The other side of beauty

Click on the title of this post and read an article about how women view or "dis-view" themselves.

I wanted to share this because I've written so often of my own sense of worthlessness because I didn't look like what my parents, my husband, my boyfriend or my society thought I should look like. That feeling has colored - and sadly continues to color - my perceptions, not only of myself, but of the world. I am trying hard to work against those perceptions - and it is a daily, sometimes hourly, battle. For, no matter how we want to think we are an egalitarian society, we are not - "we" put so much stock in physical beauty. How society responds to a person's physical features shapes that person's view of themselves and the world.
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These feelings - albeit not as strong as they were thirty years ago - are still on the surface of my psyche - still pervade my world, rightly or wrongly. They are just something I live with daily.

And maybe those feelings are the cause of my longing to be in little house in the middle of woods - surrounded by nature. Birds, squirrels, rabbits, deer, trees and flowers care not for one's physical appearance - just that you are a part of life's web.