Flair in the Face

I’ve never met anyone who loves his or her own face.

This morning, as I put on lipstick (hey, you can take the woman out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of a woman), I had a flashback flair moment.

When I was eighteen years old, a woman I didn’t know stopped me as I was bending down to talk to a group of children at a summer camp where I worked.

She pulled me aside as the children ran on and said, “You have such a loving face.” Loving? Loving? Not beautiful? It was a strange and wonderful compliment. She continued to tell me that she saw how my face was loving the children.

As I put the lipstick down this morning, I thought about how that single statement changed how I think about my face. I started to love my face and what it could do. I still love make-up. I still curl my hair and pluck my eyebrows. I still conceal the dark circles under my eyes. It’s fun to primp sometimes.

But I don’t obsess about whether or not I’m beautiful.

Living with flair means loving my face because of whom it can show love to. And it means accepting (and giving) strange and wonderful compliments that have the power to change a life. That stranger used 5 words to strip away my fixation on beauty. It’s over a decade old, that compliment. But it’s my flair for today.