BEING ELEGANT

 I have always wanted to be elegant.  Always wanted perfect hair, perfect skin, and I hate to admit it, but I love clothes -(for anyone reading that doesn't know this already).  And tell me, who doesn't fall for those ads about makeup~ you know the one's that say, when you rotate your hand just so with their product - you will look 10 years younger. That new haircut will make you look just like the girl in the picture and that new outfit will take pounds off - even if it is a size bigger than the last time you were out shopping.
I tend to get carried away sometimes with how I appear - wanting to be elegant and all.  When looking elegant is different than being elegant.  Coco Chanel said, "Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress, rather, elegance in personal style requires only that a woman major in the classics:  comfort, color, shape, fabric, value, and appropriateness.  Elegance means that clothes never eclipse the woman within but permit her inner light to shine."  This statement gets me down to what I really want to write about. 
I am surrounded by elegant women.  Women who are comforatable with themselves, who value themselves and what they do, who don't care about color or shape.  Their inner light shines constantly. 
To me, this is true elegance.  I don't live in a big city, just a simple neighborhood.  These elegant women are my friends, neighbors, sisters, daughters, mothers, grandmothers.  Lovely women, every one.  They are kind and good and have talents and are creative.  They share and serve and above all, they love. 
I think most of them like a day at the salon and a new dress. Who doesn't?  But none of them need it to be elegant. They all ready are.

They are simple, graceful, well-bred, they never over-power, but always strike the right note.  They are self assured.  Beauty, grace and elegance cannot be bought.  It is attained by how a person lives.  It has nothing to do with makup, hair or clothes.  It is letting the inner light shine through. 
These women have it!