~ For I know that your beauty is more

Because she didn’t know

Didn’t know she was beautiful
Maybe her family never told her she was
And maybe the magazines told her she was not
Not what was hot
So now she had formed her own opinion from the supposed ‘information’ she had got
She knew she didn’t need a guy’s validation for her self-esteem

But she didn’t know her value because beauty is not what society makes it seem:
Overlooking what’s within
Prohibiting us from loving our own skin
No, I don’t need to tan trying to look like Taylor
And no, I don’t need to lose 20 pounds to feel like Paris
Because I don’t need to be like anyone, I like being me
And if you happen to wonder then whom the like of I aspire to be
Khadijah, Asiyah, Maryam, and Aishah, Fatimah or the mum of Bukharee

She didn’t know
Didn’t know she was beautiful
Because she didn’t know what beauty truly was,
The one that lasts:
Beautiful is the one who fasts
Struggling to face her fears
Cries sobs and tears whom none but Allah hears
Beauty is praying and giving in charity
Beautiful is the one maintaining her chastity
Fighting her nafs, trying to attain ilm, adab, and piety

Beauty is natural
Naturally
Effortless on the outside
So much work on the inside
Actually

Beauty defined by society
5 letters that cause girls to live on 300 calories a day
For those who have averted such self-destruction, that’s 3 apples, but hey,
It’s the same 5 letters defined by cultures
In which girls employ their fingers to undo what they’ve consumed,
Hunched over toilers like vindictive vultures

Starving when there is no famine
Beauty is supposedly dressing, obsessing, underdressing, and ultimately undressing
Girls’ minds have become programmed to be self-depreciating, self-loathing; it’s all quite depressing

She didn’t know she was beautiful
So let me say that in fact if you are Muslim, tidy on the outside and working on your inside, you are indeed pretty
You may say I’m cliché to say such a thing, but for you to think you are not is the greater pity
For I know that your beauty is more
More than the shape of your nose or pigmentation of your skin
Beauty is by your speech, actions, modesty, character, and from your heart, and all that’s within
It’s how I know a veiled woman is beautiful down the street
Because I can feel her heart glow,
And no before you ask, it’s not from the heat!

Reminder

Sisters, we are the creation of Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala, and thus we are all beautiful.

From ‘Abdullaah Ibn Mas’ood radiyallaahu ‘anhu who said that the Prophet sallAllaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam said, 

“No one will enter Paradise who has an atom’s weight of pride in his heart.”

A man said, “What if a man likes his clothes to look good and his shoes to look good?” 

He said, “Allaah is beautiful and loves beauty. Pride means denying the truth and looking down on people.”

Related by Muslim (no. 131)

via Akma