Beauty and the Beautiful

By Susan “Honey” Good

This Article is Dedicated to Janice

Darlings, I have the ability to analyze your thoughts! I have the power within, sort of 😉  I know that you take pleasure in reading certain categories on HoneyGood.com. Wondering how I know?

I am able to tap into Google analytics. It tells me by charts what topics you enjoy and your favorite stories.

This is what I know. You love my stories relating to me, my family, my personal feelings on topics for women over fifty, my lifestyle, and my way of expressing my feelings in an open and sincere manner. We can relate to each other! You enjoy recipes and you revel on my beauty topics! Am I right, darlings?

Today my story is on the topic of beauty. It is a true story.

Several months ago I noticed, on my Facebook page, a woman from my past. “OMG!” I thought to myself, “This cannot be!”

Her presence on HoneyGood.com continued. I noticed posters with beautiful spiritual sayings. The sayings were ones I would choose.

Every time her named appeared it brought me back to my high school years and Janice.

Fast forward. Two days ago, Janice commented with a personal note to me on HoneyGood.com regarding my Mother Daughter story! She wrote and I quote…

“Susan, this is a beautiful tribute to your mother. I only wish I could have shared more of my life with my mother. She was killed in an automobile accident when she was fifty. However, the memories I do have are priceless!

May God bless you both.

Janice”

I was deeply touched. You know how I get, darlings! Of course, I wrote back.

The word beauty comes to mind when I think of Janice. We attended high school together in Kankakee by the Sea, my hometown. Janice was, and deserved to be, crowned Prom Queen of Kankakee High School. She was the Queen of everything!

She was the ‘It’ girl at my high school alma mater, Kankakee High! Blonde, blue eyed, petite with a sweet personality she was the best cheerleader on the team, had the cutest boyfriend, who she married. She was Queen of the hop! She was the essence of what every teenage girl at Kankakee High dreamed of being because along with beauty she possessed another great quality. She was non-threatening to the other girls. How was she able to do this at such a young age?

When our class voted for the queen of this and the queen of that I knew I would never win and was content and truly happy to be in her queen’s court.’ All the girls were.

This leads me to my commentary on BEAUTY. What makes a woman beautiful? I believe it is her ‘total make up,’ not just her looks though I will not discount that a woman’s beauty plays a big role.

Unfortunately, a woman’s beauty comes with all kinds of assaults.

How can she combat this?

I believe she should be true to herself, reminding herself to be aware of another woman’s feelings not out of weakness but out of strength.

Here a few helpful tips

Intelligence: Be beautiful with your mind. Unless you are with a group of ‘brainy’ women types I think you should keep the conversation light. You do not want to intimidate. You already do with your look.

Confidence: You are probably loaded with confidence. We all know the saying, ‘If you got it flaunt it.’ I suggest you don’t. When you walk into a room, think, ‘There you are.’ And not, ‘here I am.’ Believe me, with your presence they will know you have arrived!

Dress: Don’t allow another woman’s insecurity to intimidate ‘your style.’ In this instance, be you 100%. Dress to please your husband and yourself. Let your beauty shine. Those that don’t like it… just delete.

Affluent: Be rich within. Don’t let your money ever say, ‘I am too good for you.’ There is no beauty in that. Be down-to-earth. You can still wear your Jimmy Choo shoes and your designer jeans!

Operate in shades of Grey: If you have a strong personality don’t smother it; regulate it to the temperature of the women in the group.

Competition: Women will feel you are a threat. It is your goal for your sake to make your women friends feel like winners. You already are.

Mean Girls: They always run in a group! They bond in numbers and put others down. They are judgmental and cold. They have no beauty! If you are a part of a group such as this examine your reasons why and…run!

It’s been said that comparison is the thief of joy. A poignant reminder to celebrate yourself and your beauty, inside and out, as well as that of your girlfriends, older and younger.  We need never stop feeling — and acting — beautiful.

Photography by Hallie Duesenberg

Honey Good is the founder of HoneyGood.com where this blog originally appeared. The site is a collection of lessons learned, life advice and insights from not only her, but from a fantastic group of contributing writers, each adding their own spice to the recipe. Honey Good.com representing “a family tree of women” — wives, mothers, daughters, granddaughters, mothers-in-law, daughters-in-law, sisters, aunts, cousins and girlfriends — coming together to talk about what makes them tick as well as what they have in common. Honey Good discusses life experiences with wisdom, humor and intellect, enabling all to attain a “Honey Good Style of Life.”