Beauty Unbound

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.

The Problem with Pretty

The new June book The Problem with Pretty I checked out of the library.

The author has a PhD in Health Psychology with a focus on perception. In the nonfiction guide she rightly asserted that it’s often white men in control in the patriarchy who judge you and me as either pretty or ugly.

It’s far better to engage in self-adoration at our own hands and hearts. Instead of waiting for or wanting others to stamp us as beautiful.

Th real curiosity is that I didn’t ever think about my body except when I weighed 138 pounds and wanted to lose weight. I lost about 20 pounds over the decades. Today I’m OK with the number on the scale.

What interests me more is having the “functional fitness” to carry home a 25-pound tote bag of groceries or a tote bag full of gifts from a local boutique.

The curious reality is that I didn’t think about whether I was pretty–either in my eyes or in other people’s eyes at all when I was younger. It wasn’t until I turned 50 that I looked in the mirror and realized I was photogenic.

Yet even I face with my pretty face ghosting on OKCupid and scammers on Plenty of Fish.

Only being thin and pretty ironically guarantees that sleazy men will come after you. As well when you’re thin and pretty and INTELLIGENT men aren’t interested in you. They want you to open your mouth to kiss not speak.

As it stands, I’m not proud of how I look. It’s an accident of genes at birth. Nothing I fought for and won.

Those of us whose mother is 88 and still alive and kicking. When she has wrinkles like rivers and purple mottled skin. Should not care about our looks but our longevity.

What good is the plastic surgery if we’re not eating well and breaking a sweat? The Grim Reaper when they come looking for us is not going to be fooled by a pretty face into thinking it’s not our time to enter the pearly gates.

The author asserts that women who have a connection to their ethnicity and take pride in their heritage are immune from internalizing the pervasive beauty shame that all too often plagues us.

Buy The Problem with Pretty or check it out of the library. It was published this month in June and has two 5-star reviews on Amazon already.

CBK: A Life in Fashion

I checked the book above out of the library. I wasn’t charmed by the narrative. As I would’ve liked to hear about Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s humanitarian efforts if she engaged in any. I wasn’t enamored of the focus on her beauty actually.

One detail that I took in positively was the authors reference to how CBK was naturally attuned to choosing and wearing clothes that fit her body.

I wrote in here years ago that the motto of a woman’s fifties should be: “There’s nothing I won’t wear, and I’ll try anything once.”

After reading CBK: A Life in Fashion I would like to follow up that assertion with a codicil: We should wear the items we feel good in. And I think it’s true that we’ll feel good in the items that fit and flatter. Without having to tug or tussle with a skirt or other clothing item.

In the Science of Fitness magazine an article referred to how women in order to feel good about our bodies should dress in our favorite clothes that we like to wear and feel good in.

Every wardrobe should have at least 5 of these outfits that are winners if you ask me. An outfit we can choose on those days. A day where we don’t want the attention to be on us. A day where we need extra confidence. And so on.

CBK wore black almost always. She was also drawn to beige. Beige. No kidding.

The rule allegedly stated that an older woman should buy a gray cashmere sweater. No way for this blogger!

I think finding your seasonal colors and wearing those colors that you look good in will brighten your mood not just your face. I happen to be a Winter by the way. My favorite color to wear is hot pink.

Though I say it’s OK to dress in your favorite colors–seasonal color theory be damned! I simply don’t like to dress in neutrals like ivory, beige, camel, gray, brown, and mustard.

Come on really–how many of us really look good in a mustard sweater?

I’d say to check CBK: A Life in Fashion out of the library. It’s an easy, breezy read that should be accepted for what it is: A joyful ode to a woman who cheered up and cheered on the people she worked with at Calvin Klein and interacted with in the designer stores she shopped at.

I say to not discount reading “fluff” as even I’ve stopped reading hard-hitting social science nonfiction. I recommend checking out of the library books on self-help (150s), beauty (646s), business (650s), and design (747s)

Perhaps reading CBK: A Life in Fashion could be a momentary escape on a rainy day.

I’m all for a different kind of entertainment like readings books, listening to music, and making art. Instead of hours-on-end social media scrolling.

Allora. Now Then. Let’s have fun this summer.

Harper’s Bazaar Beauty Issue 2026

Harper’s Bazaar is back with their perennial Beauty issue. Beauty in all its vibrant individual forms is not to be discounted as a worthy tonic for the ugly in society like war and ongoing injustice.

What can be defined as a work of beauty is vast. There is beauty in self-acceptance. There is beauty in overcoming a hardship. There is beauty in feeling what we feel.

All around us beauty exists.

There is beauty in going through what we experience in life as our lives are not lived in vain.

There’s no shame in anyone’s game. It’s time to recognize as beautiful what gives each of us joy.

That could be watching a video of a kitten. Or having a caffe latte at 3:00 in the afternoon. Or buying a pair of whimsical socks at a local boutique in our neighborhood

All around us beauty exists. I think everyone should install “I Am Light” the song by India.Arie in their iTunes library or on a device. The vocalist gets at how she is not her physical attributes or any of the markers that can be seen.

India.Arie croons that “I Am Light” and like her we are all light. We are light for each other in the darkness.

There’s beauty in our differentness which is a gift we give each other.

God did not stamp human beings out with a cookie cutter. Right. We are all beautiful.

Life is Beauty Full. Case closed.

I think I’ve written this all before so must sound like a broken record.

National Lipstick Day

Today July 29 is National Lipstick Day.

Last week I ordered with a 50 percent off code a matte pink Lancome Rouge tube.

The answer to the question: I won’t leave the house without: is lipstick. As an older woman I favor shades like red and violet and deep not pastel pink.

I firmly think you can face the world with your face even when you don’t apply a full face of makeup.

After a friend told me that I don’t need to wear foundation I gave up using it except for headshots.

On an ordinary day it’s a swipe of lipstick and a stripe of eyeliner for me. My favorite is a Sephora collection aubergine eyeliner.

Little touches can inspire awe. I recommend reading the book Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness.

We don’t need to charge a costly vacation that we can’t afford to pay off to rekindle from stress. Often the secret to our sanity is right nearby.

Lipstick isn’t the only colorful confidence booster and cheer inducer. Bringing home fresh flowers to keep in a vase on our dining table can elevate how we feel. Colorful flowers give off a positive vibration too.

The cost of replenishing a wilted bouquet with new blooms shouldn’t deter those of us who can afford the indulgence. Really I make the case for figuring out how to find the extra cash to buy flowers even on a lower income.

Happy National Lipstick Day to Everyone!

Everything Beautiful Book

I checked the book above out of the library. The copyright date is 2022.

To encourage followers to buy the book I will quote from it:

“We want to keep hold because beauty is so often a porch light in the darkness.”

The author ends the book by talking about a new beauty that we define for ourselves. It is a form of self-care. We’re no longer trying to fit into the standard mold of beauty that those in power with authority have dictated to us as being the only form.

To end the book Ella Frances Sanders tells us:
“The new beauty is radical because it allows us to love ourselves in spite of being told not to.”

Shame thrives in secrecy, silence, and judgment. What if each us could stand in the truth that we’re beautiful precisely because of our imperfections?

What if our greatest struggle was the very thing that is beautiful because we emerge wiser, stronger, and more capable of loving ourselves afterward?

Seeing Our Beauty

My stance is that each of us needs to have a loving response to ourselves when we look in the mirror. At 60 years old I like what I see in the mirror. After too long staring at my face microscopically in the bathroom mirror and having a critical view of the skin on my face.

What changed and why do I no longer care about this? I’ve seen an 87-year-old woman with no makeup on her face wrinkles all over and a few extra pounds. She did not resort to $100 face creams or a costly facelift or drastic diet.

My ethic is to frown on going under the knife or on getting fillers and using filters.

The fact that material objects like designer clothes and a Birkin bag are praiseworthy, and our physical pulchritude has always mattered more in society than our health and happiness is whacked.

I feel for Linda Evangelista who has joined the 50+ club. Beauty in traditional terms is often an accident of birth. Such beauty can open doors. Only what’s behind those velvet ropes is often not the best environment for feeling great about ourselves.

Under the strobe lights it can feel good when others stroke you. Wake up in the morning to frizzy tangled hair and the remnants of yesterday’s makeup and you’re back at the drawing board needing more affirmation.

Far better it is for each of us however old we are today to look in the mirror and like what we see. This is the first step in liking others.

Perhaps a dose of listening to the Billy Joel song “Just the Way You Are” is in order. He didn’t want his lover to go changing. The singer liked her just the way she was.

I say it’s time—it’s always the right time—to do what’s harder. It might have been the natural response to be harsh on ourselves.

Let’s take a beat to see the whole picture—that is the whole photo—instead of picking apart each part of our face or body. Find one thing we like about our body. Play that up.

The Beauty issue of Harper’s Bazaar this month has a playlist of songs you can download to listen to. The songs talk about being beautiful.

Harper’s Bazaar Beauty Issue

On the cover of the Beauty issue of Harper’s Bazaar this month is supermodel Linda Evangelista’s quote: “Beauty is Earned.”

It’s not a given that women feel beautiful about ourselves.

The fat on supermodel Linda Evangelista’s skin hardened after she used the Coolsculpting technique to tighten her body that was getting older and out of shape.

No longer beautiful in the way society always valued her to be the damaging side effect of Coolsculpting sent Evangelista into talk therapy.

Too sad it is that ordinarily women put everyone else’s needs first or worse cater to others instead of our own health wealth and happiness.

In a coming blog entry, I’ll talk about Christine Platt’s insight shared in her new newsletter about how each of us should act “self-ish.”

Too often supermodels are only human like we are. They travel the globe on photo shoots and spend countless hours racking up air miles. Even when closer to home their schedules are tightly packed and could be frantic.

Having to smile at the camera when inside you’re insecure about the very body everyone loves to look at.

Evangelista wrote that no one in her history of modeling told her the exact words: “You’re beautiful.” It was always a comment on how the clothes looked on her.

Evangelista vowed to tell her son and everyone else: “You’re beautiful” every chance she gets today.

There should be no judgment here about whether Evangelista took care of her health all these years.

In the next blog entry, I’ll talk more about looking in the mirror and liking what we see.

Of course everyone living on earth is beautiful. There’s no doubt about this. We can start by telling our loved ones and friends that they are beautiful.

A Colorful Way of Living

I recommend that everyone buy and read the book above. I checked it out of the library and read it in 3 hours.

The cofounder of the Vera Bradley lifestyle brand wrote the guide. Round about 12 years ago I bought the Vera Bradley messenger bag seen in the second photo.

I will quote from the book in this review:

“Look for ways to put beauty where it doesn’t exist,” Vera would say.

“That very colorful way of thinking evolved into one of Vera Bradley’s driving principles–We create beautiful solutions.”

What beautiful solutions–to living our lives; to how we connect with each other; to what we think and feel–can we design and refine?

Creating memorable experiences like the Vera Bradley team does is the second way to craft happiness.

How about for a dinner party use cloth napkins and a ceramic pitcher? Change the tablecloth and use a different centerpiece each season.

Little touches can make a big difference.

There’s beauty everywhere if we open our eyes to see it.

Today more than ever in America it’s time to do what I coined: Take a B.I.T.E. out of life–to express Beauty Individuality Truth and Empathy.

A colorful way of living is the best way of living if you ask me. Accepting and embracing all colors and creeds of everyone living on earth.

The cofounders of Vera Bradley had an Aha moment about designing colorful bags after a layover in an airport when they rued the drab neutral colors of the luggage women carried.

Vera Bradley was Barbara Bradley’s fashion model mother.

With $500 in seed money they built a brand worth half a billion today.

Per Barbara Bradley everyone should Be Nice. If being nice is good enough for her I’ll take this from other people too.

We should not be afraid to show our True Colors. We can do this in style with a Vera Bradley handbag.

Cheers! to living colorful and loving colorful and laughing colorful.

My About Face

I figured something out when I was 55. That’s round about the time I checked out of the library a book detailing how attractive people earn more money on the job.

Since the 1990s I’ve read that women who wear makeup on the job earn more.

It begs the question: Does a pretty face get promoted even though they shirk doing work–over a plain face that works hard.

At one job I thought that if I could wear a full face of makeup on that job I’d get a better performance review.

Whatever. I couldn’t muster the ability to wear foundation blush eyeshadow–the works–after this. No longer thinking that I should spend my whole life trying to impress people.

I gave up wearing a full face of makeup after that. An old friend told me years later: “You don’t need to wear foundation.” I took her word for it.

For years so far I’ve applied only eyeliner and lipstick every day. I will leave the house only if I’m wearing lipstick. I’ll use mascara instead of eyeliner at times. There’s always lipstick.

A bathroom mirror should come with a warning like at a fire scene: Stand back 500 feet. You don’t view a work of art only five inches in front of the canvas. And every human being is a work of art.

The thing that clinched not caring about outward beauty / seeking a fountain of youth / hope in a jar was acting as a caregiver.

At 86 you won’t fool the Grim Reaper even if you look like you’re 40. If you’re 60 or older and fixated on youth that’s likely understandable in the context of mortality.

I’ll end here with what I’ve learned: How you look can take you only so far.

At 59 I can tell you that the sooner we abandon the low self-esteem the better off we’ll be. If we’re not good enough in the eyes of others no matter how good or compassionate or beautiful we are (and we are!) that’s their issue not ours.

Plus I think using an iPhone camera makes everyone look beautiful : )

What do you say? Isn’t it time to lighten up our faces?

The Benefit brand white tote bag gets at this in pink letters:

Laughter is the best cosmetic.

I think a sense of humor looks good on everyone.