As women, our number one measure of value is our outward appearance. External beauty.
For a long time now, the major determinate of our self-worth as a person, has been limited and judged by our body size, if we have cellulite, the clothes we wear, the length of our lashes, our makeup, and how white our teeth? And this standard beauty isn’t just limited social situations and the media, powerful women in some of the most prestigious positions around the world are asked and scrutinized about their appearance far too often. Woman are still held to a more critical standard of dress and appearance than men and more harshly criticized when they don’t conform to this beauty standard.
But recently this unfair scrutiny has been challenged, for example, I love it when presidential candidate Hilary Clinton responded “Would you ask a man that question?” when asked my reporter what designer she was wearing.
WE will continue to be limited in this way until we as woman stand up and require better and find this utterly unacceptable.
Our external appearance is only a small aspect of the whole amazing people we are, so why is this the majority stakeholder in our value and self-worth?
And sadly it is not just men and society, who perpetrate this. We, as women are some of the most common and brutal offenders. We subject ourselves and other women alike, to this kind of scrutiny.
It’s so limiting, and it keeps us playing small in our lives.
When continue to promote external beauty as paramount in the measure of value, worthiness and wholeness, we severely limit our potential, because we are a whole package of brains, wit, humor, kindness, drive, determination, compassion and love (to name a few).
And when we look at what impacts, improves, and changes the world, it comes down to what how we think, act and behave, not how we look.
So then why do we put so much value on physical appearance?
Well mainly, I think our society and culture have distorted our biological feminine love of and need for beauty. For women, beauty, being beautiful, and surrounding ourselves with beautiful things, is a strong part of our feminism makeup. It is what makes us who we are. And it is a wonderful thing to cherish and nurture this light and airy part of ourselves. Beauty is all around us, and it is one of the gifts in this world, that makes life meaningful and magical. But we as women need to stop limiting our value this external beauty only.
I will say again, We are so much more than that!
And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be limited by this anymore! Also, I want us women, to stop using this as a weapon to limit women around us.
I want to be a beautiful woman and I want to empower other women to be beautiful too because beauty and light is a core value for us. But I want to redefine what it means to be beautiful.
A beautiful woman is one who loves herself and others. Follows her own path and changes the world through her actions, not out of a sense of performance and perfection but out of a need to fulfill her purpose and life’s destiny.
Beauty is meant to be internal and external; both are important. In fact I think, internal beauty is more important and powerful, especially if we want to make our world as a whole more beautiful.
What if we spent as much time, energy and money perfecting our inner beauty as we do perfecting our outer beauty? What would our lives look like? What would the world look like?
I know this sounds a little naive, and a little idealistic, but why can’t we create this new ideal?
And just so we are clear, I do think it is important for us as women to feel beautiful in our own skin, and if that means wearing makeup, lovely clothes, fabulous shoes, then rock them! But guard against allowing you external manifestion of beauty to determine your worth. Be your own beautiful, because that is what makes you feel amazing, not to fall into a norm or please others.
About 8 years ago, I purchased these really cool yellow pants, and I loved them! Well, at that time I was in my full – on pleasing, what-will they-think-of-me mode and when I would wear these pants in my own home I felt like a rockstar! But when I wore them out in public, I was overwhelmed with concern and shame that people would think they were “weird” or I was “weird” or…blah, blah, blah. It took all the fun out of wearing my awesome pants, so they gradually got pushed to the back of my closet. Well, fast forward to now, I am a WAAAAAAY different person today than I was back then, thanks to all my internal perfecting work, and I recently found those cool yellow pants and when I put them one, I felt that first burst of beautiful vibrational energy, which I felt the first time I put them on! And I wear them now all the time (so much so that I have worn a hole in them) and I allow my personal vibration to be higher and don’t let fear or concern of what other people may think of my external appearance bring down my vibration and dull my sparkle.
I see this every day with my daughters, they are 3 and 6 years old, and have natural born love for all things feminine, including clothes and flowers, color, lace, bows, and other frilly stuff. Because of my life’s work and passion for empowering women around the world, feminism and women’s rights, I have tried to be very intentional about not installing stereotypical roles in my daughters and in my son. But still my girls love dressing up and feeling lovely, just as my son feels most comfortable in monocolored outfits ;). It is just what makes them feel good because it is what increases their vibration and makes them feel sparkly.
Because that is what beauty is all about, increasing your vibration and allowing your sparkle to be super sparkly.
So BE sparkly my friends and let your light shine!
With Beauty,
P.S. Do you need help and support in getting your sparkle back? Yes? Call me, that is my speciality!
Also, I would love to hear from you! What is your opinion and experience with this subject?
I wanted to include this great article because I thought it was really interesting, “7 Ways The Beauty Industry Convinced Women That They Weren’t Good Enough” and the title says a lot.
