You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.

You look beautiful," Alodia says.
I startle at the compliment. Then I smile. "I’m beautiful to the one person who matters."
She nods. "Hector’s mouth is going to drop open when he sees you.”
“I hope so. But I meant me. I’m beautiful to me.

Every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful.

Imperfections don’t make something ugly.

Beauty shouldn’t be about changing yourself to achieve an ideal or be more socially acceptable. Real beauty, the interesting, truly pleasing kind, is about honoring the beauty within you and without you. It’s about knowing that someone else’s definition of pretty has no hold over you.

for once, you believed in yourself. you believed you were beautiful and so did the rest of the world.