Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn has always been my ideal of feminine beauty. I envied her long beautiful neck, her doe eyes, her dancer's poise. She was simply elegant.

As a pudgy, round-faced girl child, I longed for her waifish, yet womanly figure and her innate sense of style and sophistication. She looked beautiful even with her tattered raincoat, wet hair, and make-up smeared by rain and tears in the closing scene of "Breakfast at Tiffany's." I yearned to be beautiful like Audrey Hepburn.

I was a large-sized, short-necked, round-faced woman when I discovered Audrey's inner beauty--her devotion to her family, her service to the world's children through UNICEF. I envied her again--this time for her ability to hold a child limp from hunger, bone thin and cover with flies and to look on this tragedy with loving compassion. She embraced the children the world would throw away. She loved them and gave them hope.

There she was, my feminine ideal, surrounded by dirty, chattering, rail-thin, disease-ridden children, all smiling at this beautiful woman, no longer young, but still poised, elegant. In spite of the heat, the dust, the despair, she glowed.

Audrey Hepburn said about beauty, "For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.” It does not surprise me that she would speak these words. She seemed so comfortable with herself.

If I were to pursue Audrey's beauty, it is the beauty of her soul that I would seek. I do pursue beauty in my own way, but too often I get caught up in the desire for long neck and elegance. I get caught up in the illusion of perfect figure, hair, face. But occasionally, when my grandchild cuddles into my ample breast with a sigh of comfort or a child giggles at my joke or asks for a hug, I can see a glimmer of Audrey in my soul.

If truth be told, I'd rather have Audrey in my soul than on my frame. Physical beauty is ephemeral, here today and gone tomorrow. Beauty of the soul lasts a lifetime. It improves with age. Beauty of the soul can carry you places physical beauty never can--through heartache, disappointment, despair. Beauty of the soul turns you outward into the world not inward into yourself as physical beauty does.

I wonder, if Audrey Hepburn had not been such a beautiful soul, would the world have considered her to be the beauty it did? I'm glad we didn't have to find out. I wish we had more of her beauty in the world today.

And I am delighted that, even as a child, I could discern true beauty.

I still dream of looking like Audrey Hepburn, but that dream is no longer skin deep.