Photo: Nina, my niece.
Beauty: A Culturally Misconceived Idea?
Who Wants to be a superstar?
What's with this idea of "cultivating" your image? Is, by any
chance, your body, a plant? Seriously, we all know how
important image is. The thing is, how important?injectting an 8 year old with botox important? I'm not going to start a rant against
botox, I've covered my thoughts on this before.
What I also said before and which I insist upon is that there is a strong link
between the affairs of the mind and those that regard our bodies. The reason is
simple.
It is the mind that makes the body do the strangest things, specially if
we let ourselves get over -influenced by influencers, if our ideals are
too high, or if our partner has too many expectations.
When it comes to beauty then, the question is: How far are we willing to go in
order to be liked and accepted by others? how about loving ourselves first?
Who said that you need to get others to like you for anything other than who you ARE? lets go back to that controversial mom for a second: wouldn't her
daughter be much better off IF instead of botox her mother told her how
beautiful and special she is? would it not do her good to feel loved for what
she is and not for what she looks like? to replace an injection of botox for one
of confidence and love? she'd do great in those beauty contests but more importantly, as an adult she would be able to lead a life where she feels good about herself and life where she can BE.
There is a new, O.B. Tampons TV add in Buenos Aires these days
where a girls tells a friend she can't go somewhere because she has
her period and she's afraid that her pads will not work well or look bad.
Her friend asks: "why don't you use a tampon?" She replies that a
friend has told her it's not good to wear tampons all the time, so the
other friend asks who she got that information from. Off they go trying
to figure out the source of the information. She was told by another
friend that was told by the lady that did her bikini line who was told
by a friend that was a guy, ha, ha, ha! The add ends saying:
"DESMISTIFICATE" (demystify).
Was it Elle Woods in "Legally Blond" that came up with the idea that
you have to work very hard for others to like you? Was it Emily in "The Devil
Wears Prada?" Isn't it the other way around? Don't we have to feel good with
ourselves first? How many diets do we have to start? How many hours do we have
to spend at the gym for others? how about doing things for ourselves? When
do we start a biomolecular treatment as an attempt to deny our age? and
most importantly, when do we realize that we are all beautiful?
My Psychoanalysis teachers taught me that if we only focus on our image
(remember the Witch in Snow White?) we put ourselves in a very poor place.
Why? because the image of our own selves appears very early in our own
development and in order to keep evolving, we need to keep adding content
to our mind structure, we need to absorb things that matter from our environment,
to play and love, to nurture our souls, to surround ourselves with nice people, that is how our mind starts improving;
that's what makes us love ourselves, our lives, and that's what makes us beautiful.
Our best and perhaps hardest "exercise" is to feel good with and
about ourselves. It is to let ourselves shine with our own light, this
is what makes you, you. It is from the inside that one becomes
beautiful. It is by filling our lives with great memories, our minds with
meaningful content and our hearts with love.
