Our culture tells us that emaciated is beautiful. You can never be too thin, right?
So we’d expect it to celebrate someone like Lizzie Velasquez: born with a rare disease that makes it impossible for her to gain weight.
Not so.
As an eleven year-old girl, she stumbled upon an image on the web that looked like her.
It was her. And it had a caption: ‘the ugliest woman on the internet’.
Stunned, she scrolled down.
The image had been viewed by 4 and a half million people. Strangers who not only voted her unspeakably ugly, but in thousands of comments, outlined why.
Here is her response:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzCeIGwnZuc
Wow, how cruel we can be. How much we can hurt each other with our words. How quickly we judge others. How quickly we attach labels to people. How quickly we can cause others pain and steal their self-confidence. 8 seconds that changed her life. Despite her devestation she turned the stares of 4 million, the hurtful words of thousand ”Curse” to “Thank you God”. I loved her courage, her humility, her beauty in turning to thank God in and for the hardest of times. And not to hide away, but to be upfront speaking, encouraging others.
To tell them to thank God and they will see amazing answers.
She deserved the standing ovation – a very inspirational young women.
Amazing. I saw this truly beautiful woman on my other favorite blog :) and was dumb struck at the low level of incivility that exists in the world. Her comment about people hiding behind their computers reminded me about being held accountable for every idle word. Even before google we were not anonymous. She so obviously lives in that beautiful relationship where He is the husband to the husbandless. I tremble at the wrath of God for those who un-repentantly messed with his woman.
What an amazing woman, a true inspiration.
Amen sister