Smoke and mirrors, baby

Once again, I am calling myself out as a walking contradiction. I work in the beauty industry. My job is to use many, many products to make women look “better”. And I love it. I have always, always loved the way I can start the day with my regular old mug looking back at me in the mirror, and in the space of five minutes or up to two hours, depending on the occasion and my inclination to spend the time, I can transform myself.

The hours upon hours I dedicate to thinking up the ways I could physically improve myself, not only with makeup, but with dieting, exercise, hair dye, toying with the idea of botox or even breast augmentation is at the point of ridiculous. This attitude of not being good enough just the way we are is an appalling plague of our minds.

Where does it come from? Why, my bread and butter is a good place to start. The Beauty Industry (video):

Now, you can debate the possible hypocrisy of this advertisement till the cows come home with udder implants, and I probably won’t disagree with any sides of that argument (video):

However, Dove is not wrong. We really must get to our girls, make them realise not only that they are beautiful as they are, but most importantly, that there is much more to them than their appearance regardless. If we make that known in the first place, our job of keeping their innocence, their integrity and their self-esteem in tact will prevail.

Let me close by saying there is nothing wrong with wanting to look and feel beautiful. There are just a very many warped idea of what beautiful actually is, floating around out there like butterflies, but stinging like bees. And there is far too much emphasis placed on the importance of beauty for girls and women.

Read more of my nags here and here.

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