Beyond Beautiful : A Poem for Women
Aarshia Sen’s poem, challenges us to look Beyond Beautiful, honoring the brilliance and resilience of women whose minds and power have shaped our world far more than appearances.
Beyond Beautiful: A Poem for Women
Today I owe an apology
to every woman
I called beautiful
before I called her brilliant.
As if the curve of a smile
mattered more
than the sharpness of her mind.
As if the world
has not already spent centuries
teaching women
that their faces are worth more
than their voices.
I said beautiful
before resilient,
before restless with ambition,
before tired from fighting doors
that should have been open.
I forgot that women
have been thinkers in rooms
that refused to hear them,
builders of futures
they were told not to imagine.
So this is my apology—
not for seeing beauty,
but for stopping there.
Because women
are not meant
to be admired like sunsets.
They are storms,
they are fire,
they are the hands
that rebuild the world.
And next time
I speak of a woman,
I will start
where I should have begun:
with her mind,
her work,
her power.
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