The book I’m reading right now describes one of the characters as beautiful, and by beautiful the author seems to mean that extraordinary that causes you to keep looking at the person, just because someone that beautiful can’t be real.

Beauty is a strange thing. For me beauty has always been a combination of the external and the internal: In my opinion, the most beautiful person in the world is my grandmother. That is one of my basic truths: Grandmom is the most beautiful person I know.

But I had a bit of a shock as I went through old family pictures–pictures from when my father was a child, and even from when Grandmom was a child. In those pictures I look at her not as I know her now, but as she was years and years ago–as a stranger to me. What I found shocking is that the woman in those photographs isn’t the beauty that I see when I look at Grandmom. I’m not saying she’s ugly–just that in looking at a stranger I do not see the woman I know, and so all that I know of her is stripped away, and I am left with only the image.

I had a friend in college who many I knew thought was gorgeous. But I never saw it. What I mean by that is that he was certainly pleasing looking, but when I looked at him I saw not just his physical looks, but also the childish habits that drove me crazy. I loved him as a friend, but I never found him attractive–despite what other women felt.

Sometimes I think I’m alone in feeling this. I look at models and actors and can’t understand why they are considered so beautiful. (With some exceptions of course.)

Is everyone as obsessed with superficial style and image as they seem? It’s not like the phrase “What does he/she see in him/her?” is an uncommon one.

I knew another woman in college–a friend of a friend–who did some modeling in her spare time. The strange thing was that if you saw her going to classes, you would never believe that she was a model. She wore sweatpants and pulled her hair back, and barely put on makeup and looked like every other female college student. But when we went out she pulled out all the stops, doing her hair and make-up, and transforming into another woman entirely. I was fascinated by the whole thing, and to be honest, still am. She was the same person, regardless of how she dressed or did her hair, yet the reactions to her in her different states were almost shockingly different.

It’s something I’ve always kept in the back of my mind, when considering beauty. How make-up and clothes and hair can completely change the way others view us.

And I try to keep it in mind for myself, as well.