As a young girl with short hair that could not be elegantly curled or pinned up in any fashion, I was not called a beautiful child. Instead, I was called adventurous. This adjective was very fitting as I enjoyed climbing trees, exploring creeks, and playing games with the neighbor boys that resulted in excessive sweating. Often I returned home with cuts and bruises, blood staining the knees of my pants. I was not a pretty sight. Therefore, the idea of beauty eluded me in my days of childhood, and still I find that the concept is baffling.

What is beauty? Many times I have believed to know what and who is beautiful, but looking back, I wonder by whose standards I would be correct.

Arizona (a clothing company) informs me- a fragile, blooming teenager- to love myself, because there will only be one of me. While the message is well defined, it does not call me beautiful. They might want me to fill in that blank myself, but I am still weary.

“Easy, breezy, beautiful: Cover Girl” straightforwardly tells me what is beautiful: their makeup. More specifically, their models, the ones who flounce about with painted eyelids and defined cheekbones. But even their deemed-attractive girls are airbrushed and photoshopped, made to appear like gods that I do not worship because I cannot identify with them.

Beauty is a universal concept, yet it is more likely to appear in writing rather than be spoken aloud. Why are we embarrassed to say someone is beautiful? We are eager to fill our journals with praise of women and their wondrous appearances, but to verbally state so causes heat to spread through our cheeks and tinge our faces cherry.

Teenagers do not use the word “beautiful” often. If a boy wishes to describe a girl to his friends, he will say she’s hot, attractive, or in the rare case, pretty. If a girl wishes to describe a boy to her friends, she will use similar adjectives. It is only when the boy and girl are alone that one will tentatively whisper the word to the other, careful not to break the thoughtful atmosphere and have their moment come shattering to the ground.

Perhaps beauty is an adult’s game, along with taxes and responsibilities. They have survived their childhoods, and have the memories to prove it. Maybe they have earned to right to stare into someone’s eyes and call them the word that is much more easily applied to paintings and waterfalls.

On the cusp of adulthood, I wonder when we are allowed to use the word beautiful. Do we know what beauty is once we’re older, and we have traded in our innocent eyes for a pair of jaded ones? Or do we understand even when we are young, when every tree, every friend, every ladybug is beautiful?

I do not know what makes a person beautiful. In my life I will feel moved to call someone such, but if someone were to address me with this delicate, tender word, I would look at him or her and ask: what makes me beautiful to you?

Maybe the only answer I can hope for will come from someone I’m inclined to believe.