The Price of Beauty – A Peaceful Conscience

From the upcoming book "Treasures of Grace - The Gift of Peace for Troubled Times" by Kira Marie McCullough and Keb Burns. Wordcraft Press. Available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble October 2024

Christian Dior had no idea that he was making the life of a seven-year-old American girl miserable but miserable I was. In the late 1950’s, Dior’s full, petticoated skirt designs had made the long journey from the runways of Paris down to the Sears Girls Department and into my little life. My mother fell in love with a particular brown plaid dress with a full Dior skirt and Peter Pan collar and bought it for me. Not only was this a color I despised, but the petticoat was made of a scratchy, stiff netting that was gathered around the waist into a raw, jagged edge. It always left me with an encircling rash. “Sit still! Stop scratching!” my mother would whisper threateningly as we sat in church. I couldn’t wait to get that thing off as soon as we got home. When I complained to my mother about the petticoat she replied “That’s the price of beauty, dear. Sometimes looking nice means being a little uncomfortable. If you think that’s uncomfortable, try wearing high heels.”

I had two “dressy” dresses, which my mother switched out on alternate Sundays. The other one was my favorite, a lovely cotton dress in shades of blue and turquoise. It was soft and comfortable too, so the price of beauty was pretty low in that one. I wanted to wear it every Sunday, but my mother insisted on rotating them so they would last longer.

We didn’t have a washer or dryer in those days, so my mother washed my Sunday dresses by hand in the sink and hung them to dry over the kitchen stove. She would turn the gas burner on the lowest setting and the ring of tiny blue flames would glow like a crown of teardrop sapphires, sending heat up into the gently billowing skirts.

There they were one Friday night, the brown dress I hated and the blue dress I loved, side by side, drying over the stove. I passed through our galley kitchen and joined my father in the adjacent den. It was my custom to sit with him as he watched the Friday Night Fights on TV and bombard him with silly questions, which he patiently answered. He would tell me about the boxers, explain their strategies, complain about the referee, and analyze the coaches’ styles. I pretended to understand, and he pretended to believe I was interested, and we both enjoyed spending the time together.

We had been bantering like this for a while when something caught my eye in the kitchen. Looking through the doorway, I could see something orange and flickering reflected in the window over the sink. Curious, I went to the kitchen door and looked toward the stove, where my dresses were hanging. The hem of one was on fire. I turned to holler for my dad…but a thought came to me, and I closed my mouth. The dress that was on fire was the hated brown one. What a serendipitous bit of luck!

I calmly walked back to the couch and sat down. In the window, I watched the reflection of the flames climb the dress until they almost reached the collar. The whole kitchen was glowing with a bright, golden light. Certain that the dress was now beyond repair I finally spoke, “I think something is on fire!” My dad jerked his head around, saw the flames, jumped up and ran into the kitchen. By the time he got there, the flames were burning the paint off the vent hood and licking at the ceiling. I had no idea that fire could spread so fast. Now I was properly scared; I may have waited too long.  

He turned off the burner, grabbed the dishpan, which had water in it, doused the dress and the vent hood, and pulled the remaining shreds of fabric down on the stovetop to smother the last of the flames with a pot lid. As he examined the sooty burn on the ceiling, my mother came running from the other end of the house, saw the smoking debris on the stove and wailed, “Oh no, not the brown one! I loved that dress!” My blue dress was unharmed.

“Good girl!” my dad said, “You saved us! If it hadn’t been for you, the house might have burned down!” I suddenly felt terrible. I knew that because of me the house might have burned down. I started to tell him what I had done but I couldn’t bear to disappoint him after he had praised me. I also saw the genuine sorrow in my mother’s face as she picked up the charred bits of fabric. I knew what she was thinking; her hard-earned money had just gone up in smoke.

The following Sunday my mom brought the blue dress to me to put on for church and said, “We can’t afford to get you another dress right now, so you’ll have to wear this one every Sunday.” This is what I had wanted of course, but I wasn’t happy about it. In fact, as I sat in the pew at church looking down at the pretty blue skirt, I realized that I didn’t enjoy wearing it anymore. It felt like ill-gotten gains. The price of beauty had become too high for this dress. I may have looked beautiful on the outside, but I felt pretty ugly on the inside.

Nothing destroys inner peace like a guilty conscience. Whenever you are tempted to do something wrong to get something you want, remember that you won’t be getting it for free; you will be buying it with a very great treasure: your peace of soul. Peace is not a treasure you spend; it’s a treasure you keep. Saying no to temptation is the real price of beauty, “… that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and peaceful spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.” 1 Peter 3:4