Christian girls looking cute... again

Today, while learning about art therapy, we were given an exercise: pick one of the pictures they provided, and write some words in response.  I picked this image:

I'm really drawn to images of dancers (self-disclosure: I am a Pinterest-addict), because I really admire their ability to move gracefully and twirl and create on the stage.  Also, as you know, little girls dream of being beautiful ballerinas.  Because, as society as categorized, ballerinas are inherently beautiful.

I wrote that I was quite jealous of this girl, that she was so pretty, so graceful, thin, and that I'd always dreamed of being her, or someone like her.  I thought this image was just so beautiful.  Classic beauty.  What I aspire to.

But then I started looking more closely at this picture.  I don't know if you can see, but I thought the way she was stretching made her collar bone and shoulders look really unnatural.  Her arms were actually more bulky than willowy.  And her fingers, though posed in a graceful gesture, were not exactly ideal for becoming a hand model.

So I am both drawn and repulsed by this picture of "beauty."  I think I find it beautiful because I think it's supposed to look beautiful, because ballerinas are supposed to be beautiful.  And from far away, they really are.  Is it because they are so thin and muscular from years of practice and exercise?  Is it because of the almost ethereal quality imbued by their pretty, wide, gauzy tutus?

But the close-up stories is not really beauty.  Where is the actual beauty?  I've heard it said that ballerinas are gorgeous on stage, but years of beating their bodies for the sake of the art yield bloody feet, disproportionate body build, lack of curves.

Why am I saying all of this?  When I look at this picture, I think of all the ways that I envy her, that I wish I looked like her.  But then again, do I really?  And why is that I want to be her, rather than be content and satisfied with me?  I know that my visceral response to the ballerina and the image is subconsciously due to my issues of image, body or otherwise.  I've once again fallen into the trap society set by buying into ideas of what is "iconic beauty," or what is the "ideal body type".  I've let the world define what "grace" and "poise" and "elegance" means.

Also, haven't I too passed judgment onto who is beautiful?  I've just sneered at this dancer's body--the "unnatural" position of her limbs, the "un-ideal" hands, the "boyish" build of her upper body.  When will we stop passing judgment on each other?  Why do we do this, instead of finding the beauty in something other than the way we look?

All I can do, I've now decided, is make sure I take care of my body, treat it as God's temple, and let Him mold my character into loveliness that comes from kindness, compassion, patience, selflessness, and love, rather than what my body shape is like, whether I can be like the ballerinas, or how fat or thin my fingers and hands are.  And I will endeavor to see people for who they are, beyond what categories society neatly bounded them, and see the beauty within, rather than just using stereotypic values of "beauty"..