Some days ago as I took my seat in my office, I came across this strange article on a popular lifestyle site about how one of the “most ugliest woman in the world became one of most inspiring person in the world”. The title instantly drew my attention. I was intrigued, thinking about the bizarreness of the caption. I wanted to know more. Without another thought I decided to click on the link to read further.
This was the story of Lizzie Velasquez, one of the most, if we were to use a more polite and sober language, “not so good-looking” woman in the world. It was so heartrending to know about her.
#The Woman- Lizzie Velasquez
She was born with a rare syndrome which means she can never put on weight and weighs only about 60 pounds. She is blind in one eye and have no fatty tissues to store vital nutrients which means she has to eat after every short interval. She also shows the signs of Progeria, which means she has started to age prematurely.
As I learnt more about her.. about how she was bullied all the time at school and in college and how she had to face so much discrimination just because of her looks, it made me think, are looks really that important?
#Looks!!
In a society which is highly biased towards the outer appearance, they definitely do. Since childhood we are taught to define looks in a specific mold and anything outside is simply incomprehensible. We can find this all around. The intense media pressure more or less confirms the same as most often they show people drawn towards good-looking women. This judgmental philosophy is so hurting that it can even break the self-confidence of all the girls who do not fall in the line of society’s definition of “pretty”. Rather than focusing on personality, a woman’s worth is counted only in terms of how she looks.
#Who you are!!
So what a woman who happen to be Lizzie Velasquez can teach us in this upscale trend of this mentality? She rather stresses to make women focus on “Who they really are”. Being a motivational speaker and author of two books, she chose to ignore what people thought of her and instead concentrated all her attention on her career. In one of her motivational videos, she tells us that she used to think about her outer appearance earlier but now its only her goals, success and accomplishments that are important.
#Find your Focus!
It is vital to transform such a thinking, such a mentality. Women or we should say any human being is not a product which should be judged by their looks and appearance only. Instead one should focus on the inner beauty and inner happiness which in fact, is the real definition of being beautiful. Its important that our future generations should also be taught to love beings regardless of their outer appearance.
