October 14th 2026

Beauty and the Question of Integrity

Beauty and the Question of Integrity

If beauty is present, so too is integrity, for integrity means to hold its shape.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Does that mean integrity exists when we terraform the land to extract and exploit?

Or as we go under the knife to uplift, enhance, pump and preen?

I contemplate this question, not yet finding an answer.

I think about beauty as I age without cosmetic enhancements. I read yesterday about a 34-year-old influencer who had just had a facelift. I wonder what drives that type of behaviour? Imagine living all your life chasing an image of youthfulness and, in the process, denying the glory of aging magnificently. Or, indeed, aging with such distortion, after so much work, that your face looks like it has a place in a taxidermy lineup.

The desire too young for eternal youth that ends up having you look like a 70-year-old literal Barbie doll.

It is true, I look at my face in photos sometimes and have an issue reconciling the inner story I have of myself with the person I see. Oftentimes it is shocking.

However, I have spent a lifetime committed to loving and accepting myself as I am. Real work on this. It continues.

I have always invested in my health and well-being as a priority. Real work. Hard work. On things I can actually change. Like my fitness, strength, mobility, balance, mindset, awareness, communication skills, worldview, education, quality and quantity of food.

For the most part, this investment is selfish. I want to be strong. I want to be fit. I like myself more when I take care of myself. I do it for myself. I am loved for myself by my partner, and I know that. No insecurity lurks in the corners of my actions.

As I write this, I notice, perhaps, the creep of righteousness and superiority. Something I write about as the seed of most of human suffering and bad decision-making.

Yet I look at the artificially pumped and pinned, and I do feel sad. I look at what happens to faces after being pumped and pinned, and I struggle to see beauty through the distortion.

I return to my question of integrity. If integrity means wholeness, complete, is the act of seeking to cut and fill a face or body toward wholeness, or away from emptiness? Is it an expression of integrity, or a grasp of seeking integrity without doing the completing work that integrity asks of us?

Perhaps this is the answer. If the enhancements are done from a place of zero insecurity, from a place of completeness, then OK. But if they are a response to a world that feeds off insecurity and self-loathing, not OK at all.

Published October 14th 2026. Photo taken October 14th 2023