what is beautiful

Today while taking a swift peek of the newspaper, I happened upon an article on the inside of the front page that totally mesmerized me.  It was a story about Andrej Pejic, a beautiful blue eyed blonde fashion model who has graced the runways of shows for designers John Galliano & Jean Paul Gaultier, been the face of a Marc Jacobs line, and whose loveliness has appeared on magazine covers & in print ads.   The reason this beautiful young model has garnered so much attention--Andrej Pejic is a man.
Born in Bosnia and spending some of his childhood in a Serbian refugee camp, his family went to Australia where he was discovered at age 17.  His traditionally feminine features, long blonde hair and statuesque figure make him the perfect model, but in an interview I saw online it struck me that although he has one of those faces you cannot take your eyes off of, his beauty seems to be in the way he is seems so, well, happy with who he is.  He told New York Magazine: “I know people want me to sort of defend myself, to sit here and be like, ‘I’m a boy, but I wear makeup sometimes.’ But, you know, to me, it doesn’t really matter. I don’t really have that sort of strong gender identity — I identify as what I am. The fact that people are using it for creative or marketing purposes, it’s just kind of like having a skill and using it to earn money.”  I am hoping that in the glare of the fashion world's obsession with this beautiful boy, he can hang on to his healthy sense of self, something he as credited his family & friends with.
All of this got me to thinking about what beauty is.  You could ask a hundred different people and you'd get a hundred different answers.   Sometimes I am so struck by something beauty in the unexpected, certainly adrodrogyny is beautiful in that way, if one does not fear what is different, but embrace it, that you can see its true beauty.  And finding beauty on a gray February day, in the midst of stress, work, and well, life, can sometimes be a challenge, to put it mildly. I mean, you can find a million things about how the world is going to hell in a hand basket, and trust me, I know there is a lot of ugliness out there. But why not give yourself a minute to find something of beauty in your own life, something in an unexpected way.  Choose to be happy about something small, laugh at something silly, really really look, be certain that it will turn out the way it is suppose to, even if it is not the way you first expected.  And listen to the oldest rule there is, love thyself.  Remember, you are beautiful.
Happy Valentines Day, my loves.