When Beauty doesn't know where to land

Mr Gorgeous has this way of giving compliments that still catches me off guard.

He’ll say “You’re beautiful” or “You’re gorgeous” so naturally, and every single time, my body does this tiny internal flinch — because I don’t quite know what to do with it.

Years ago, I promised myself I’d stop arguing with compliments.

Just say thank you, even if I didn’t fully agree.

But there’s a big difference between saying the words and letting them actually land.

If someone praises how I think or see the world, I light up. I can talk about that for hours — how I arrived at a thought, what shaped it, what it means to me.

That kind of compliment feels earned. I know how to hold it.

But when the compliment is about my appearance, it hits differently.

It’s like it doesn’t have a familiar place to sit inside me yet.

It’s not that I dislike how I look.

I have a huge amount of respect for my body.

She’s strong — she’s carried and birthed three children, healed from illness, and still gets me through the day even when I’ve treated her like an afterthought.

I honour her. She’s magnificent.

And yet, there’s still that critical voice that notices the bits that don’t fit the old idea of “pretty”: the cellulite, the pale skin, the uneven patches, the parts that jiggle more than they used to.

Most of those “flaws”?

They were pointed out to me long before I ever saw them myself.

That’s what makes this so interesting.

When Mr Gorgeous says something kind, it’s not that I reject it — I just realise how new it feels to have someone see me like that, without asking me to change or hide.

He said something last night that really made me think:

> “I can’t think of a single woman I’ve met who’s comfortable saying, ‘I look pretty.’”

And honestly, I get it.

Most of us were raised in a world where “you love yourself” was an insult.

We learned to shrink our confidence so we wouldn’t be seen as conceited.

When I was younger, humility meant shrinking.

A lot of us were taught that loving yourself out loud was a flaw.

So even now, when I hear “you’re beautiful,” my inner child — the bashful one who remembers those lessons — wants to hide behind humour or deflection.

But loving yourself doesn’t have to mean vanity.

Maybe it’s just appreciation.

Could I sit in front of a mirror, look at my own reflection, and simply say, I’m pretty?

I can say my eyes are — that’s always been the safe zone.

But to say I am still feels like walking barefoot into new terrain.

Maybe this is the next layer of healing —

to let physical beauty become something I can hold, not just something I’m told.

To let a compliment land without needing to deflect or explain it away.

To look in the mirror and say, Yes. I see her.

Because beauty — physical, aesthetic, self-beauty — is about the energy of being at ease in your own skin.

And maybe that’s what he sees.

Maybe that’s what I’ll finally start to see too.

Because beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder —

and it’s about time our own eyes learned to behold us too,

on the outside as well as within.