WHEN "BEAUTIFUL" STANDARDS BECOME THE NORM...EVEN IN BOOKS | WITH KAYA COCOE

 

When "Beautiful" Standards Become the Norm...Even in Books. 

Once you have master something know that you will become a student...

Thinking back when I was a child, looking back though it were not as a mistake but as a child, learning God. Slowly, but surely, I would come to know how faithful God is and how his loving-kindness resurfaced my life. The beauty here is that it is all God and none of me. However, what happens when we take a standard among others and adapt it into our lives...our way of writing. We lose sight, we lose everything that made us authentic. 

I am for the beautiful main characters but only to a certain extent. When one is singled out because of their beauty and it becomes a personality...a standard is birthed and positioned as the norm. 

I mean, everyone is doing it. 

Beauty is the rival to that which is ugly. The only thing we should be thinking about is how ugly sin truly is and not glorifying the flesh. It is even written that: no flesh shall glory in my presence (See 1 Corinthians 1:29). We are all made in the image or after the likeness of God, what do you say to this? Feelings of worthlessness should not be your escape. 

Instead, knowing that all glory belongs to God should be our understanding. As a person who writes books with diverse characters I have come to know that beauty is surface deep. 

The real and true beauty is in God through which he made us fearfully and wonderfully (See Psalm 139:14) for which we praise God. In the full revelation of the standard of beauty comes the accurate, "God made all things beautiful in his time," (Ecclesiastes 3:11.) It is not our work, it is our reflection, a testament that God himself is beautiful even making his creation so. 

But what happens when you idolize beauty...when you put beauty as the standard of life? One can write a character based on the characteristics of beauty but after the writer forms beauty into a standard...we have a problem we see often in modern stories.

We see that beauty is counter of authenticity.

We see that beauty is narrowed in the gaze--scrutinized, cultivating a blueprint that is superficial.  

Painfully, we try to relate to these characters that are beautiful without substance and then we try to mirror out our own reflection as a way of being challenged. We think, how often is a character portrayed as beautiful but lacking everywhere else? It is because our society sees beauty as a throne and not because of the only One who sits on the throne of grace. 

I questioned my own motives for beautiful characters who were only beautiful---that's it. I thought, no... there has to be bone to this structure. There has to be room for change. Especially, because I saw my writing through the writing that was already in major bookstores. 

 So, in all it carries weight when it is said: Like a gold ring in the snout of a pig is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion. (Proverbs 11:22)

She's beautiful. That is fact.

But if that is the only thing...we have lost the reality of her value.

Write valuable characters...not those reduced to an object adorning a pig's nose. For in the end, its value is nothing but misleading. 

 

MEET THE BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR:

Kaya Cocoe