Each of us should use our free will to choose how we want to present ourselves to the world. The author of the Problem with Pretty states point-blank that “Self-care is resistance.”
The guide is written in the right convincing way to expose how the majority of American women internalize shame when others (usually White men in the patriarchy who call the shots) are judging whether you and I are pretty or ugly.
My story: For too long to count I was thinking about my time in college in the 1980s and the weird clothes and garish makeup I wore. Imitating the face of Siouxsie Sioux, the lead singer of the Banshees, I slathered on a smoky eye, dark lipstick, and crimson blush.. Every day.
You could not see my real face back then. Luckily when I turned 35 all traces of that makeup were gone. I simply stopped using the war paint. And maybe using the word war before paint is apt. Not only was I fighting that the notion of traditional beauty was the only standard or should be a standard to begin with:
Too I was hiding under that mask because I was a rebel back then. It was the 1980s–a decade of extremes. Shoulder pads so big a plane could take off from them. Outsized ambition in the era of Wall Street wunderkinds.
My one regret about The Problem with Pretty is the Truth. Powell-Hicks corroborates the way things have been for too long. Using research and her own first-person account. Again I’m always impressed with motivational books that use memoir to tell a story.
Powell-Hicks details how when she attended an HBCU in Alabama the other Black women students thought she was too thin. A size 4 the author wanted to lose weight! It was the firs time she realized that a Black woman could be “thick” and pretty. Having lived in Orange County all her life before then. There she experienced racism based on her looks. A factor in why she internalized beauty shame.
In the coming blog entry I’m going to talk about my first-person experience with beauty unbound. To illustrate that you and I should not waste five minutes caring about pleasing men with how we look.
Yes, the time has come to choose how you and I want to present ourselves to the world. “They” might not like our newfound confidence in our bodies that enables us to resist feeling ashamed.
That’s O.K. I for one wasn’t satisfied with the men on offer in my life who revolved in and out of restaurant doors on the endless first dates that were duds.
Coming up: This blogger’s expose of her own alternative approach to pretty.
Left of the Dial 