If you are female — any female — you will be told throughout your life that you have something wonderful called “inner beauty.” It’s an ingenious compliment; it’s something you can say to almost anyone.
Regardless of what your face or body look like, as long as you’re not a complete monster, you are always guaranteed to have inner beauty.
We throw this phrase around all the time. It’s a customary component of any “admirestagram” or Instagram birthday post. Christian women’s conferences and devotional books are built around it. Any time a woman shows admirable character traits, she can be said to possess true inner beauty.
But what exactly does that mean?
By using the “inner” qualifier, we are trying to counter our culture’s one-size-fits-all standard of beauty. We are trying to let women know that it’s OK if they don’t meet that standard, because they can still be beautiful. All it takes is a little kindness, honesty, intelligence, and confidence.
But I wonder if this shifting of value from outer beauty to inner beauty isn’t just perpetuating the same unhealthy obsession with beauty that it’s trying to repair.
I’ll admit it: I want to be beautiful. But I don’t want this to be the most important adjective that describes me.
When we use the words “inner beauty,” we are taking qualities that are good in and of themselves and bringing them under the banner of beauty. Why is this necessary? Why can’t I be virtuous simply for the sake of being virtuous, rather than virtuous for the sake of being inwardly beautiful? Is beauty really more important?
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control: this is the fruit that is produced when the Holy Spirit is working in us. When we perceive these qualities in a guy, we call him a man of integrity, a man of God. We don’t say he is inwardly handsome. Yet when we perceive these qualities in a girl, we say she is a woman with inner beauty.
If I were to choose between these compliments, I would much rather be called godly than beautiful. The reason I value any positive character traits in me is not because they make me more beautiful; I value them because they are an outworking of my identity in Christ, a reflection of His transformative work on my heart, and a sign that I am growing more into who He has called me to be.
When we subordinate godly qualities to the concept of beauty, we devalue them, as if they do not hold enough inherent goodness to stand alone.
Whatever beauty actually is — definitive ideal or cultural construct — it is simply one of many positive qualities a person can exhibit. It is not the be all, end all. It is not the same thing as kindness, honesty, intelligence, or confidence.
The reverse is also true: kindness is not beauty. Kindness is kindness. And kindness is not valuable because it has some imagined connection with beauty; kindness is intrinsically valuable.
By continuing this unnecessary emphasis on beauty, not only are we diluting our praise of these positive qualities, but we are also undermining our own efforts to instil in women a sense of their inherent, immense value.
If you think a woman is kind, call her kind. If you think a woman is strong, call her strong. She doesn’t need to be beautiful to be these things.
Instead of referring to a woman’s inner beauty to teach her that she has value, we can do a far better job by referring to the reality that she is a human being — a simple truth with profound implications.
Photo (Flickr CC) by Silvia Sala.
