5 Pictures That Make You Feel Beautiful

Lately it's a thing on Facebook to share five pictures that make you feel beautiful. While I love the idea of finding things you like about yourself, and celebrating them, every time I see a friend do this, I cringe.

While some of these pictures are more about the feeling they had at the time (such as hugging a child), most of them are pictures from a wedding, or posed family shots, where they were specifically dolled up to look their best.

This tells us that most of the time, in ordinary everyday life, they do not feel beautiful, and some may think it's sad that they don't feel beautiful every moment.

I think it's a goddamn tragedy that anyone even thinks about it.

Because here's the thing I want them, you, me, all of us to get: no one cares what you look like. And if they do, fuck them and their shallow bullshit. Yes, that goes for your significant other, too.

Think about it: I hope you can agree with me when I say that I don't give a flying fuck what my friends look like. I care who they are inside: kind, funny, generous, smart, fun. They don't need to lose weight or gain weight or get stronger to change my opinion about them; fat or lean or in between, they are the same wonderful person to me, and the outside is irrelevant. If they are supermodel beautiful on the outside, but act like assholes, then we're absolutely not going to hang out.

The extent I might care about my friends' appearance is this: are you healthy enough to do the things you want to do? That is all that matters. If that's possible in your body's current state, then you are perfect as you are. You should post 5 pictures of those fun activities you can do.

If it's not possible in your body's current state, then start making progress, whether that means more strength or more endurance or whatever, to do those things you desire. And you should post 5 pictures of the efforts you're making.

And if, in those 5 pictures, you are a sweaty, ponytailed, unmakeuped messy disaster, then all the better!

Because the way you feel is more important than the way you look, and maybe when we stop trying to show only our best appearance, and instead just show ourselves in our real, honest glory, however that looks, we'll finally understand that it is in fact the GLORY of us that our loved ones truly love to see.

Our people don't care if we look perfect - they just want us to be perfectly happy.