|
Moms are not pretty,
You know why? Because pretty is a word that doesn’t begin to express what our moms are.
If you have been blessed with experience a loving mother,
I want you to think about her now,
(and if you haven’t experienced it, imagine a mother figure in your life)
If I were to ask you, what is your mom?
What words would you say?
Caring?
Strong?
Smart?
Full of life?
Joyful?
A real multi tasker?
The soul of your family?
How long will it take you until you say, for example:
my mom's body is Amazing!
Her hair is so shiny and sleek,
Her skin has no pimples, her nose has no blackheads!
Her wrinkles are barely visible?
Did you feel the shock of attaching these superficial values to your mom or (mom figure)?
Did you see how what your mom is, cannot truly be described by her physicality?
Well, that is exactly what the Beauty industry does,
In the article just before this I wrote i would tell you the one thing they use to get us hooked on their marketing, messaging, and their products…
They attach our self worth to only our physical self.
But you are not your hair, or your skin, or how well you can apply your makeup to look like a different person
Far, far from it,
You are a soul in a body, a soul that was breathed in by Allah, as he says in Surah As-Sajdah (32:9):
"Then He proportioned him and breathed into him from His [created] soul and made for you hearing and vision and hearts; little are you grateful." (Quran 32:9)
So,
convincing us to take our true, inmeasurable value and place it,
Not in out hearts, our character, our inner self,
But in our physical self
This is where the messaging becomes what it has become today. Where beauty, and the efforts to attain it, can become someone’s whole purpose in life.
The tag lines of Maybelline for example:
Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline - as if saying if you are not born with good looks, then we can give it to you.. Which subconsciously places being beautiful as a life goal, because one way or another, you should have it
Or L’Oreal famous: "Because you're worth it” - yes you are worth it, but not because you buy L’oreal products! You have intrinsic worth, that was given to you with your creation, when Allah destined that you would be here in this world and told the angel to place your soul in the womb of your mom! That’s the real worth!
But time and time again they will try and try again to tell us that if we don’t have this external “beauty standard” that they have come up with,
That we will be missing out, on life, on love, on relationships, on success…
And they make billboards, and ads, and now we have influencers just telling us this over and over again…
But you won’t miss out on anything,
We have trust in Allah that all that is meant for us will reach us,
And that He created us they way He did with intention and Purpose,
And that Beauty is a part of that too,
But it’s a part, not the whole,
And just like with your mom,
You would not say she is pretty,
-That’s superficial-
You would say she is so much more than that,
She is truly full of beauty,
Because of what is inside of her that manifests on the outside,
So wouldn’t you want to be beautiful like that? In the complete sense?
That is the starting point, that is the true goal.
And so in reaching this goal, we will not discard our outer selves, no not all,
Your whole self is the inner and outer,
And in the next article I want to tell you why physical beauty, and the way Allah programmed us for it is actually so amazing….
|
