Beauty and the Body

So many of us have poor relationships with our own bodies.  We are too short, too tall, too fat, too skinny, too dark, too masculine, too feminine. We have bad hair or we’re bald or we have wrinkles or pimples or tics or freckles.  We move with assistance. We’re somehow “odd” — there are just so many ways to be judging against conscious or unconscious beauty standards.

In the words of KC Kvasnička-Slack, newly-called Leader of our sister community, the Washington Ethical Society:

“We are fat and queer and trans and Black and brown. We’re people who are chronically ill, and who experience mental health problems, and who interact with the world in a way different from the ‘norm’. We are people with bodies and lives that we are supposed to believe are wrong. We’re told to hide, to disappear, to blend the best we can. To kill pieces of ourselves so that someone else may think we’re ok. But we are ok. We’re better than ok. We’re beautiful. We are – as Psalm 139 says – fearfully and wonderfully made. We are stardust. We are the universe experiencing itself…”

RYSEC Leader Jone Johnson Lewis will reflect on how beauty standards as they’re commonly defined, and how people get defined by those standards, affects our relationships with others and ourselves — and how we might change how we think about beauty and bodies, as personal transformation meets social justice.

Contributions to "Sunday Sharing" are shared between RYSEC and this month's sharing partner.  Read more and contribute:

Meeting Location

This Sunday is Zoom-only for the platform program. We begin the program promptly at 10:30 am ET, with gathering time from 10:15.  We will try to end by 11:30.  The Zoom room will be open until noon for socializing.

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