Moise Tuombemungu and Isaac Christiansen M.S.

What is beauty?

Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. – 1 Peter 3:3-4

The Webster dictionary defines beauty as “A combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses especially sight.” In this piece I seek to go beyond such mechanical conceptions of beauty, instead I seek to explain beauty’s inward and outward manifestations. Many also say that “true beauty resides inside ourselves” for out of the abundance of the heart true character shines. Beauty has moved continents, shaped societies, and demolished powers of oppression; it gives wings to courage, love a reason, and death a name. It’s a universal peacemaker inspiring man to take risks beyond comprehension.

Beauty impacts humanity in as strong and effective manner today as it did since humanity’s beginning. It is something for which young ladies strive, and the pursuit of many young men. Beauty can be classified as inward and/or outward, and these two entwine with each other and interact with our conceptions of self. These two forms of beauty are the mastermind behind art, the way people act, and the way they dress. While a person may be outwardly attractive, inwardly they may lack compassion for others. I believe inward beauty is immensely more important than outward beauty, although some chase vainly the outward form than the inward, you see that outward beauty may not reflect inward beauty at all, and in the final analysis, be nothing more than a facade. For a person to be truly beautiful genuine empathy is a necessary, albeit perhaps insufficient, condition.

Inward beauty is comprised of a set of qualities that defines the personality, character, and passions of a person. Inward beauty is what sparks emotions when the eyes witness overwhelming acerbic sufferings or great joys. Inward beauty is built upon a foundation of the environment a person is around, flowing from wells of experience and struggles, draws strength from human compassion and recoils from wickedness. When people in positions of power label others this can develop into what sociologists (notably Erving Gothman) have termed “stigma” and while stigma can act as an outside influence on the recipient’s life chances, the power of these labels varies depending on how much the person imbibes their content. Therefore, it behooves us to be more encouraging to our friends and other participants in our lives, including strangers. Inward beauty is greatly influenced by what we see daily. Your eyes are the windows of your soul, the vast depictions and actions we feed our eyes through our voluntary participation in corporate media that is all to often soaked with violence and imparts lessons of egotism and consumerism, gives rise to how we behave and even how we speak.

When inward beauty becomes harmed in any way, it may erode our sense of hope in each other. Without compassion, empathy and love the human being finds him or herself thrust into depression. This pain, sparked by the utter decay of social cohesion can lead someone as far as to jump off the high bridge that holds their unique life. Inward beauty in other words is your inner being or soul that defines really who you are. That’s why it is inaccurate to arrive at judgment based on a person’s appearance, it is far better to relate with others based on what we can capture of their essence.

While outward manifestations of inward beauty is composed of both our actions towards others that reflect social solidarity and compassion, our society’s conception of outward beauty is limited to physical appearance. While the outward manifestations of our compassion, reflects our inward beauty through our actions, outward beauty and physical appearance are primarily emphasized by society, from the salience of morning rituals of applying makeup to the face, to the buying of certain weaves, clothes, plastic surgery and liposuction. We see society and the media promoting shallow depictions of what beauty is to sell products. In order to sell a woman makeup, large corporations must first sell them a particular conception of outward beauty. While advertising helps form these depictions, we as consumers chase after them. Every society has different attributes of what beauty consists, originating from cultural differences, and a great spectrum of religious faiths. Is it not a marvelous, simple mystery that what one considers not to be beautiful, is lovely and fair to another?

So why should a person chase in vain for outward beauty, more than the inward beauty when the latter represents our essence and the former a mere facade?

I believe that beauty is in all that is good, while ugliness resides in the destructive forces that enable a human to slander his fellow. Our piercing words, our unfeelingness, our lack of compassion for the other may result in an acerbic, bitter destruction of someone’s life, magnified by the innumerable abrasive lies of claiming a person’s unworthiness stemming from mendacious evaluation of worth that use nothing but a perverse and hollow conception of beauty as evidence. Thus while much of beauty is undeniably physical, it is its inward form that truly makes us who we are, without it we’re merely nothing.

“To the person who has known the depth of himself, none can uproot the inner beauty through storming lies and calumny ” – Moise Tuombemungu