Break the Silence - Beauty

Okay, I'm just going say it; there is something universally macabre, yet fascinating, about a body that is significantly underweight. Of course at first there is often revulsion yet at the same time, an inability to draw the eye away.

But bone and skeletons do not represent beauty. They may be beautiful in their own right as marrow and creators of blood cells but they do not and should not represent a beauty to which we are encouraging each other aspire to and replicate.

I can't sit here and write what beauty really is, because the truth is I don't know. I've spent a long time with a warped image of what beautiful is in terms of human appearance. What I do know, is that beauty is individual. It has personality and life and means something different to everyone across the world. Our western culture, our British society is trying to catch a wave that's just too high; we cannot, we do not have the right, to dictate what others should see as beautiful.

One thing is for sure though, I'm yet to meet anyone who can tells me that an untimely death is beautiful and that, is where an eating disorder will take you unless you force yourself to reassess the situation.

There's all sorts of beauty you can create out there, it doesn't have to be based around your looks. Words and art and nature and this whole world are filled with beauty if you take a step out of the eating disorder and look in the right nooks and crannies where our wonders hide. Or be different - it makes us shine and sparkle like nothing else and difference is not negative, it makes us unique and lovable and fathomable.

Lots of love,
Jo x xx