True Beauty Under Pressure

Who you lookin' at in that tone of voice

Recently we have all been reminded of how the media pushes it's twisted definition of beauty at us women.  A magazine at the checkout counter last week revealed what a few well known celebrities look like without their make up. (shock!)  This type of so-called-news always makes me wonder why we would even waste our time and money on it.  Does it make us feel better about our own less than perfect images?  I don't think so.  What they know we will be tempted to do is mock how normal and plain they look without makeup and further drive their false definition of beauty into our souls.

A few days later came the cruel attack on Ashley Judd's appearance.  Personally I admire Ashley Judd for going natural in her aging process and say more power to her.  When the media started hacking away at the way she looks I started shouting at the reporter on television and waving my my hand at them to go away!  (yes I really did) "LIKE WE CARE!  GET REAL!  LEAVE HER ALONE!".  I am so against this kind of derogatory news it makes me want to pinch heads off!  It serves no good purpose in anyone's life...not even to make one feel better about one's own sad life.

Why does the media and now social media continue to do this?  Because they know it affects us, they know it feeds some low desire in us.  Do you get the picture?  The good news is that we women also have leverage to fight back!

I bet you smiled back!

Being a rather realistic person, I know my face is not the kind to ever launch a thousand ships, but it might launch a dingy.  And though it is not a pretty face, it is a handsomely beautiful face and I have thankfully learned to love it without needing makeup on to do so.

I have my Facebook friend and blogger Pamela Price, who writes Red, White and Grew, to thank for inspiring me with her post supporting Ashley Judd.  In it she decided to post an image of herself as she "really" looks, bare faced and hair hidden.  I loved it and I decided to join in and do the same.  Us girls have to stick together, especially on this topic.

Here is the quote from Ms. Judd that Pam posted on the subject and what got us both going.

"The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of person hood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our person hood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted."  (Read her entire article here)

That did it for me and I was in to post my own photos.  However, after thinking about taking my own naked faced, hairless photos I started to choke a little.  To come clean, I have some issues about how I look now that I am not, er, young anymore that I don't openly share and they were bugging me.  I had to face them.  I knew it would be cathartic for me to do as humility is good for the soul after all.  Some of you may find this funny because these days I rarely if ever wear makeup.  That doesn't mean I don't think about how I look.

A smile is my favorite thing to put on my face.

Yes I really do miss that smooth youthful skin when I see those lovely images of youthful beauty, even if have earned this beautiful patina of life people can see on my face.  And I winced a little when I remembered how I look in those photos goofy photos I enjoy taking of myself for my blog.  Somewhere in the past year I have become more obsessed with how I am aging than I have wanted to admit.  Why I even have started wishing I had some extra cash lying around to get one of those fancy modern day beauty lifts they are advertising everywhere.  That is how all of this has begun to affect me and I don't like how it makes me feel about myself.

In Pam's blog post she asked the question "Do you think that social media is adding to the pressure that women feel to look a certain way?  As I thought about this I realized that to some degree it does push this unrealistic ideal of what beauty should be. However, I also think social media is cutting both ways on this issue.  There are gals like us who are realistic about our beauty expectations and take the process in stride, even if we don't always enjoy the results and encourage our sisters to love who they are as well and then there are the others...the beauty liars who are trying to push those unrealistic expectations on all of us no matter what our age.  Sad but true and this is why we have to stick together girls!


Getting older and getting wrinkled has never really been something I worried about and I have even looked forward to since I saw an elderly couple in matching red tennis shoes walking hand in hand down a sidewalk together.  They had to me in their 90s but were still living a life together.  I wanted to live to be able to do that with the man I loved someday too.  But I am digressing here.

The necked truth

The only exception to my not feeling dread about getting older was my 29th birthday when I just wanted to crawl in a hole.  As you can see I survived that event and then I went on to discover that life really begins at 30.  Or is it 50 now?  I'm not sure how I will feel at 59; I'm 56 now.  But I have never tried to hide how old I am and find it silly to even consider trying to...after all, the neck doesn't lie.

So if you blog or if you are on Facebook I challenge you to post your own naked faced, hair covered image in support of this cause.  Remember, we are in this together girls!


Copyright © 2012 by Patty Hicks
All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. All reviews must include author's name and a link back to this blog.