Title Tuesday: Your Own Beautiful

Welcome to  Title Tuesday, my favorite day of the week! This day is dedicated to book suggestions, news, cartoons, and reviews. I write this portion of my blog because I am a big believer in the motivational speaker Charlie Jones' quote which says, "You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” I try to meet as many new people as possible and to read everything I can. This is my way of sharing that information with you. You can see a visual summary of the books I have reviewed for both adults and children over on my Facebook page. If you are interested in understanding my rating system for books you can read my Book Review Explanation here and What I Believe here. If you want to check out what I am currently reading or what I want to read next, friend me on Goodreads!

I was excited to receive a copy of Your Own Beautiful with Advice and Inspiration from Chelsea Crockett. Crockett became a YouTube sensation for her makeup, life, and style videos. She is very popular in Christian circles because she often mentions her faith a bit here and there. However, I can honestly say that I was sincerely disappointed with this book for a couple of reasons and I will list those out here:

• If the book is about being your OWN kind of beautiful, why then would you try so hard to look exactly like everyone else? 
• In a culture saturated with sex and digitally enhanced gorgeous women, it is easy to feel less than beautiful.  Why then would her parents allow a young girl to spend literally HOURS in front of a mirror and a computer screen to make and create this idea that you need to be physically beautiful? (She posted her first YouTube video at just 13 years old.)
• Simply throwing random Bible verses (OUT OF CONTEXT) into your writing does not make your writing biblical. 
• THE ENTIRE PORTION ON DATING in this book was very questionable. 
• She talks about modesty, but she simply does not live it out. Aside from some VERY sexualized pictures in the book, modesty isn't just what you wear it is an attitude. If you are taking a bazillion selfies everyday to post up, it doesn't seem like modesty is actually very high priority at all. 

Overall, I give this book a measly C-.  It seems as though this book is a marketing ploy. It is something put on the shelves that mothers will buy for their preteen daughters to help them navigate the perils of middle and high school. However, it falls markedly short of helping to make a person truly beautiful. Instead of reaching for Christ, Crockett reaches for a "peachy blush".