Behind the Scenes of Defining Beauty

Self-esteem is something that every girl struggles with. Some more than others, but nonetheless, we all struggle. It's part of being a girl. 

I, too, have struggled with my self-esteem. 

I remember in elementary school, I always compared myself to others. I mean, who doesn't? I think it is safe to say that it is just part of women's nature. We have the constant pressure that both we and the world put on ourselves to be the best---the prettiest, the skinniest, the most stylish, etc. However, it doesn't matter who or what I compare myself to, comparison never fails to make me feel even worse about myself than I did initially. We often compare our weaknesses to other's strengths, which just isn't fair in the first place. We shouldn't even compare ourselves to anyone but the person we were yesterday.

I use to think I was ugly. Not even kidding, I would look into the mirror and think to myself that I was so ugly! I figured every pretty girl knew she was pretty, and since I didn't think I was pretty, I must be ugly. I would always wonder what it felt like for a pretty girl look in the mirror knowing she was beautiful. 

Then one day, I was sitting at the lunch table with some of my friends. We had just had a fight, and they were apologizing to me. I asked them why they had been so mean to me. One of them looked at me and said, "Alice, we are all so jealous of you. We think you are so pretty."

That caught me completely off guard. How could anyone think I was pretty? I was so ugly.

In addition to feeling ugly, I also use to think that I had the fattest legs. Every time I saw myself in a mirror, I would think about how big my thighs were, until one day, I was standing next to a girl that I knew, and I noticed that we were the same exact size. Actually, her legs were more muscular than mine, and I thought she was so skinny! It was finally put into perspective for me that I wasn't fat. I was actually incredibly skinny.

Crazy how the adversary really tests us as women. Satan knows that as soon as he attacks our self-esteem, we as girls become incredibly vulnerable. We are willing to do things to feel beautiful---to feel like the best. Sometimes, we even take it to extreme measures to feel beautiful. Some girls, or most girls {from my observations} feel as though having a guy is what defines their self-esteem. Ladies, it isn't like that at all.

In 6th grade, I even would watch the boys I liked to see the girls they liked so that I could try to replicate their outfits or hairstyles. I use to think that would give me a chance with that boy. I ultimately became so self-conscious that I reached the point where all I wanted was to disappear. I didn't even want anyone looking at me. I thought that if anyone was looking at me, that meant I had something wrong with me.

People would tell me I was beautiful, but I didn't see it. 

I started feeling a little more comfortable in my own skin around the time of middle school. That is, until I would be around another girl I thought was prettier than me or got more attention than I did from boys. I easily found my faults.

I distinctly remember being at Girl's Camp with my ward in middle school. We were all sitting around the campfire around 1 in the morning, and Ted Potter was telling us cute stories about how he and Chris met and courted. Ted had taught a self-esteem class at a neighboring high school, and the conversation eventually turned into a self-esteem conversation. I asked Ted and Chris if when a girl get married, if the comparison between herself and others goes away. They told me that no, it doesn't. In some cases, it may actually increase. I remember Ted looking me in the eyes from across the fire and asking me directly if I thought I was beautiful. I would start to make excuses, but he would cut me off and demand a yes or no answer. I never could answer the question. Inside, I wanted to say yes, but I knew that yes was a lie. Ted then told all of us how beautiful we all were, and the divine nature we all had.

I wanted so badly to believe that. I had heard it my whole life, but I didn't actually have a personal conviction of it. It was just an overused saying that I thought people would tell me just to make me feel better. There wasn't actually any truth in it. I hated when people said that.

Little did I know that that question leaving me in tears was just the beginning of the path it took for me to gain my own personal conviction of Ted's statement. Not the truth that I am beautiful in a worldly sense, but that I have a divine nature, and a Father in Heaven who loves me, which makes me-and everyone else for that matter-beautiful in our own ways. Beauty is something that radiates from the inside-out, not outside-in.

That conversation was actually a series of events that led to the change. 

Next on my journey was my patriarchal blessing. It was the beginning of my sophomore year of high school when I finally felt like it was time to receive it. I had just had my first knee surgery a month previous, so I was still on crutches and in a knee brace. I remember getting out of the van, hobbling up the steps, and knocking on Patriarch VanOrden's door. My stomach was full of butterflies because I was so nervous. He opened the door, introduced himself, stuck out his hand and said, "I have been so eager to meet you in person ever since I received your name. There is something different about you. Something special. Something that makes you very special. Come in!"

My patriarchal blessing changed my life. It was so personal and just what I needed. My blessing did a lot of things for me, but there were two specific things that it did for me that changed my life the most. First, it told me of things that I was to accomplish in my life, trials I would endure, and blessings I would receive if I lived worthy enough to receive them. I wanted all of the blessing SO BADLY that it gave me the motivation to live my life the absolute best I possibly could. I finally saw my potential, and I wanted to reach my potential.  Second, it gave me a glimpse of the love that my Heavenly Father has for me, as well as Christ. For the first time in my life that I can recall, their love became tangible for me. All my life, I had been told about it, but now I was starting to know it.

 However, the pivotal point came a year later. This is a tidbit of a previous post, but I figured I said it best in the post, so I copied and pasted it. Just to preface the story that most of you have already heard, this is taking place just following my second knee surgery.

"The brace that I was in covered my leg from the top all the way to my ankle, and it prevented my knee from bending. After six weeks following my surgery, I was able to move the brace 30 degrees, then the following two weeks, I could move it 30 more and so on. I had started physical therapy by this time, and it was hurting pretty bad. My circulation disease also causes my body to swell a lot, and the scar tissue I have grows very thick, very quickly. Because of this, my scar tissue was so bad that it wasn't allowing my knee to bend at all. I would go to hours of physical therapy as well as do my own exercises at home to try and break the scar tissue, but no matter how many tears I shed or how bad it hurt, nothing was working. After a few weeks of no progress, my doctor sent me to the hospital for an emergency procedure to break my scar tissue. I was sent back to the operating room where I was put under anesthetic, and pressure was put on my leg until the tissue tore. I woke up after the procedure, and it was the most painful wake-up I have ever had from a surgery. Normally, numbing medication is put into my knee to control the pain for the first two or three days, but I had none of that in my leg at that time. It is the first time I cried since I hurt myself again in May---with the exception of happy tears I shed when I received flowers from my two dear Aunts and wonderful Grandma to wish me a quick recovery.

I had the procedure done at 8:30 on August 15, 2011, and by 8:00 the next morning, I was in the Physical Therapy Office to start my exercises in order to prevent my scar tissue from building back up. Literally, it had been less than 12 hours between my procedure and physical therapy, and by the time I arrived at PT, my scar tissue had built up so hard and thick, that my leg was stuck. Again. It was like I hadn't even had the procedure. I saw my doctor the following week, and he was very sad to learn that my leg still wasn't responding. He said, “Okay, I am giving you two more weeks. If you don’t have at least 90 degrees of motion, we will do another emergency procedure." I decided at that moment that I would not be having another procedure, and I continued on with my appointments and exercises for the next week, only to be extremely discouraged to find out that once again, no progress was made. I internally decided that I was done trying. I refused to go through the pain, time, effort, and money if I was getting nowhere. I figured that it  was God's will that I needed to have this procedure again.

I hadn't told anyone that I had stopped except for my cousin, Roger, who was on a mission. Two days before my appointment with my doctor, my dad asked if I would like a blessing, and I said yes. My dad asked my older brother, Sam, if he would like to give the blessing since he had just been given the Melchizedek Priesthood. He agreed to it, and gave me the blessing. The first words out of his mouth were, “Alice, you must do your part in order for the Lord to do his part.” Sam had no idea that I had stopped, so there was no other place this direction could have come from than straight from God. Right then and there, I realized that I needed to start my therapy and exercises back up, and it would all work out the way it was meant to. I did just that, and Tuesday morning, I went to physical therapy one last time before my appointment, and just as I had suspected, there wasn't even a single degree more of motion. I packed my bag for the hospital and headed to Dr. Huntsman’s office. He came in, checked my leg, and confirmed that I would be having a procedure that night. We filled out the needed paperwork, and as Dr. Huntsman was leaving the room, he turned around and said, “Hold on. I have a feeling that I need to check it one last time.” I laid down on the bed, and he bent my leg, and it kept bending and bending until my calf muscle touched the back of my leg, too. My leg miraculously had full motion. I started bawling, and so did my mom. Instead of leaving with a hospital note, I left with a six-week release from my doctor allowing me to play six weeks of school volleyball."  

It was at this moment that I finally realized that God really does know each and every one of us individually. He knows ME. Of all the people in the history of forever, he knows ME. Not only that, but he knows me well enough to know exactly what is going on in my life. I saw a glimpse of the love and concern that my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have for me. I truly understood the sacrifice Christ made for ME, and how much he cares for ME. Christ suffered for each and every one of us. The love He has for each and every one of us is incomprehensible. Once I came to understand this, and knowing how much He loves me, it no longer mattered to me what anyone else thought of me. All that mattered was that I was living my life the way I needed to in order to get to where I want to be. I needed to be better than I was the day before. I was all of a sudden completely comfortable in my own skin. To me, beauty was no longer something the world could define. Beauty truly came from the inside. People say that all the time, but it is so true! I didn't need anyone else to tell me I was beautiful, I decided that I was beautiful, and my opinion is the only one that I needed.

Seeing my life change from this experience, I wanted every other girl to feel that same way. Not only did my perspective on myself change that day, but also the way that I viewed others. Everyone around me is so beautiful. I don't even know how else to describe it. I started seeing the world through an eternal perspective. No one has a past to me, only a bright future. I see the potential everyone has, and I see Satan attacking everyone's self-esteems and trying to get all of us to settle for less than the absolute best. 

I get on Facebook and Instagram, and people are told they are ugly, their hair isn't long enough, their eyes are the wrong color, or they are too skinny or even too fat. It is ridiculous! People don't need the world to tell them what they are or aren't. 

A few weeks ago in our ward, all of the girls wrote down on a piece of paper what they were struggling with. Almost every other paper said their main struggle was self-esteem. It breaks my heart to watch anyone struggle with being comfortable with who they are---struggling to find their beauty, especially when I know all of these wonderful women. I have grown to love them so much! They are all so beautiful. 

If I could travel the world and share this message with others, I would. If I could help even just one person realize their potential and beauty, it would be so worth it. 

Earlier this semester, one of my classes announced that for a final project, we would be making a video that covers a course concept. For those of you who don't know, I am majoring in Broadcast Journalism, so a lot of the classes this semester have allowed me to study the influence that media has on the consumers. One area that we studied was the influence media has on women. I totally understand this concept, because I have been influenced by media. Songs, movies, television shows, magazines---they all tell us we aren't good enough or pretty enough,or skinny enough or tall enough or strong enough. In contemplating what I wanted to do my final project on, I decided I was going to do it on how media influences women's perception of beauty. I figured that if I was going to spend time making a video, I might as well make it something that could make a difference.

I was already in a group, so I needed to convince my group that was the topic we wanted to use. I had this vision in my head of what I wanted the video to be like, too. I proposed the idea, and the girls were all very welcoming with the subject, but we debated on what should be in the video or not. Finally, we meshed mine and Tarryn's ideas together and came up with a script.

We filmed the video, and I put it all together in a few hours. I was so excited! It was exactly how I wanted it, except one transition that I needed to fix. We took it in to our teacher, and he told us to change some things about it. I disagreed with the changes he wanted to make, but I made them anyways. It was quite a battle for me! I wanted a video that would help girls when they watched it, and I felt like making the changed he suggested detracted from the vision I had of the video. Granted, it doesn't help that I am incredibly stubborn.

Despite my stubbornness and issues I had with my editing program, I finished the video.

 Here it is, folks! Go ahead and watch it! It isn't perfect, but I am really happy with it :)

{or you can follow the link here.}

I was super nervous about the grade I would get for this video, or the feedback I would receive from the class when we showed them the video. We chose to do a serious video, whereas most others chose to do a funny movie.

Surprisingly, the class took the video very well! After we were all done watching the movies, my teacher asked if there were any that we wanted to watch again. The class asked to see mine again! Yay! What took me even more by surprise was my class voted my video as the 2nd Runner-Up! We got an award and everything!

And not only that, but my group received 100% on this video. I was so excited! I got the grade I wanted AND got to share the message that I feel so strongly about.

Anywho,

My ultimate dream in life is to make a difference. If I could change even just one person's life for the better, my life would be made, and my dream would have come true. That sounds silly, but I mean it with all my heart. I pray every day that I can be an instrument in the Lord's hands, and I strive to live so that I can be that instrument. I hope that everyone is able to find the gospel in their lives, and in turn, the gospel makes the difference in their lives that it has in mine. I pray that everyone can come to know and understand their divine potential and find their beauty. I pray that everyone can become comfortable in their own skin. I often contemplate how I got lucky enough to experience the things I have so that I can come to the knowledge and understanding that I have. I just figure that I am taking the experiences for granted if I don't share them with others and in turn, bring others to Christ and help them know and understand of their infinite worth.