Beauty is the passion to which we dedicate our energy everyday to making our life happen.
As a woman, living in today’s society seems to be a game show where you need to favor one over the other – only one box contains the jackpot.
As if a woman, once she embraces her gender has to comply with the pertaining gender roles. As if a woman needs to choose between career and children. As if a woman needs to choose between successful relationships and their businesses. As if a woman needs to choose between strength over form. Ultimately, what makes a woman are her choices, but the options are what makes a society.
It is high time that we redefine what strength is as a woman. Women athletes are the epitome of strength – mental and physical. Training like maniacs is the lifeblood of our being. It is the natural tune to which our hearts beat to. Sweat and soreness are part of what makes us. Muscles are continually pushed to the limit, revealing the beauty of human spirit. Nothing tastes sweeter than dedication when you wake up ready to devour the day. If this isn’t what real, raw, beauty is then I don’t want any of it.
Beauty is the passion to which we dedicate our energy everyday to making our life happen. Everyday, we choose to move and everyday we choose to be better.
But then pray we don’t defy the image society has painted for us. Pray that we don’t intimidate men with our build and shock women of the possibility that our bodies can be trophies of hard work. The rest of the world only praise us until it becomes uncomfortable. It becomes uncomfortable when we no longer fit the mold we have pushed ourselves out of.
This time, celebrate. Celebrate because the rest of the world be damned. Beauty is universal but the metrics we have placed around it are delicate, fragile, and fleeting. This is where beauty lies, in the conviction of strength. Paradoxical as it might seem, people are afraid of the strength that lies beyond the bounds of comfort. That isn’t real strength.
Here’s to the lady athletes, the true femme fatales, who take charge of their body, who bask in the drug of movement. This is for you and me, the beauty that resonates to the heart and not to the eyes.
