realize the toll our current carbon emissions will have on future generations. Through activism and protests, students all over the world have encouraged older generations to give attention to the problem of climate change.
Appreciating Inner Beauty
Inner beauty cannot be defined by an extrinsic argument and can only get appreciated through the person’s actions, words, and beliefs. Those who have made an impact on the world exemplify what real inner beauty entails and what it can mean for the world.
Inner beauty is not a creation of high fashion and big pharma. It is a realization that specific individuals have the qualities that would enable them to play a more significant role in the world and have an impact on society.
One’s Qualities as the Only Way to Quantify Inner Beauty
In terms of aesthetics, inner beauty remains unappreciated as it is not a portrayal of the physical but the appreciation of qualities. Qualities cannot be quantified but can only get projected to the world. Inner beauty is all about character when it comes to fashion and beauty. The world’s top models only get identified after they also get examined by their qualities. Those with the most impactful causes are the only ones who attain accolades of beauty worldwide.
Meghan Rapinoe and Her Fight Against Trump
Think of figures such as Meghan Rapinoe, the U.S. Women’s Football team captain. Through her exemplary leadership and her fight against the Trump leadership, she was able to attain true beauty by also having qualities that complement her inner beauty.
The Unstandardized Nature of Inner Beauty
Inner beauty is not a standard and does not get confined within the perception of others. It is there when it is felt in terms of impact and actions. When the world sees the light of the individual, they can then get appreciated as being truly beautiful and having inner beauty.
Feminists also fall in this category, and the proponents of feminist theory have played an increasingly crucial role in defending the role of women in society. Feminism encourages the equality of the sexes and champions women’s rights. It helps all of us to seek to dissuade ourselves from the perceptions and standards of beauty that are sold to us today.
Inner Beauty vs Main Stream Media Content
A lot of the media and content that we see these days come geared towards extrinsic beauty and the standards that fashion imposes on women. The narrative tries to sell sex appeal and the aggressiveness of the female sex as the ideal standard of beauty. However, inner beauty conflicts with this notion and is more concerned with the qualities one has rather than outward appearances.
Some will argue that outer appearances matter, and yes, they do. However, they are not as impactful or appreciable as inner beauty. The outward standards of beauty are, in this view, skewed and motivated by ulterior motives. These motives include selling products and services to the female demographic.
How the Beauty Industry has Nothing to Do With Inner Beauty
Think of it this way, the industry creates standards and promotes them as a way of encouraging women, especially, to buy certain products to be seen as ‘beautiful.’ The fashion and cosmetic sectors are part of this industry where specific individuals get seen as beautiful through their fame or celebrity status.
These individuals are empowered and paid by the industry to ensure that they market and sell these products as their preferences or choices of beauty products. Such actions mean that their fans or followers will most likely get influenced to buy the same products while seeking to be seen and appreciated as beautiful, as well.
The Intentional Nature of Product Placement in Advertising
Product placement works through the seemingly unintentional placement of certain products in certain media. Think of TV shows and the various products you are likely to see the characters interact with. These can seem completely random and unintentional but are powered and promoted passively within the TV shows.
You would wonder why you see a mineral water brand getting used continuously as the bottled water of choice for the characters in a show. Such products and many others, including drinks, hotels, and vehicles, get carefully and intentionally placed within particular media as a way to promote their respective brands and businesses. Such product placement gets paid for, and the brands that are getting promoted ensure that the makers of shows or other media become incentivized to place these products
What is the name of your favorite TV show?
The Advertising Industry’s Efforts to Create Preference and How to Ignore It and Appreciate Inner Beauty
Advertising works in mysterious ways and can even trigger subconscious preference by ensuring that consumers undergo constant advertising and see numerous unending campaigns, even when they don’t realize they are. It emphasizes outward appearance and tries to influence all of us to adopt certain lifestyles.
For example, if an individual was to buy a $2 water bottle, they are encouraged to buy the $5 one when it gets carefully placed in their favorite TV show, even without knowing it. Inner beauty works differently and encourages authenticity, originality, and self-drive. It translates to living one’s version of an ideal life and lifestyle and not following what becomes marketed as beautiful, by understanding that beauty is not always external. Beauty can be and is mostly internal.
