By Hilary McMurray

It’s a new semester. Everyone is roaming campus, scoping out the new students and hottie hunting, but the standards for being ‘hot’ or ‘beautiful’ are constantly changing. One day, it’s okay to be thin, the next day curves are in again. “Extreme makeovers” can help people keep up with the trends, but before the scars are healed a new definition of beauty has already been accepted. It’s ironic how so much emphasis is placed on outer beauty, yet we remain indifferent to inner beauty.

Kids are the worst. If there’s a kid on the playground who looks different, the other kids will single him out and without a doubt make fun of him. We’ve all been that kid at some point in our lives. Glasses? Braces? Freckles? Those are the easiest targets. Those of us who were picked on and called ugly were always told by adults “true beauty is on the inside.” I never bought that load – always a cynic, I responded, “Yeah, that’s what people say to make ugly people feel better.” I’m a pessimist (although I prefer the term ‘non-practicing optimist’) and I tend to dwell on the uglier side of human nature, but last week something happened that sparked a personal revelation.

I was having the day from hell. Not a thing had gone right, and my misery hit a peak around rush hour – here I am, standing on an Orange Line platform, swearing up a storm because I’d missed a train by seconds. Next to me, a group of absolutely gorgeous teenage girls were making fun of an older man who, judging by his unkempt appearance, was probably homeless, and was definitely blind (the sunglasses and white cane gave that one away). “Ew, he’s probably not even blind,” “Yeah, he probably just wants to stare at us,” they snarled. The man was clearly disoriented. He called loudly and repeatedly, “Can somebody help me?” Everyone ignored him. Finally, when he approached the teenage girls, one of them said, “If you keep going straight, there’s a cop up there.” The girls huddled together, quietly snickering. There was no cop, only the edge of the platform.

I had to do something. I rushed over and grabbed the man’s arm, warning him to stay back or else he’d fall. “Do you need help?” I asked. All he wanted was to know if he was on the right line to go to Forest Hills. He was not. I walked him over to an officer who could help him. The man reached for my hand and said, “Girl, I can’t see you, but I know you’re beautiful.”

That hit me. I’ve been called both beautiful and ugly before, but to be called beautiful by someone who could not see me touched me in a way that words cannot even begin to describe. I was ashamed of myself for getting so frustrated just because my day sucked and I missed a train. What would have happened if I hadn’t missed that train?

It broke my heart that those girls, while so beautiful on the outside, could be ugly enough inside to endanger the safety, and possibly the life, of a blind man. Most people just ignored him; these girls singled him out like he was the four-eyed, freckle-faced, metal-mouthed kid on the playground, only their taunting was so extreme that the man could have died. Why? Because his hair was a little scraggly? What kind of sick person does something so cruel and laughs about it? Those girls decided that unlike them, this man was not beautiful on the outside, so therefore he did not deserve their help, or even their empathy.

“It’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world.” That’s a line from American Beauty, and it sums up everything I felt when that blind man called me beautiful. To judge beauty while blind is something everyone has the ability to do, but few of us actually go through with it. I spend a lot of time trying to make myself beautiful on the outside, and I worry about my appearance unnecessarily.

“Is my makeup even? Do these pants make my butt look weird?,” I’ll ask my friends when we’re getting ready to go out.

Guess what? It doesn’t matter. Not that I’ll abandon my eyeliner or my hip-huggers anytime soon, but I was shocked into realizing how trivial it is to obsess over outer beauty when it is so subjective and affects nothing but personal ego.

Real beauty isn’t seen with the eyes, it’s felt in the heart. Want to experience real beauty? Do something kind for people in need. Unlike fashion trends and makeup, that kind of beauty won’t fade away, and it’s never forgotten.

– Hilary McMurray can be reached at comments@nu-news.com