Is inner beauty more important than physical beauty?

By Neha Makhdoom

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Or isn’t it?

Quotes are something that have recently become a little bit of a cliché. But this, for all intents and purposes, is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me, about me. A friend and I were having an argument about why people in this day and age do not usually believe in helping people out. After I let out a whiny, “But WHY?” he replied to be, and spoke words that I will never ever forget.

“Because not all hearts are bathed in molten gold like yours.”

I have a purpose for telling you this. People say a lot of things in the passing. They’ll compliment you on your hair or tell you how beautiful your eyes are or how ‘adorable’ you are. But a compliment about your personality, even if it’s said in the midst of a heated conversation, or in the middle of the night with drooping eyelids, will always be worth more than even winning Prom Queen.

It is very easy to judge a book by it’s cover. Inner beauty is something that is infinite. Symmetrical faces and big, green eyes are never going to change that. And who are we to say who is pretty, and who is not? I know for a fact that people from around where I live think that having eyes which are anything but medium brown is a sign of some kind of angelic beauty.

But myself, and maybe a handful of others would beg to differ. I’m not saying that having blue, or green or bronze eyes makes you unattractive, but personally, I think there’s nothing better than a pair of brown, owl-esque eyes. Everyone has different preferences, but when it comes to inner beauty, nearly everyone’s looking for the same thing. Nobody wants cruelty. If a person is beautiful on the inside, I think that that beauty will shine out of them regardless of whether they have a full set of pearly white teeth and a flat stomach, or not.

Physical beauty is also something that disappears with age. Even the skinny , blond super models eventually have saggy thighs and lines on their faces. Some people age gracefully, some do not. Who a person is, their little quirks, the way they speak, the way they are is something that does not go away. It may evolve over time, but it never really goes away.

People are judged because of the way they look nearly every day. Stereotyping happens all the time. Fat, skinny, dark, fair, goth - all of it. And even a person like myself, who believes so deeply in the importance of inner beauty manages to pass some comments about peoples appearances. But if you look at the flaws in a person’s face, you see who they are. I am, and have always been of the opinion that a smile is a key to the soul. One smile and you can conjure up the person’s whole life in your head.

I know how generic it is for me to think that inner beauty is more important than outer beauty, but that really is the truth. Looks will change, fade. But a person with a pure personality will be eternally beautiful. Even one day when they are old and grey, the same person will shine out of them as they did 20 years ago.

A person makes friends, falls in love with someone. Even if they are ‘gorgeous’ or are not. If they have an ugly personality it will never work, but someone who does not have angelic beauty, but a godly personality, will always find their way around, and manage to make friends. They may not be able to bat their eyelids and charm people with their perfect hands, but they will always be able to do it with a bit of they that is reflected in the way they smile, the words they use, and the people they help.

The reason that the ‘bathed in molten gold’, casually sitting in school over lunch quote will always mean more than an excited ‘Your eyes are so pretty!’ conversation is that at the end of the day, you can always help the way you look, but you will never be able to shake off who you truly are.