An Open Letter to Phenomenal Girls Everywhere

 An Open Letter to Phenomenal Girls Everywhere:  from Justina Chen Headley (author, North of Beautiful) 

A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine called me up in tears.  An acquaintance had commented on a photo my friend had uploaded on Facebook:  “You must have turned heads in your heyday.”

 ”Sweetie,” I said.  “You’re gorgeous!  Forget about it.” 

Right. How can we forget dings to our beauty -intentional or not-when we’ve been taught to care how people view us?  “Does my butt look big in this?”-a demand for reassurance disguised as a question.  “Do I look old?”-we ask the mirror, studying every cavernous pore and buying creams to combat wrinkles and age spots.  We count calories, we cut fat grams.  We wear our fat jeans on bloated days only to curse our fat genes because every day is a bloated day. 

I remember the first time I was called ugly.  I was eight and arguing with my father who sneered that I was acting like a stepmother-you know, the ugly, mean ones who populate fairy tales.  The second time I was called ugly, I was spat upon by the racist in my high school.  And the third time?  I had just moved to Australia and was in a bush pub when a drunkard eyed me over his cavalry line of empty beer steins and slurred, “God, you’re really ugly.” 

Luckily, three times isn’t the charm.  I’m not dragging myself through life, the poster child for All Things Ugly.  What saved me from seeing myself as ugly wasn’t being shortlisted as the cover model for a magazine or being named princess at many a high school ball.  It was Maya Angelou’s poem, PHENOMENAL WOMAN.  Her words opened my eyes to transcendent and incandescent Beauty: 

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. 
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size… 
I say, 
It’s in the reach of my arms 
The span of my hips, 
The stride of my step, 
The curl of my lips. 
I’m a woman 
Phenomenally. 
Phenomenal woman, 
That’s me. 

I held the poem in my hands-the words a map to Me.  To my inner and outer Beauty.  And as I whispered those words-phenomenal woman, that’s me-I realized I’ve been glorifying an unattainable fashion-model beauty as mythic as Aphrodite.  That fashion-model beauty is transient-here today, gone in ten, maybe twenty years.  That fashion-model beauty isn’t even real in today’s plasticized, photoshopped world. 

Once I stopped buying into fashion-model beauty, I realized that our society’s worst insult leveled at a girl-God, you’re really ugly-is actually…laughable. 

I’d rather be The Most Phenomenal Me I can be than The Most Beautiful Girl in the room.  One will sustain me forever, the other will fade and leave me yearning for my glory days.  I don’t want to live in memories of my past prime when I have the beauty of now. 

One of the reasons why I wrote NORTH OF BEAUTIFUL was (in my humble way!) to attempt to put Maya’s glorious words into prose for today’s girls, especially since I think the media’s insistence that we be forever thin and young and beautiful is even more prevalent than ever.  I wanted to challenge women and girls not just to define beauty for themselves, but to find beauty in themselves. 

What is truly beautiful?  For me, I find beauty in a person’s spirit, generosity, confidence.  It’s being honest and brave and doing the right thing.  It’s being at our own personal best physical and spiritual shape.  It’s about making a difference, leaving the world itself more beautiful. 

What can be more truly beautiful than living so fully and generously that every day is our heyday?  So let’s write our own Beauty Vow:  make every day our heyday.  Find your own beauty.  Be phenomenal.  Start now. 

To true beauty,

Justina 

Justina Chen Headley is an award-winning novelist for teens.  Her most recent novel, NORTH OF BEAUTIFUL, has earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. Drop Justina a comment on her blog: 

www.justinachenheadley.blogspot.com. 

The Find Beauty Challenge

So phenomenal girls around the world, here’s my challenge to you:  Define beauty.  True beauty.   

Load a 90-second video telling me and the world what is beautiful to you on www.youtube.com/northofbeautiful.  You could win an iTouch for yourself.  Plus, I’ll donate $10 for every uploaded video (up to $1,000) to Global Medical Surgeries, which helps kids with cleft lips and palates in third world countries.   

For all the rules, check out www.justinachenheadley.com.