Beauty? Beauty tips? Beauty secrets? Beauty obsessions? Beauty standards? The quest for beauty and its definition is age-old and will continue until the end of time. What does Disney have to say about beauty? 

The Wicked Queen of Disney' s Snow White looked into her mirror each day  and would ask, "Mirror, Mirror on the wall...who' s the fairest of them all?"

The fairest of them all? What is it about this that strikes me? I can hear the same threads of insecurity, as well as natural desires in her voice that are woven into the soul of every woman. The desires of a woman to want to feel beautiful. The desires to feel that there is something uniquely special about us. We want to feel desirable. We desire to be the beauty in our story and ultimately to feel as if we are...the fairest of the land.

Along with these perfectly normal desires, also comes the darker side of our insecurities, the darker side when we, like the Wicked Queen would do anything to be that fairest of them all.  I am not just talking about the mean girl stuff, because there are plenty of evils that go along with that. But what about what a woman will do to try to hold her reign (or maybe fight for the title) as the fairest of them all? Issues of self-destruction to our bodies. Starving ourselves to look a certain way. Binging and throwing up our food up- just to look a certain way. Putting a needle in your veins or snorting something- to look a certain way. Exercising for hours a day...to look a certain way!

To look a certain way, for what?

I understand this firsthand having been a model in New York City for a couple of years. I know the price of beauty. I know what kinds of things women do to try to be that fairest of them all. But what is it all for anyways?  To destroy our bodies so that we can be deemed as most wanted by men? Then, what? So that then with our beauty there is an expectation to be used by men because of it? To give to them what is most precious? Our purity and dignity?Beauty is to be prized and cherished. Beauty is to be worn and represented with dignity. What happens to beauty when you begin to age? And we all will. Where then does true beauty lie? And how is it measured?

The Wicked Queen was wrestling with her loss of beauty. She was looking somewhere to find it that lead only to pain and dissappointment. It may seem funny to think she was asking a mirror the deep questions of her beauty, but we do something similar today. We look into a type of metaphoric mirror, I call- "The Mirror of the World"  which is pop-cultures definition and standards of beauty . This is the mirror we look into to define who we are based on the unhealthy and unrealistic standards society has placed upon us. And just like the Wicked Queen having a younger, more beautiful girl on the scene, looking into this mirror will never satisfy us. This is a mirror that needs to be shattered and exchanged for a healthy mirror. A mirror that measures our beauty not based on what we look like, but instead on the character of our life and who we are!

...My beauty tips on how to be the fairest of them all...be kind, be generous, be patient, be gentle, laugh, live, love others and love God.