Friends, I don’t know about you, but almost a month into quarantine, I am… *eh-hem* not looking my best.

I got a look at myself via Zoom the other day and had to do a double take.

It me.

Just goes to show that vitamin-D deficiency, sporadic showering, and having no one to impress will do absolutely nothing for your appearance.

Who knew 🙂

However, as I was wondering just when it was that I started resembling the Hunchback of Notre Dame, I got to thinking about attractiveness more generally, and given that I will likely be in Quasimodo-mode for the foreseeable future, I thought now was as good a time as any to talk about beauty.

And because I’m feeling nostalgic for the days when it wasn’t potentially a death sentence to go out and buy groceries, I figured we’d kick things back to 2011 and see what the preeminent boy band of my middle school days had to say to the question:

What Makes You Beautiful?

As was the case with my musical musings on Kygo’s “Higher Love,” I find myself sadly at odds with One Direction, and I fear I must go in… another direction 🙂

Because despite how sad middle-school Sarah would be to hear it, upon closer examination and further reflection, college-Sarah disagrees with both the spirit and the lyrics of the song.

So…

Where did One Direction go wrong?

Focusing On The Physical

While the generous hearer of “What Makes You Beautiful” might see it as an encouragement to the insecure, adolescent girl, I’m a bit more skeptical.

Because while One-D’s espoused prerequisites for beauty are seemingly universally accessible:

Eschewing make-up.

Flipping your hair.

Smiling at the ground.

They are also all physical.

Which means that according to One Direction, beauty is stuck in the superficial.

Now, I think we all know by now that that’s nonsense.

For one thing, we’re all on an inevitable march towards external ugliness.

You might look amazing now, but one day, those things are gonna fall.

Gravity gets us all.

Does that preclude someone from being beautiful?

I don’t think so.

My Grandma was one of the most beautiful people in the world.

Both when she looked like this:

And when she looked like this:

Her appearance might’ve been different, but her beauty was consistent.

Because the truly admirable and worthwhile kind of beauty resides on the inside, and while bodies degrade and decay, your heart--your soul–can always grow more beautiful.

Which brings me to my next point of diversion from One Direction.

True Beauty Is Not Effortless

Implicit in the general ethos of “What Makes You Beautiful” is the oft repeated platitude:

“You’re beautiful just the way you are.”

Take the final line of the first verse:

You're insecure/
Don't know what for/
You're turning heads when you walk through the door/
Don't need make-up/
To cover up/
Being the way that you are is enough

How nice.

Truly, it’s a well-intentioned sentiment, and I don’t fault them for it.

However…

Given that the most enduring, admirable sort of beauty has nothing to do with what you looked like when you woke up this morning and everything to do with with how you comported yourself every second since gaining consciousness, it simply cannot be the case that just being is enough to be truly beautiful.

I’m reading Friedrich Schiller’s On the Aesthetic Education of Man right now, and in his “Fifth Letter” he says this:

“Man portrays himself by his deeds, and what kind of image is shaped in the drama of the present!”

I completely agree.

Beauty, true beauty, is the work of decisions made and actions undertaken in the drama of the present.

It isn’t effortless.

We know this.

The heroes of our history books did hard things, admirable things, beautiful things, and they often did them when the going got tough and at tremendous personal cost, suffering truly significant, even mortal, loss.

So when the chips are down, who are you really?

Who are you choosing to be?

A dragon lady?

A scoundrel?

A brat?

Or are you taking the opportunity to be and become beautiful?

Only you can answer that.

This brings me to my final point!

You Should Know Whether Or Not You’re Beautiful

The all important chorus of One Direction’s flagship song concludes with this:

You don't know, oh oh/
You don't know you're beautiful, oh oh/
That's what makes you beautiful!

Yeah, no.

Even superficially, lacking self-awareness is not a particularly attractive trait.

However, when it comes to interior beauty, if you don’t know whether or not you’re beautiful or whether or not you’re at least on your way to becoming beautiful, I guarantee you are not.

100% guarantee it.

Because if beauty is a process and product of hard, grueling, and maybe even costly work, and you don’t know whether or not you’ve taken part…

You haven’t.

Let me put it this way:

Doctors remember their time in residency.

Lawyers remember their 1L year.

PhDs remember their dissertations.

And on and on and on…

Because those titles were hard won.

And in that respect, being a truly beautiful person is no different.

The process is certainly a memorable one.

However…

Here’s the daunting and wonderful thing that I’ve come to see:

Life, all of life, is the training and the testing ground for beauty.

Every day brings with it new opportunities to become the kind of person you never thought you could be.

I mean, that’s certainly true for me.

And listen, I struggled with vanity for a very long time, (still do, sometimes!) so I get wanting to be pretty and all that rot.

But honestly, I’ve come to see that what I want more than anything is to be able to say definitively that the most beautiful part of me is the heart, the soul, the character, I am cultivating.

So…

Sorry, One Direction, but I’m afraid the path to beauty lies in…

Another direction.

*I know this post has nothing to do with Easter Sunday, but all the same! I hope you had a blessed day because about 2000 years ago, Jesus broke out of that grave 🙂