True Beauty and The Allure of Cosmetics
If you want to totally transform yourself into a different creature for Halloween, you may need a whole lot of makeup, but looking beautiful every day doesn’t require a bunch of cosmetics.
Convincing the shopping public that they simply won’t look any good without a wide variety of creams and powders is a multi-billion dollar racket. However, if everyone knew the truth (and acted upon it) the beauty aid business would go completely bankrupt. To explain why, we need to ask ourselves, “What really makes people look sexy?”
Confidence
I’m not talking about boastfully swaggering around in a pantomime of assertiveness and arrogance. I’m talking about the real kind of calm self-assurance that is earned through challenging and impressing ourselves repeatedly. I think we’ve all known people in our lives who may not look so hot in a photo, but in person, they have a certain something … a magnetism, a quiet sense of self possession, that draws us to them even more than someone who looks like they hopped out of a magazine.
Fitness
You can’t get the beauty of fitness by starving yourself, because you’d just look gaunt and weak. You can’t get beautiful fitness from surgery or from anything dispensed from a pharmacy. When someone is really fit, they have the kind of health that can only come from eating natural food and exercising regularly. Look at all of the top athletes from any active sport. Check out the olympians from every part of the globe. They all have more in common than their unique strength and skill, they also demonstrate complete gorgeousness across the board.
This summer I discovered a concept that really resonated with me. It’s so simple that it was a bit crazy that I didn’t think of it before, but it has changed the way I look at food.
Food is energy. If we want good energy to come out, we must only put good energy in.
Greasy fries, processed meats, and beer or soda pop cannot possibly maintain the kind of beauty, health and vigour that we want to feel. Raw veggies and fruit, plus plenty of water are clearly a better alternative if we want to look and feel great over the long run.
Honesty
When people are being real, you feel it. You know it’s the truth and that’s hot. Authenticity comes from having nothing to hide. We are all imperfect, and the sooner we admit it, the better for everyone. When we are being genuine, it makes everyone feel more relaxed, confident and at ease.
With that in mind; I admit that I do use a few tools to attempt to improve my looks, and I keep them to a minimum. I use some lipgloss, a dash of almost neutral eyeshadow and some coverup. I wear makeup mostly in winter, because I’m so pale that my veins are visible through my skin and the skin under my eyes looks bruised. In summer though, when I can get a healthy amount of sunshine, I abstain from using cosmetics almost completely.
Here’s a true story that ties all of the three categories of what I feel creates true beauty together. When I was a student in university, I lived a block away from a wonderful gym and I exercised there daily. There was an ‘older’ woman who also went there regularly. She was maybe 40, which was about twice my age at the time. She was very fit and had long hair with generous sprinkles of grey in it. She was what is now called a cougar, but the term hadn’t been invented yet. I thought, “That’s how I want to look when I’m her age.” She was strong, assured, active and full of positive energy.
Sexy Inside and Out
We all have it in us to become more beautiful by accomplishing things that we think are awesome, consistently working to maintain or improve our health, and by being genuine. We don’t need all of these lotions and potions.
It really should be no surprise that it is impossible for cosmetics to bestow true beauty, because if you look up the word cosmetic, the definition contains the truth. The meaning of a cosmetic change is something that is superficial, surface, outward, or external. The change is only to appear to be improved, rather than to actually be made better.
We have all heard that cosmetics are meant to make us look younger, but that’s not correct. They are mistaking youth for health. Yes, many younger people are more healthy, but I’d say that is becoming less true today with the prevalence of childhood obesity, the wide ranging lack of nutrition and complete inability to skillfully move their bodies. That’s simply not sexy. No amount of makeup can make someone who is extremely unfit look gorgeous.
Maybe you have a completely different opinion. What do you think? What makes people look beautiful to you? Contribute your viewpoint in the comments section below.