Beautiful meets its other parts

I've been preparing for a lot of upcoming activities for our church youth groups. Among the topics are dating, morality, modesty and its relevance to life, what it means to have virtue and be beautiful in a world where that definition is as stable as the Richter charts.

I came across this fantastic little quote:

"Let the sisters take care of themselves," Brigham Young urged, "and make themselves beautiful, and if any of you are so superstitious and ignorant as to say that this is pride, I can say that you are not informed as to the pride which is sinful before the Lord, you are also ignorant as to the excellence of the heavens, and of the beauty which dwells in the society of the Gods. Were you to see an angel, you would see a beautiful and lovely creature. Make yourselves like angels in goodness and beauty."

Take that, cranky old critics who assert Mormon women are repressed and stifled. Take that, cranky old critics who assert the superficiality of looking your personal best. This statement places equal emphasis on being lovely as to being beautiful. And on goodness as to possessing beauty. Beauty begins with self-respect, and grows into self-acceptance and continues to bloom into a version of love and kindness to yourself that is mirrored in how you treat other people.