“I am so beautiful, sometimes people weep when they see me. And it has nothing to do with what I look like really, it is just that I gave myself the power to say that I am beautiful, and if I could do that, maybe there is hope for them too. And the great divide between the beautiful and the ugly will cease to be. Because we are all what we choose.” — Margaret Cho
That is the line Margaret Cho opens Belief 3 of my book Let Go of Limiting Beliefs with, and it still startles me. Not because it is loud, but because of where it locates the power. Beauty, in her sentence, is not bestowed by a mirror, a camera, or a crowd. It is claimed. She gave herself the power to say it — and that one move, she suggests, is what begins to close the divide.
Most of us were taught the opposite order. First become beautiful enough, by a standard we did not set. Then, perhaps, feel beautiful. The chapter asks what happens if we reverse it.
The Belief, in Its Own Words
We want to believe that what is on the inside is more important than the exterior. But you may not see others reflect that idea. Some people are too caught up with keeping appearances and their quest for beauty. That does not mean you have to believe the story that beauty is good and is the most important thing.
In the book, the belief shows itself in ordinary sentences:
I am not beautiful. Who will want me?
I am not thin enough.
I am not athletic enough.
I always have bad hair.
Read them slowly. None of them is really about a face or a body. Each one is a verdict about worth, wearing the costume of appearance. Who will want me? is not a question about hair. It is a fear about love and belonging, and it has learned to speak in the language of looks because that language is everywhere.
That is why arguing with the mirror rarely works. You can fix the hair and the fear simply finds a new address. The belief is not a grooming problem. It is a story about who gets to decide.
In Real Life: The Ideal Is Not Neutral — It Is Fed to Us
If the comparison standard felt unrealistic, the research says that feeling is accurate. In 2008, Shelly Grabe, L. Monique Ward and Janet Shibley Hyde published a meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin titled “The Role of the Media in Body Image Concerns Among Women.” A meta-analysis does not run one new experiment; it gathers the well-designed studies already done and asks what they say together.
They gathered 77 studies, with 141 effect sizes — work involving more than 15,000 participants, as the University of Wisconsin–Madison summary of the paper reported. Across those studies, exposure to media images depicting the thin-ideal body was related to greater body dissatisfaction, stronger internalisation of the thin ideal, and more eating-related concerns and behaviours. The mean effects were small to moderate, not magical — and that honesty matters.
Here is what that means for this belief. When you compare yourself to an ideal, you are rarely comparing yourself to a neighbour. You are comparing an unedited morning face to a selected, lit, and finished image — and then treating the gap as personal failure. The studies suggest the gap is, in part, manufactured by exposure itself. The more the ideal is fed to us, the worse the comparison tends to feel.
This is not an excuse, and the chapter never offers one. It is a correction. Stop comparing yourself to an ideal of physical beauty that is unrealistic — that is the book’s third Action Tip, and the research gives it a spine. You cannot win a comparison that was rigged before you entered it. You can only step out of it, deliberately, and choose a truer measure.
One honest note: a meta-analysis describes averages across studies, not a verdict on any one person’s morning. But the direction is consistent, and it matches the chapter’s claim: the standard is not a mirror. It is a feed.
Going Deeper: The Book’s Way Through
The chapter’s Action Tips are gentle because the wound is not gentle — but they are specific.
First, enhance what is already unique. You have some qualities, on the outside and the inside, that are unique and beautiful. Enhance those elements. Not invent a new person — enhance the one who is here.
Second, embrace both sides honestly. Embrace and accept your imperfections and your strengths. The chapter adds a line worth underlining: self-acceptance gives you confidence, and that makes you attractive in a way no product can bottle, because it changes how you carry yourself.
Third, stop the rigged comparison, as the research above confirms.
Fourth, remember where beauty is judged. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder — and, the book adds, in the person who carries it. You are one of the beholders of your own life. Your eye counts.
Later in the same book, in the chapter on being good with people, I placed a line attributed to Audrey Hepburn that belongs here too: “For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.” Notice her measures: seeing good, speaking kindness, walking as if accompanied. Not one of them can be bought, filtered, or taken away by age.
If Belief 3 is the one that keeps finding you in mirrors and photographs, it is one of 12 beliefs worked through in the book — each with Action Tips and a New Belief to practise: Let Go of Limiting Beliefs.
A Small Practice: Behold, Do Not Grade
Here is a short practice built on the chapter, for the next time you catch your own reflection.
When you see yourself — mirror, window, front camera — pause before the grading begins. The grading voice is fast: chin, skin, hair, weight, age. Interrupt it with beholding instead. Name, out loud if you can, one outer quality you will enhance rather than hide today, and one inner quality that is genuinely beautiful in you — patience, humour, loyalty, courage.
This is not a pep talk, and it is not pretending. Grading asks, do I pass? Beholding asks, what is here? The first question has only two answers, and you already know which one the belief prefers. The second has a hundred answers, and finding even one of them loosens the belief’s grip for that day.
Do it for a week of mirrors. Small, honest repetitions are how a new belief stops sounding like a slogan and starts sounding like you.
Try This Today
From the book, the New Belief for this chapter, exactly as written there:
“I am a beautiful person inside and out. I appreciate my inner beauty and allow others to appreciate me as well. I consciously focus on my strengths and will not give energy to my perceived weaknesses.”
Say it once today, slowly, in front of an actual mirror — not as a performance, but as a decision. Margaret Cho’s point was never that the words are magic. It was that she gave herself the power to say them. The divide between the beautiful and the ugly, she wrote, will cease to be — because we are all what we choose.
Choose, today, to be one of the beholders who sees you clearly.
Get the Book
Let Go of Limiting Beliefs works through 12 beliefs like this one — each with Action Tips and a New Belief you can practise the same day. It is available as an instant-download ebook at its launch price of $3.49 (reg. $6.99):
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New to Launch Your Genius? Start with my free book, 12 Amazing Life Lessons From Rumi — twelve timeless quotes and the lessons I found inside them, free to download at launchyourgenius.com. 🌿
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