Tags

, , , , ,

Lights. Carols. Tinsel. People.

We are almost in the Christmas season and I’m looking for the perfect gift. The sales assistant is holding up two red glittering packages so I can make a choice.

Me: This one’s perfect, thank you! She is so beautiful and her best feature are her lips. She’ll love playing around with these glosses.

Sales assistant: Oh yeah, don’t you just hate her for it!

Me: *Surprised* No. Thanks bye!

This little scenario played itself out and as I walked away I remembered back to the days when I was a sales girl at the cosmetic counter. Competition wore a red lipped smile and friendships were often strategic- these were the cosmetic counter wars!

What struck me the most about this encounter was how normal it is for a woman to dislike another girl/ woman/ sister because she is beautiful. On the flip side, women can judge another for not being good looking enough- you’re damned if you are and you’re damned if you’re not.

The older I get and the more awareness I cultivate I have grown more thoughtful with my words. I guess that’s called getting wiser. Intention is why you say something means more than what you say. It’s the energy you choose to infuse your message with. An example is when someone smiles and gives you a compliment but really doesn’t mean it or likes you all that much. It leaves you somewhat confused. Paradoxically, the words you chose to speak says a lot about the kind of person you are. How we choose to define our reality is a process of creating our life. The labels or words we attach to everything and the emotional experiences we cultivate from that, shape your world as you know it.

My memory travelled back into my teen years. Troublesome for many reasons and one of them was because I had low self esteem- not that I was aware. I believed I wasn’t pretty enough without make up. That’s normal right? My mother never wore much, mostly on special occasions. I’ve now followed suit and even though her own self-esteem needed work, I learnt most of my beliefs from teen girl magazines. Bombarded from ages 13 years and up with “beauty advice” designed to stifle any self-worth and filled with products to emulate an image of beauty.

When I was 16 I started my first martial arts class, Muay Thai at a boxing gym. It was a men’s gym but I did the women’s classes. Just before the class was about to end the guys would come in and watch, which always put me on edge. I kept to myself and remembered thinking these exact thoughts “Arrrgh they’re staring! Why are they looking? I have no make up on!”

I felt shy and incomplete without it. Looking back I realised it was my lack of confidence and make up was a way to hide my true self from the world, which I believed wasn’t good enough. It doesn’t matter how much make-up you wear, it’s why you wear it that makes the difference. I was fine without it, I’m still fine without it and when I wear it, it’s for the right reasons.

Since then I would put my self-esteem through personal tests. I’d intentionally wear less make up, especially on a first date and purposefully not follow fashion trends unless I really liked the style. I’d do anything to break habitual and negative behavioural patterns and let go of anything that wasn’t really me. That self work will continue for a life time. I love shedding the layers of inauthenticity. I especially avoided the chemical infused beauty branded products and still do.

The moment I discovered a wider meaning and appreciation of beauty, it opened up my acceptance to my own. I chose to see beauty in myself and others without judgement and excessive preening or obsessive ritual. I gave up reading women’s magazines- one of the best things I ever did for my self-esteem. Giving up means they were somewhat addictive. Any habitual behaviour is addictive in its nature. Your thought processes are as addictive as your cup of coffee (or tea!) in the morning.

The man in my life no longer had input into how I felt about myself or what image I upheld. I stopped defining what was beautiful according to another’s standards and allowed life to show me beauty as it is, living, breathing, organic beings and certainly not perfect. Crinkled, wrinkled or fuller bodied beauty is not limited to youth and slenderness. I’ve met many women who are older and beautiful but they still don’t see it. I’ve met very good looking women whose beauty faded very quickly after knowing them.

Beauty is…

The sparkle in your sisters eyes, when she smiles and when she cries.

It’s the sound of the children laughing while playing under the sprinkler.

Beauty is the way birds sing every dusk and every dawn and the pattern in which fish swim.

It’s the colours of the rainbow and their reflection in an insect wing.

Beauty is in the moment

when your whole life changes and only you can pick yourself up

Again.

It’s the way the light shines off your hair

and the way women walk and men stare.

It grows in your friends smile over the cups of tea you share.

Beauty is myth, it is primal, it is ancient.

You’ll never be more beautiful than you are in this moment.

~

These images are a collection of a few beauties some young, some old, famous and not. I tried to vary this album as much as possible and show examples of beauty across all cultures. I hope it supports the ideas I share in my post.

If you widen the definition of what you believe to be true, you can redefine your world and how you see yourself in it. Beauty is many things, it uses all the senses and more in fact true beauty is indefinable and is not limited to time or aesthetic perfection. That’s one ideal of beauty. Go to a different part of the world and their ideals will be very different. Travel to a different time in your mind and beauty takes on a different image but DON’T forget what you learnt when you come back to live in this society.

There are a million subliminal messages being absorbed by you every time you watch T.V or music clips, listen to the radio and flip through beauty magazines. There is a reason millions of dollars goes into marketing and advertising products. Even if you think it’s not affecting you, it IS. That’s the power of an image. Words are a powerful force in your own life but do you realise most words are attached to images too? I’ve written about this before but have only touched on it.

I’ll give you an example, take a deep breath and don’t think of an elephant in a pink tutu. Did you? That’s how the mind thinks in pictures. We each assign a picture to most words. Even though my instruction was to NOT think about the elephant in a pink tutu the mind saw it. That’s also an example of how sometimes the mind works separately to your will and why meditation is a good practise to create some distance. What image do you create when you think of Goddess? Or of Witch? It’s unique to you but it is affected by the words and images you have been exposed to. Choose which media you expose yourself to wisely. Only the ego thinks it’s smart enough not to be affected. If we weren’t affected by all that then we wouldn’t be consuming at the rate we are. We wouldn’t have as much narcissism or self-doubt as there is and there certainly wouldn’t be as many beauty products on the shelf. It is an estimated 50 billion dollar industry.

I think beauty grows in a person as your connection with them does. How you look at your sister, mother or daughter is an example. That is if you get along with them 😉 Good looks are not what makes a beauty. I see beauty as the essence of a person, which is partly primal, mythical and ancient. Cleopatra was known for her beauty, which wasn’t the standard in her time yet is now mythical in its status. The word beauty in Russian is called Krasata and is derived from the Slavic word red, Krasna. Possibly because red was considered the most beautiful colour and is associated with blood, birth, death, resurrection, fruit, lips, passion, power, garnet, fire, danger, love, sex and life. These words and images conjure up a powerful but very real force of nature. There is nothing preened, polished or that pretty about it. It is procreative life force at its most raw. Red and pink (the diluted form of red) packaging is used often in advertising  because deep down in someway we all psychologically respond to the colour red (all colours really). In some way we are mystified by beauty and that’s where dissecting it, perfecting it and labelling it ruins the magic.

There is a whole spectrum of beauty available all over the world from hot to cool, simple or exotic and earthy to ethereal. When I observe the natural world, I don’t see animals going against nature to achieve perfection. They are already perfect and they know it. They don’t judge each other for how they look, rather they have a natural acceptance of the world around them and their place in it. Our intelligence or perhaps ego on the other hand has pushed us in an opposing direction and it’s not only in our “modern” society. I think it’s been that way for a long, long time.

You are normal and beautiful and wonderful.

Love