This was one of the first writings our founder contributed when first establishing Maiden America. It seems fitting to kick off the re-establishing of our company with what is at the heart of all we do – making the world a more beautiful place, one product (lovingly handmade in America) at a time.
I ask my daughter, “what makes a person beautiful?”
She is shy. She says she doesn’t know.
Then she guesses, “her dress?”
I smile. My daughter loves the dresses I make for her.
“Well, she is lucky if she has a nice dress…but, what makes her beautiful isn’t her clothes…”
“Eyes?” She asks.
“Nope…but, you can see some of a person’s beauty IN their eyes…because eyes are like magic windows. When you look out through your eyes, you can see into someone else’s eyes…and, if you look carefully, you can sometimes see into who they are, inside. Have you ever seen eyes that looked mean or angry?”
My daughter nodded.
“Are mean eyes beautiful?”
“No,” she said.
“What about kind eyes. Have you seen eyes that looked kind?” I asked.
My daughter nodded again.
“Are kind eyes beautiful?” I asked.
“Yes,” she agreed.
“If you saw a person with beautiful clothes and mean eyes, would that be a beautiful person to you?”
My daughter shook her head ‘no’.
“No… it’s not a person’s clothes or hair or the color of their skin or anything they can’t change by thinking and feeling…and, really, it’s not their eyes, either, that makes a person beautiful…”
My daughter looks at me funny. “So, what makes them beautiful?”
I kneel down in front of my daughter and say, “what makes a person beautiful is what they think in here…(I point to her head)…and what they feel in here…(I point to her heart). And you can see how beautiful a person is by what they say and do…by how they treat other people and animals…and by how they treat themselves.”
My daughter smiles. She looks deep into my eyes and pulls at my arm. I hold her head close to my neck.
“We are both being beautiful,” I say.
© 2003 Aliza Wiseman, founder Maiden America
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