Beyond Beautiful: A Practical Guide to Being Happy, Confident, and You in a Looks-Obsessed World

by Anuschka Rees

“Relaxing your hair is like being in prison. You’re caged in. Your hair rules you. You didn’t go running with Curt today because you don’t want to sweat out this straightness. You’re always battling to make your hair do what it wasn’t meant to do.”

According to some estimates, 70 percent of women in West African countries, such as Ghana and Nigeria, use them regularly; almost one-third of Indian women use skin-lightening products every day.

So worried do some parents get about a daughter’s dark skin ruining her chances for matrimony that they are willing to spend what little family money there is to buy skin lighteners for her to apply.”

In fact, it is not helpful at all when people point to someone like Halle Berry or Julianne Moore as evidence that women over a “certain” age can be attractive, too, because it does nothing but highlight—once again—that in order to be beautiful you have to look young for your age.

Because not only do we rarely see actresses over thirty-five star in major movie roles, but we are also barely exposed to stories of women over thirty-five at all, no matter the medium!

True....

“Youth and beauty are not accomplishments, they’re the temporary happy by-products of time and/or DNA. Don’t hold your breath for either.” Carrie Fisher

as women we’ve been told all our lives that our youth is the only time that really matters, the only time we get to do fun stuff and experience the world. Time is running out.

“What we need is to literally come together, make friends of all ages, and talk about how we feel. If younger women can look past the ‘She has wrinkles, I don’t want to be like her’ bias that we’ve all internalized from a lifetime of being brainwashed by the media, and actually talk to older women, they will tell you that they love being the age they are, and how aging brings confidence and clarity. As a younger woman you can be like, “ ‘Guess what? I’m going to age into this power, and this sense of self-knowledge.’ ”

“I’ve been using eye cream since I was a teen. I’m thinking about getting into face yoga and I have also considered Botox or face acupuncture for the lines between my brows.”

“I’m worried that I won’t be able to accept the changes my body will go through when I age, because I had a really hard time accepting the cellulite that I got in my early twenties. I hope that by then I will have cultivated a more relaxed attitude.”

“I’m sad about growing and looking older. Seems I’ve only just begun to make peace with how I look, and now it’s all changing for the worse.”

For many of us, how we feel about the way we look has become the deciding factor for how we feel about ourselves, our worth as a person, our life, everything.

If that seems a little weird or exhausting, remember: you are already commenting on yourself negatively all the time. What you are trying to do is to simply be a little fairer to yourself by paying equal attention to your good traits when you exhibit them.

But body image is a big deal, because it’s a question of freedom. Yes, a lack of confidence affects what you see in the mirror, but what’s way worse is that it convinces you that you can’t do things because of the way your body looks—wearing shorts, for example, or going out without makeup that covers your acne, or dancing, or speaking in front of a big crowd.

Think about some of the people in your life whose opinion is important to you. Your friends, your relatives, perhaps your coworkers or boss: would they judge other women for having the specific physical aspect you feel self-conscious about?

Thing is, some people would

The trouble is, of course, that much—no, scratch that—the majority of what you see on social media is anything but candid and everyday. There are filters, lighting tricks, and Photoshop.

every third photo taken by a millennial is a selfie.

Wow, impressive. Not true for me though (anymore, if ever) thank god.

Lindsay and Lexie Kite call it selfie-objectification: “[Selfies] are a clear reflection of exactly what girls and women have been taught to be their entire lives: images to be looked at. Carefully posed, styled, and edited images of otherwise dynamic human beings for others to gaze upon and comment on.”

But the more you see a version of yourself that doesn’t really exist, the more foreign the woman in the mirror will feel to you and the less satisfied you’ll become with her.”

Remind yourself of the purpose behind your selfie: are you trying to prove to everyone how hot you are, or are you trying to capture a great moment and express yourself?

Meaning. Based on the picture, what can you really infer about this person and her life? Does the shot of this gorgeous lady with ripped abs and capped shoulders mean her life is nothing but sunshine and rainbows? Or does it simply mean she spends a lot of time in the gym and knows how to pose, but probably still goes through the same ups and downs as everyone else?

“When I developed an eating disorder at seventeen, I used images of girls with thigh gaps and thin, ringed fingers in luxe settings—mined from Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, and others—to spur my self-starvation. I kept seeing them in my feeds (ironic language there, huh?), wondering when I’d feel as pretty as they appeared to feel.”

“I’ve dabbled in blogging and have tried to grow my own following. I can’t help but notice those beautiful girls with large followings and very little to say. I’m willing to bet that if I looked more like them that I would be much more successful in that realm.”

Like many women, I’ve always thought of my body as a work-in-progress. I was always on some sort of plan: to lose weight, to maintain my weight, to tone up (whatever that means), to grow some body part, shrink another. Periods where I’d eat without any guidelines were “breaks” until I’d eventually get “back on track.” My New Year’s resolutions always included an appearance-related goal.

firmly established “healthy eating” as yet another box to tick to qualify as a respectable woman.

Because just like there is nothing shameful or embarrassing about not always going for the healthiest option in other areas of life (like not getting eight hours of sleep, forgetting to floss, or drinking margaritas on the weekend), there is nothing shameful or embarrassing about eating a box of cereal for dinner once in a while.

You think about food all the time and count down the hours until you’re allowed to eat again.

You’ve already broken the diet, so what does it matter? Better make the most of it while you can.

The next morning you’re mad at yourself—at your body for producing all these unhelpful cravings and at your brain for having no discipline.

“I grew up in Australia but hated going to the beach because I didn’t want anyone to see my body. I have been on weight-loss programs on and off since I was twelve. It’s always something that’s in the back of my mind—this idea that if I lost weight and had a perfect body then my life would be easier and better.”

“I often fall into cycles where I hype myself up to eat as little as possible and skip every meal I can without anyone noticing.”

“I’m always on a program of some sort. I’ve struggled with binge eating, so I’m often on the hamster wheel of the bingeing/restricting cycle.”

For years I was a slave to my bathroom scale: I would step on it every morning, sometimes several times a day, then hold my breath and wait for the little numbers to pop up, to tell me if my day was going to be a good one or not. A lower number than I expected would make me feel ecstatic. A higher number could ruin my whole day.

Studies have shown that the language used on “fitspiration” social media accounts is often barely distinguishable from that used on pro-anorexia websites.

In the end, #fitnessgoals is just a euphemism for #appearancegoals.

Now, if you love running, barre, and whatever “abs and booty programs” entail, all of that is great, but if you don’t, then you’ll need to constantly motivate yourself to stick to your program. And guess what your motivation will be? Yep, all of your physical shortcomings and how much you want to “fix” them. When you hit a wall in your workout, you’ll push yourself to keep going by thinking about how much you hate your jiggly thighs. When it’s rainy outside, you’ll convince yourself to put on your running shoes by fantasizing about how great you’ll feel once your stomach is flat and your upper arms less flabby.

That type of hyperfocus on your body acts like a magnifying glass. You’ll eventually know every inch of your body so well that you lose sight of it. Your “flaws” appear more prominent and tiny changes seem major. Every move in the right direction gives you a dopamine hit that leaves you craving more. You may find yourself staring at the mirror for minutes at a time trying to spot “progress,” use every shop window as an opportunity to inspect your new form, or take pictures of yourself to get a better sense of what you look like.

My thin clothes were colorful and had cool patterns and interesting cuts. They were fun to wear, reflected my personality, and made me want to get extra creative with accessories, hairstyles, and makeup.

Relatable... My thin vlothes are more fashionable, unique, cool

“I sometimes fantasize about what I’d wear if I had my dream body, and I even put clothes in the cart online. I’m not sure why I do this; I guess I like torturing myself.”

“Just make sure you get black or dark blue ones to make your legs look smaller. And wear that with something white on top to balance it out,”

Yep. I remember learning these rules and thinking like this around middle school...and i still do. Subconsciously or consciously.

when really the goal is the exact opposite: it blatantly promotes the idea that the first and foremost objective of clothes is to manipulate, hide, or minimize your body.

And they were all in total agreement about it, none of them questioning whether looking skinny should even be such a concern to them—as if it’s just a no-brainer, just something that you do as a female.

All of that discomfort costs energy and keeps us from being able to fully enjoy the moment.

I could barely pay attention because I was so focused on trying to shift my weight in an effort to relieve the burning pain in the balls of my feet at least a tiny bit.

Relate to this though just with chronic pain stuff ha

You start seeing your body as something you have the power to optimize, rather than something that is just there. You’re opening the floodgates to envisioning all the things that could be.

But if more and more women sport perfectly sculpted noses, ultra-smooth foreheads in their fifties, or perky boobs after pregnancy, it undoubtedly creates a new baseline and pushes our already unrealistic beauty ideals even further through the roof.

“I’ve had five surgeries in my life—all were to save my life. I feel horrible that so many women would go under general anesthesia to ‘improve’ themselves.”

“As much as I agree that it’s your body and you can do what you want, we also don’t make choices in a vacuum, and cosmetic surgery becoming a new standard for beauty seems like a self-perpetuating, highly profitable system. So while I don’t judge any one woman for getting cosmetic surgery, I’m very critical of the overall system and the subtle ways that we push women toward getting cosmetic surgery and really downplay the risks.”

We can get mad at magazine airbrushing all we want, but as long as the people who shape our idea of beauty systematically model a standard that cannot be achieved without major surgery, tens of thousands of dollars, and the willingness (and time) to endure pain, discomfort, and immobility, our collective body image will remain in big trouble.