The appropriately named Eddie Cantor, comedian, actor, and songwriter, performed a song in the 1933 movie Roman Scandals called “Keep Young and Beautiful.” You may remember it if you happen to be over 100 years old. The chorus goes like this:

“Keep young and beautiful

It's your duty to be beautiful

Keep young and beautiful

If you want to be loved

Don't fail to do your stuff

With a little powder and a puff

Keep young and beautiful

If you want to be loved”

The song sums up the obsession of the early motion-picture culture with physical appearance. It’s difficult to tell whether any satire was intended by the lyricist, Al Dubin, but it is remarkable how persistently the aspirations of the Hollywood generations have exalted youth and beauty as the highest values in life ever since. 

Anti-aging products have become a huge business. Nowadays the “little powder and a puff” have become Botox, plastic surgery, cosmetics, nutritional supplements, hormone treatments, steroids, exercise plans, weight loss jabs, and many other methods of transforming mutton into lamb. (On the other hand, as one wag of my acquaintance commented when someone pointed out his growing circumference, “Obesity is my foolproof way of avoiding wrinkles.”)

One wonders if all these life extension strategies and wrinkle management regimens reflect humanity’s existential fear that there is nothing beyond death. After all, if this is all there is, why not drag it out as long as possible? Why not make the most of whatever time we have left on this planet? 

Its extremes may be seen in the apparently growing industry of cryonic preservation, where bodies are frozen in the hope that in the future, when a cure is found for whatever they died of, they can be revived and treated.

But even if we don’t go in for extreme makeovers or attempt to cheat death, we may be someone whose entire day is ruined when we cautiously step onto our AI-driven interactive bathroom scales in the morning only to hear its electronic voice protesting, “One at a time, please!” Is the miraculous and sinister nocturnal augmentation of body fat nature’s cruel way of keeping us from being happy? In the cold light of day, we might think so.

Is the anxiety about our appearance and the urge to appear attractive based on a fear of what other people think? Do we yearn for affirmation from those around us? Do they, in turn, long for our approval? Not so with God. “The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” (1 Sam 16:7)

And what does the Lord see when he looks at our heart? He sees our true nature. We are not the body beautiful: the profile, the biceps, or the nose job. Each of us is a beautiful being whom God created out of love. Yes, we are tarnished by sin, but isn’t that why he came into the world: To rescue us from our own sin? The Gospel of John tells us this quite plainly. “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (Jn 3:17)

We know that the second-greatest commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves. But loving ourselves is, you might be tempted to conclude, no easy matter. Nevertheless, through the gift of the Holy Spirit that we received in baptism, we can begin to see ourselves as God sees us and to love ourselves the way God does.

We may stare at our reflection in the mirror, shake our heads, and wonder why on earth God chooses to love us in the first place? But the answer is quite simple — because we’re worth it.