Beauty vs. Personality: An Easy Decision

I know, I know.  You have heard it so many times before.  “It’s isn’t what’s on the outside but the inside the matters.”  Or, “pretty is as pretty does.”  Or” looks fade, but a sweet spirit endures.”  Well, my friends, stop hearing and go ahead and start believing!

But don’t take just my word for it.  A 1920’s beauty expert explains it better:

“If being attractive were merely a matter of good looks, one might with justice feel that the cards had been stacked and a few fortunate personas had drawn all the trump.  But, the appeal of beauty is transient.  Having no roots, it quickly dies, and one turns for refreshment either to a new type or back to a personality that interests or stimulates or that has in some was grown grateful.

There are two or three women who always have, or always will, stand out in my mind as being singularly attractive.  I recall one, in particular.  I remember most distinctly the lovely line of her head in profile as it was revelared by the simple arrangement of her hair.  Nor shall I forget the whole graceful picture she made in her invariable costume of dark blue, so plainly made that it stood out among the costumes of the day.  She understood the art of making herself beautiful in a distinctly individual manner.  But suppose she had been only a beautiful picture.  You can imagine the disappointment one would have felt if, behind an exterior of so much promise, there had been only an empty head and heart.

We talk a lot about the subtle and indefinable charm of personality.  Everyone admits that it is more powerful than beauty or than intelligence.  You often see a woman of fascinating personality who is not beautiful, but did you ever see such a woman who was not at all intelligent?  I am positive that you never did, for personality is primarily a quality of the mind.  It is the result of a warm, alive, dynamic intelligence – a combination of heart and brain, of feeling and thinking.

Let no woman feel that because the gods have seen unfit to endow her with beauty, she must take her place among the unattractive.  She may have had a better opportunity than her fairer sisters to cultivate the rarer graces of mind and heart.  And no woman who is alert, intelligence, and always warmly and sincerely responsive can long be unattractive.”

I hope you join all our fellow sisters by laughing harder, helping more, and valuing each other.

What a great group we shall all be!

~Aimee

Cover Photo by:  Arvid Frederick Nyholm – “Woman Seated at Her Vanity”

Source: Inspiration, 1925

Beauty vs. Personality Cover

One thought on “Beauty vs. Personality: An Easy Decision

  1. Reblogged this on From Goats To Soaps and commented:
    We’re sharing something a little different with you today. This fabulous post, with its insightful observations truly does not need any introduction. I’ll only say that I enjoyed and agreed with Aimee’s comments, while the piece she quotes expresses some of my own thoughts and feelings far better than I could. This is one short passage of writing that should not be let fade into history, for it is as accurate and meaningful today as it was when it was first printed, and will be in another fifty or hundred years.

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