What is Beauty

Yesterday I attended a beautiful lunch and style show at my daughter's Fashion Boutique where she is a new manager. This Boutique is one of a kind and is called Bella Mia, located in Champaign, Illinois. The show was stunning with lovely models and rich high fashion; so delightful to look at and admire. It brought to mind some thoughts.
My mother used to say, "People will always treat you the way you look and dress...that first impressions are crutial." My mother was quite stylish in her dress and manner but I don't think this was the essence of what she wanted to convey to me. Mother meant that one should always look "put together," (not necessarily fashionable), neat, and dressed in presentable clothes that fit well. She particularly wanted me to make sure that my children looked nice when they went out with clean combed hair, washed faces and clean outfits.
"Your children will benefit from the positive affirmations they get, even from strangers (when babies) when people treat them as well as they look, and she was right....babies and children soak up positive messages like a sponge. The opposite is also true; children instantly sense when negative messages are coming their way. And like it or not, people do react positivly or negatively according to what they see.
The other message I received around the idea of beauty was from my Dad.
"Beauty is only skin deep," he would say..."the rest is up to you."
He would often suggest to his five daughters that women of great beauty in our society were at risk of never being anything else. Women especially have been highly idolized for nothing more than looking fabulous. This is a danger my father would say; the danger of not becoming anything of any worth or consequence. Of course, my father was an intellectual who highly prized education above all else, and was always promoting the value of this. I was blessed by his ferver and determination to give the same love of learning to all of his children. My mother valued this as well but, on ocassion, when the whole family was together, seven children and their offsprings, she would look around the room and say, "Aren't we all just so good looking." I was doubley blessed, I guess.