The way you look tonight...

Beauty isn't only skin deep.*

“The Way You Look Tonight” is the title and a key lyric from a classic song written by Jerome Kern (music) and Dorothy Fields (lyrics). It was originally performed by Fred Astaire in the 1936 film Swing Time.

🎶 One of the most famous lines is:

Someday, when I'm awfully low,
When the world is cold,
I will feel a glow just thinking of you—
And the way you look tonight.

The song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936.

So what has this got to do with the Fogy blog today, you might ask?

Well, recently—yet again—there have been reports of people dying while undergoing cosmetic surgery.

While cosmetic procedures may be necessary in some extreme cases, it strikes me as one of those things that rarely justifies the risk or the cost.

So you didn’t make the list of the world’s most beautiful women or handsomest men. Is it really worth risking your life to turn yourself into something you’re not?

Of course it is, some would say.
People think:

1. I’m fat.

2. I’m ugly.

3. My nose looks wrong.

4. I look too old.

5. My face is out of shape.

6. My body isn’t what it used to be—especially after having a baby.

And the list goes on. We seem unable to accept the way we look, simply because society judges so much based on appearance.

We believe that beauty brings success. That being attractive will earn us respect. That someone will fall in love with us—maybe even buy us everything we’ve ever wanted—because of how we look.

And deep down, many of us still hope success will come without real effort. That it’s just too much work to become something meaningful, so we settle for trying to look the part instead.

But beneath all that plastic glory lies the gory truth: a shallow shell, and a forgotten self.

Perhaps it’s better to invest in becoming something real. To educate ourselves. To understand the world around us. To build true relationships—the kind that last.

Too few of us are willing to accept how we look when others are around. We carry a deep desire to be seen as better than we are. And maybe that’s because no one ever gets to see the real us anyway—because they’re too busy judging the way we look tonight.

And there we are.

The way you look tonight is when love sparkles and shines beyond the surface. When the true self, in a true relationship, matters most.

Wasn’t Stephen Hawking still beautiful when he died?

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