She Don't Know She's Beautiful

My dear Men,

You’re handsome.

What did that do to you? Just reading those words, imagining a woman saying that to you, what does that do to your insides? Are you deeply moved, or hardly affected? My guess is that your response to those words would vary a lot depending on who you are and who said it to you. By my guess is also that it would not mean nearly as much to you as the words “You’re beautiful” mean to a woman.

This post is not going to be filled with advice, or a chastisement, or even a challenge. No, I just wanted to give you some insight into how powerful it is to tell a woman that she is beautiful. What you do with this information is totally up to you.

When I was a freshman in high school, a senior I barely knew wrote me a letter. He was not attracted me, and I was not attracted to him. Like I said, we barely knew each other, and the letter didn’t change that. But in this letter, he told me that I am beautiful. This is my first memory of a young man ever telling me that, and it’s stuck with me. And I have kept that letter for the past 10 years. I can remember almost every instance of a young man telling me that I am beautiful, regardless of how I felt about him or how he felt about me.  Sure, I’ve been called “pretty” and “cute” and “nice” and even “stunning” and “gorgeous” on fewer occasions, but I can’t remember those moments very clearly. They didn’t stick with me like the words “You are beautiful.” Not, “You look beautiful” but “You are beautiful.” 

There is something inherent in a woman that desires to be beautiful and to have that beauty acknowledged. Every woman, in the depths of her heart, just wants to know one thing from you: “Am I beautiful to you?” Because if she is beautiful to you, then she knows you have accepted her, and that she is safe to act. When she acts, it will be to give this beauty to you, whether she is your lover or your friend or your waitress or your nurse or just someone you pass on the street.  In this culture where human value is judged largely by what you do and not who and what you are, women are deprived of hearing the word “beautiful” as a description of themselves. Even worse, women are getting used to hearing “You’re beautiful” as a poorly disguised “I want to have sex with you.” Not only are the words lacking, but now even a woman’s receptivity to hearing them is diminished. But ability to be moved by an affirmation of beauty is still buried within the heart of every woman. And once uncovered, it can make a woman’s heart soar.

Tell a woman she’s beautiful, and for a brief moment in time, her world stops. She forgets the demands clamoring for her attention, the expectations from work and school and family and friends and society. She stops fighting for an instant, pauses and just breathes. You have essentially told her that it is good simply that she exists. And although there are parts of her that won’t believe you, and will shout out their objections that will eventually ruin the moment, she starts to wonder if what you have said is true after all. The more she hears those words, the more she starts to believe them.

 I hear the words “You’re beautiful” every day now. Far from getting used to them, I’ve found my heart responds even more strongly each time. Imagine if every woman got to hear that every day. Tell a woman she’s beautiful, and she’s going to start acting beautiful. Not strong or sexy or successful or productive or efficient or tough or any other description that has been thrown her way. She will start to be all of these things, but it will flow out of her underlying ability to be beautiful. 

A woman's heart is a fragile thing. Humans are fragile. Femininity and masculinity are even more fragile. So when I tell you that a woman’s heart is a fragile thing, I don’t mean that a man’s isn’t. I just mean that both need to be treated with the utmost care. Maybe some day I'll endeavor to explore a man's heart. But today, I just want to call your attention to what happens when you build up the feminine heart. And it starts by calling her beautiful.

Real Men Die

Years ago, I had a conversation with a gentleman I knew in college. He said to me “You know what I think the ultimate love story is? One where the guy dies for the girl.” Well, my knee jerk reaction was that I don’t find that romantic at all. They don’t get to live happily ever after or anything! But now I think I understand better.

I was talking to a particular Marine about what he calls his “death wish”. He was explaining to me how he joined the military with the full knowledge and acceptance of the fact that he may be called upon to lay down his life for his country… and he kind of likes that. For him, it was the fullest way he could think of to express love for his country, and ultimately his family and friends that live in this country. This baffled me.  You see, I also serve our country and am willing to lay my life down for her. But if I’m truly honest with myself, I don’t really want to. I would see death as a side-effect, and not the climax of my service. In my mind, I’d rather be alive to continue serving. He doesn’t care one way or the other. 

Upon further reflection, I realized there are very few things I would be willing to die for, and that my list was much shorter than this Marine’s. At first I honestly felt kind of selfish compared to him. But then I realized there was something deeper afoot. It occurred to me that perhaps we had touched on some greater reality about the difference between men and women. 

In courtship, the archetype is that the man offers flowers, candy, rides in his cool car (or truck), and meals. The woman, however, does not express her affection for him in the same way. If she has feelings for the man, she expresses them by receiving his little gifts, not in giving her own. Think about it. When did they write a love song about a girl sending a guy a dozen roses? When has it ever been “cute” or “romantic” for a girl to pay for a date? (Practical, yes. Modern, yes. Equal-and-fair, yes. But never romantic.) If a couple finds themselves in a dangerous situation, is it not typically seen that the man throws himself in front of the woman, and that the woman hides her body behind the man?  Men are wired to give, to lay down their lives, to fight and die for what they love. Women are wired to nurture, support, and receive life, which requires that she NOT die.

This all may seem very unbalanced. But I posit that it’s only unbalanced if you’re functioning from the viewpoint that mutual affection is the ultimate end of romantic relationships. If men and women had the same protective instinct, then they would run into each other trying to guard the other one from some impending danger, and they’d probably both die. So much for mutual affection.

 Why would it be more beneficial for the woman to survive? Could it be because she has the potential to bear life within her? Think about it. In the most intimate act where man and woman do what they do to become mother and father, the man gives himself and the woman receives, quite literally. It is only when the man gives his life that the woman can give her life… but not back to the man. No, she, in turn, gives her life to his child. The pattern of giving and receiving is not circular, but linear. The man does not give so that he can receive. He gives so that the woman can also give. My Marine does not wish to die for the sake of dying. He wishes to die so that the lives of those he loves can continue.

It makes perfect sense in light of the fact that man and women were designed to complement one another. We weren’t made to be the same as the other, to act the same as the other, to love the same as the other, or even to die to ourselves in the same way as the other.  Everyone dies. Real men die and real women die. The point is to help the other die well.