Originally published June 5, 2008

I was watching My So Called Life last night (thank you Netflix for that trek down memory lane) and came across Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130.  In this day of mass-marketed, homogenized, plasticized cultural ideas of what a person should be, a sonnet that celebrates the imperfect, flawed, but ever-so-much more real version of what is lovable was quite refreshing.

So often I see the amazingly wonderful people in my life, both men and women, compare themselves to society’s “ideal image,” find themselves lacking and begin to doubt their own worth. Why, when we look in the mirror, do we see only our flaws instead of the beautiful creatures we actually are?

So, today, I give you Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 and hope that you can try and see the beautifully flawed, amazingly real person that you are…

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red: If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask’d, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak,–yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go, My mistress when she walks, treads on the ground; And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.