My Perception of Beauty

For my first blog (apart from my intro) I wanted to talk about my personal perception of beauty. Having grown up a very feminine boy, it was very difficult for me to accurately define myself, and it took a lot of time, trial and error and stumbles along the way to find out where I fit and what my definition of beauty is. Magazines fill our heads with these pictures of size zeros and flawless, airbrushed faces and tell us that that is real beauty, when this so called real beauty is half computer generated and nearly impossible to measure up to.

What I've realized in my travels is that everyone is like a snowflake; no two are the same, and in that respect, no two definitions of beauty is the same. To me, real beauty is being comfortable with who you are and realizing the fact that you can't please anyone, so you have to please yourself first and foremost.

I found this out the hard way- I came out of the closet at the age of 14, and I was the only openly gay kid in school at that age. Naturally, this got me a lot of attention, especially from the jock boys.

I can clearly remember many times when I would look at myself in the mirror and consider just dropping it all. I could just dress in drab clothes, forget the nail polish and makeup, cut my hair short and start sinking into the background. But then I realized, what good would that do? Those boys would probably just keep making fun of me, if anything even worse because they would know that they had broken my spirit. So I would buck up, don my sparkly purple nail polish and get back to who  really felt I was.

Being who you are takes a lot of strength, and it's that character that separates you from the crowd. As time went on I became supremely comfortable with who I'd grown to be, and people responded to that positively. Before the year was done the number of people bullying me was drastically reduced, simply because I didn't let it get me down and I never sacrificed my personality. I can proudly say today that what I did back then shaped who I am now, and I don't think I've ever felt more proud of who I've grown to be.

I'm putting this post out to anyone who will read it, to tell you that you are beautiful, in your own special way, and I love you for it. If we were all the same skinny, airbrushed, model sized people, then no one would stand out, would they? You need only to believe in yourself and let your sparkling personalities shine through (:

Embrace yourself, and the rest will come easy.

Lots of love purple sparkly nail polish,
Dylan