The Many Shades of Beautiful

It's a memory that has stayed with me: my Hawaiian friend Jeanne Nishida, whose parents' ancestries were Chinese and Japanese, was sitting up late with me in our college dorm talking about her self-image growing up. One of a small minority of Asian students at Northwestern at that time, Jeanne was used to feeling different, even when growing up in Hilo, Hawaii. There were no beauty role models who looked like her in mainstream American culture.  As a child, she used to amuse both family and tourists by saying that she wanted to be Betty Grable when she grew up.

We laughed when she told the story, but inside I felt a twinge of sadness that my dear friend had grown up wishing to be fair and blonde. "Either that or that I would wake up and be a lovely Chinese Hawaiian," she said recently. "But by the time I was eight, I realized that wasn't going to happen."

In college, where I met her, life wasn't always easy for Jeanne because she didn't fit the old stereotype that many had at that time of a tiny, sweet, shy, submissive Asian woman. She was -- and is -- smart and strong and not afraid to voice her opinions. She loves sports -- and ended up with a marriage made in heaven, to Jimmy Yagi, the (now retired) basketball coach of the University of Hawaii, Hilo Vulcans. She is a "what you see is what you get" sort of person, without pretense. She is loyal and funny and loving, the very best kind of friend to have.

I always thought she was beautiful, both inside and out. It took some time for Jeanne to realize her very special beauty.

I saw this scenario often when I was a psychotherapist for several psychiatric clinics dedicated to those with life-changing or life-threatening illnesses or injuries. I had patients of all colors and ethnicities  and was often surprised and saddened by the stories of discrimination, even within families, against those who were more dark-skinned than others. One client, Diana, was from Guyana and her lighter-skinned family was ashamed of her darker skin and hadn't included her in many family activities when she was growing up. The pain lingered in her heart, even as she won college scholarships, work accolades and traveled the world. She was one of the most fascinating, warm and beautiful women I have ever met, but what she wanted most in life was to be embraced and accepted and loved and to have a sense of fitting in. She longed to belong and struggled to see the beauty -- both inside and out -- that was so evident to those who knew and loved her.

And I've seen this in my own family when my sister-in-law Jinjuta remembers the pain of growing up feeling distinctly unbeautiful because of her darker skin, typical of her Northern Thailand origins. It's painful to think of this lovely, smart, and wonderfully kind woman having a moment's doubt about her singular beauty and intrinsic worth.

Jeanne sent me a video the other day of the lovely and talented Lupita Nyong'o,  giving a speech several days before her Academy Award triumph, and talking about growing up in Kenya as a dark-skinned woman. It took her some years to realize what real beauty is and to feel this within.

What an amazing story to hear from a young woman who has become not only a celebrated actress but also a beauty icon in the past few months. And how her message that real beauty is goodness and compassion and love resonates.

It's a message that so many young girls need to hear -- both girls of color and girls who are simply plagued by adolescent self-criticism or by the pain of not fitting neatly into society's standards of beautiful.

It's a message that we also need to hear and remember as we age and as traditional, youthful beauty fades into memory. We need to remember that there are many shades and many seasons of beauty and that the greatest measure of beauty is not light skin or youth or a lithe, slim body, but a loving heart and generous, compassionate spirit.