Imperfect lupin with raindrops
Home & Garden, Self-care

Different is Beautiful

Smelly Socks and Garden Peas

Some time ago I wrote a post about beautiful imperfections. Recently, my thoughts are travelling along a similar path.

There are some fairly well-defined traditional ideas about what is beautiful: blondeness, being thin with big boobs, sunny days, lush green grass, orange sunsets, spotless cars, rhyming words, clear skin, a straight nose, big blossoming flowers, manicured lawns, copperplate handwriting, the list is endless.

But, as I look out of my kitchen window, my lawn is sprouting dandelions, the veg patch is weed-filled, it’s rained and the lupins are bedraggled. And me? I’m skinny with zero boobs, dirty brownish curly hair that tends to frizz, freckles, and massive calves, I talk too much, judge too easily, say the wrong thing and hide how hurt I can be.

However, my garden is beautiful to me. The bees are happy, the birds are hopping about and the raindrops on leaves sparkle to my eyes. The grey, cool weather provided me with a lovely run, cool and much more enjoyable than in the glaring sun.

So today, I’m reflecting on the positives that don’t fit traditional ideas about beauty and perfection. Those differences are beautiful too.

I love my curls and my freckles. I’m loyal and forthright and fierce when I need to be. Those are good things on the flip side.

Tell me how you are differently beautiful, celebrate yourself.

  • Stormy skies at Delamere Forest

Published by Smelly Socks and Garden Peas

Rants, rambles, loss, gin, guests, recipes, funny kids, occasional poems, and a bit of running.

25 thoughts on “Different is Beautiful”

  2. I do find it interesting what beauty means to different people. When you said your garden is overgrown but you love the wildlife, it reminded me that I love sharing pictures and videos of all the birds and bees that I feed and water in my garden and someone once said, aren’t you embarrassed how messy your garden is? .. I was not 🙂

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  3. Beauty is definitely more than what we’ve codified it to be. I am differently beautiful because of the lush brown of my skin, my too tall for a girl height, my crooked teeth and everything else that isn’t “right” about me x

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  5. Love it, love it, LOVE IT!! Beauty is everywhere – literally. Today I walked passed the corner shop at the end of our road. The exterior is a little run down and often undesirables – lairy louts hang around outside, smoking or talking very loudly. It doesn’t always feel quite as safe as it should. But today I walked passed and the owner was sat outside on a crate, basking in the sun, and his employee (a very old man but one you could tell had grafted hard all his life) came out to join him. He pulled out his cigarettes and sat down in the doorway. For a split second the sun shone down on the two men and their shop – the corner shop that has been there for all my life, that has supplied us with last minute milk and chocolates at 10pm, and kept us going through out the pandemic. It looked so beautiful and picturesque – like something out of a quiet Italian village. It was quite the moment and I thought to myself, the lairy louts are our louts, they live here, it’s their neighbourhood and this shop is our shop, it serves everyone in the community. It was a beautiful thought xxx

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  6. What a lovely post on positivity! I like my big hips and I appreciate my height even though I’m not supermodel tall. I think I’m just at the right height. Beautiful just the way I am.

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  7. Love this post. I love that you embrace yourself, you are you, different and beautiful in your own way. I’ve lived my childhood hating my hair, legs and dimples in my cheeks. But now, I’ve embraced me. What makes me different from others makes me unique. My legs are beautiful, my dimples makes my smile even more attractive, my hair is dark and shiny. Now I’m free accepting who I am. Thanks for this wonderful post

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  8. I love this beautiful post! I eschew most expectations for feminine grooming and I’m too outspoken for many people’s taste. That’s fine with me 💪 Thanks for creating this space to celebrate our differences!

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  9. Pingback: The week gone by — July 18 – A Silly Place

  13. This post is beautiful. You can find beauty in everything.

    This might be a little rambly, but I spent my teens hating my eyebrows. They were too ‘bushy’, too thick. I would pluck the life out of them until they resembled what the world deemed as beautiful. Now, I don’t pluck them to an inch of their life. Instead, they are bushy and beautiful. Every time I look at them, I remember that they make me look like my mum, and I don’t think of her as anything other than beautiful, so why should I see mine any other way.

    We are all different; we are all beautiful. Thank you for sharing this post; it genuinely made me smile. 💜

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  14. I spent my youth hating how I looked and I see now all these years later how sad it was to miss out on loving myself and enjoying life. It’s so freeing now to know that different is beautiful and that we don’t need to buy into what society/the beauty industry is trying to see us as beautiful. Fab post!

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