Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nancy Rue has written over 100 books for girls, is the editor of the Faithgirlz Bible, and is a popular speaker and radio guest with her expertise in tween and teen issues. She and husband, Jim, have raised a daughter of their own and now live in Tennessee.

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The Beauty Book

Thomas Nelson

Contents

One You Gotta Love It........................................6Two Heads Up!................................................24Three The Skinny on Skin.....................................36Four Hands 'n' Feet..........................................48Five When Beauty Gets Hairy..................................62Six Clothesline..............................................68Seven Don't Trash Your Temple!...............................80Eight What If I Have to Put Up with ...?.....................88Nine You Go, Girl!...........................................98

Chapter One

LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. ISAIAH 64:8

Okay, let's get one fact straight right up front: every girl has her own special beauty.

Yeah, I know you've heard your mom say, "Well, I think you're beautiful, honey." I also know that doesn't mean a whole bunch when some kid's calling you Pizza Face or everybody's telling your sister she's drop-dead gorgeous and then patting you on the head and saying, "You're cute too, honey."

But really, God doesn't make junk. He made each of us just exactly the way He intends us to be. So just like everything else God made—from blackberries to rhinoceroses—you gotta love it. You gotta love you too.

"Yeah," you may ask, "but if every girl is beautiful, how come "everybody" isn't seeing it that way?"

Because—bummer!—people aren't like God. Somewhere along the way, since the whole Adam and Eve thing, somebody decided there was only one way to be a beautiful woman at any given time. Right now that standard is being five foot ten, weighing about a hundred pounds, and having lips as big as the living room couch.

So how are you supposed to convince "everybody" that you're this knockout even though God shaped you like a fire hydrant or gave you lips the width of a pencil line or gave you curves nobody else has at ten?

You can't. You only need to convince you, and that's what this book is about. By the time you get to the end, I want you to be able to check yourself out when you pass a store window and say, "That's me. Cool! And I love that!"

Here's a good way to start. From now until you finish reading this book, try to follow this rule: NO BADMOUTHING THE WAY YOU LOOK.

That means no dwelling on the zits that have appeared on your forehead. No talking about how fat you think you are. No wishing you had curlier hair (or smaller ears or straighter teeth). Pretend you are one of your friends. You would rather eat brussels sprouts than hurt a friend's feelings, right? So NO putting your friend—you!—down.

That's a really hard rule to follow, so let's look at some of the things that can keep you from seeing how gorgeous you are.

BEAUTY BLOCKER #1: TV TRAINING

One of the reasons people think there's only one way to be beautiful is because that's all they see on television and in magazines and movies and on the Internet. Even the Barbie dolls seem to scream, "You have to look like me!" But you don't.

GIRLZ Want to Know

* LILY: Those girls on the cover of Seventeen have perfect skin. How do they get that?

They don't. Nobody's skin is that perfect. Everybody has at least the occasional zit, freckle, or scar from when she crashed her bike. Those magazine photos are retouched with computer programs and digital editing software that can remove "blemishes" (why don't they just call them pimples?), make eyelashes longer, and even chisel in great cheekbones. If you met those models in person, you would see that they have pimples, birthmarks, and little scars too. No lie.

* ZOOEY: If I use the shampoos and face creams I see in the ads, will I look the way the models do?

Probably not. For starters, that model isn't you. And don't you think if a company wants to sell a product that's supposed to give you thick, shiny hair, they're going to pick a model who already has that thick, shiny hair? Besides, if you were born with thin hair, there isn't much in this world that's going to make it thick. But who says you have to have thick hair to be beautiful?

* RENI: I'm the shrimpiest girl in my whole class. Why does God even make short girls when tall girls are always the ones people think are beautiful?

Actually, people's ideas of what's beautiful change over time. Back in the late 1500s and early 1600s, plump women with rolls of rosy flesh were considered beautiful, mostly because the better fed you were, the wealthier that meant you were. In the 1950s, lots of curves were the going thing in the movies and on the posters. By today's standards, Marilyn Monroe would have been considered overweight, but men in the fifties drooled over full-figured women. In the 1960s, when the Beatles said on the radio that they preferred petite girls, everybody wanted to be a short little peanut.

Does that mean somebody who was beautiful forty, fifty, or four hundred years ago wouldn't be beautiful today? How much sense does that make? Nah, this makes sense: everyone has beauty—plump and rosy, round and curvy, short and pixie-like, and tall and pencil slim, not to mention everything in between.

BEAUTY BLOCKER #2: THE COMPARISON GAME

Come on. We've all played it.

"I don't have breasts yet, so I'm not as grown-up as Chelsea, but at least I don't have to wear those geeky braces like Whitney, so I can't be that bad."

It seems like a harmless enough game. After all, most of the time you just play it in your mind until you come out ahead of somebody and can make yourself feel better, right? Well ... hmm. Let's see what God has to say about that.

How Is This a God Thing?

It used to be the "thing" to wear bracelets and T-shirts that said WWJD: What Would Jesus Do? You could even get it on boxer shorts, for Pete's sake! The trend has passed, but the question is still worth asking: What would Jesus do when faced with the temptation to make Himself feel like He was okay by playing the comparison game? Would He say to Himself, "Yikes! I don't have big muscles like Peter, so I must be pretty wimpy. Then again, Peter's always asking stupid questions. I must be smarter than he is. That's more important, right, Dad?"

Of course Jesus would never say that because Jesus was perfect. We will never be perfect, but we do try to be more like Him, right? And if the above is too lame for Jesus, it's too lame for us too. Dad, uh, God certainly doesn't compare us. Can you imagine God saying, "I sure did a great job on Carly's complexion. Too bad I messed up on Emily's. She's not nearly as cute." Hello!

God doesn't compare us. Jesus doesn't compare us. The world we live in compares us, but who are we supposed to follow?

Jesus made it really plain. Love your neighbor as yourself (check out Mark 12:31). That means no putting your "neighbor" down—and no putting yourself down. Period.