Seeing Beauty in New Places

This week Gerber (the baby food company) did something awesome. They chose Lucas,  the beautiful baby above, to be their Gerber Baby of 2018. Lucas is the first Gerber Baby to have Down Syndrome. In making this choice, Gerber helped revolutionize our standards of beauty.

The Gerber Baby has long been seen as the quintessentially beautiful baby. If someone wanted to say a baby looked like the cutest, most perfect baby there could possibly be they would say he or she “looks like the Gerber Baby!”

To choose a child with a disability as the Gerber Baby helps us all to see beauty in new ways. Our culture often has very narrow confines of what is considered beautiful. But there are so many ways to be beautiful. Sometimes we just need to see with new eyes. How advertising chooses to represent beauty can have an effect on what we see as beautiful.

As the mother of a beautiful child with special needs, it means so much to me that we as a culture come to see beauty in more expansive ways. I truly believe that when we open our eyes to all the beauty that surrounds us, we will be astounded.

It has made me wonder how can we all begin to see more beauty in this world? Where might it be hiding right in front of us (or inside of us)?