There is a kind of beauty in imperfection. Conrad Hall
Hello, Welcome to my blog, "Kitchen and Letters."
Hurray to a new blog entry! This year I promised to write more often, a lot more. So far, I have accomplished my goal. I enjoy it, and I hope you have enjoyed it too.
I have a list of topic ideas, and more are added. Feel free to message me if you wish me to write about something. I write about what is in my mind, what makes me happy, and what makes me see. The primary purpose is to help me understand and to share with you. From now, I will be adding a goal and a small challenge. You are free to share it. This came to me because I do yoga with Kassandra( if you have yet to hear from her, I highly recommend her YouTube channel; I will share a link below.), and she added a purpose for the Aprils challenge. This made me wonder, why not do the same when I write. It will be an incentive for all of us.
Purpose: To ask ourselves how important beauty is for us; what do we find as beautiful? Is it gender bias? Is it art? Do you find yourself attractive? Why? What defines your beauty?
Challenge: Will you share your beauty with me? How?
Beauty is a broad word! It truly is. We can talk about artistic beauty, personal, emotional, and architectural. Beauty is what it is, depending on who is seeing it and how it is seen, how it is understood, and where we come from when we speak about it. It is also abstract. What I might find beautiful, you might not.
What is true is that we are treated depending on how we look. How we present ourselves in our social group is sometimes hard to let our guard down and our social ideas. People treat us according to how they think we should look, and how we look 'sends' a message of how we should be treated. Many times, this message can be misinterpreted. We can often not change how we look, like the color of our skin, hair, and genetics. They are there for a reason. We learn to make the most of it.
Have you ever tried to google: "What is beauty?" As I always do when I think of an idea for a blog. It starts with a personal experience, and after that, I take that idea and ask around people close to me. I create a conversation, and then I start to research. I love that I modify the initial thought every time I do that. When you google 'beauty,' most of the research targets woman's markets and is around the woman. It is challenging to summarize most of the topics that I choose. I tried my best; however, there is much more to discuss or have an opinion about. There is an ocean of information about beauty out there, from skin products to clothes. The annual expenditure difference between men and women in this department is narrower than I thought. On average, a woman in the USA spends: 3750, and a man spends 2928 USD.
While I was searching, I found this great short video about how the meaning of beauty has changed over the years
https://www.girlsinfilm.net/videos/what-is-beauty is quick to watch if you have little time.
My initial thought comes from my experience as a 'model' for a local company. The production behind that, as one can imagine: is nails, hair, makeup, and clothes. As they finished putting on my makeup and fixing my hair, so I looked pretty for the photo shoot. I looked at myself in the mirror to see if I liked it. I felt so foreign to what I usually looked; that person in the mirror was me, somewhere there I was, but it was not me. For the first time, I realized that this provoked me was a good thing. I love who I am. I accept myself without makeup and in my everyday life. It was a feeling of relief, to be honest. I have had this production done to me before, many times. All the other times, I did like what I looked like. This time, I could not wait for the photo shoot to finish to remove my makeup and continue with my life.
This made me wonder about beauty and the relationship that we, as women, have with it. We grow up thinking that makeup makes us look pretty and that we must add paint to our faces to look more attractive and presentable. A very profitable industry makes money from us year after year, and women, without a dought, buy it. We agree and form part of this social game that adding those ingredients to our faces is necessary and that we need them to be attractive and employable. Additionally, we buy other beauty products to remove this from our faces, plus skincare to take care of the damage. It all seems to be a circle with no end. Very little is told about being beautiful with our freshly washed faces. That is known as 'natural' and indeed is natural, but simultaneously has a negative connotation as being 'careless' or, in other words, hippy.
Is it fair to treat people, no matter where they present themselves, because of their appearance? It has happened to all of us, and we have all been judged by it.
Beauty holds itself; ever since I have been in front and behind the scenes, I have walked with more pride in who I am. I know that my beauty is how I treat people, listen, and see the beauty of things. I may be lucky that my beauty is how I look, no matter how I dress. The more I listen and talk to people, the more I understand that we all have some beauty within us.
What is beauty for you? How do you let it define you, and how do you define it?
To conclude: I would like to imagine people in their natural state, women without makeup, as I watch t.v I find myself finding more attractive women wearing makeup; in my mind, they 'look' better. Nonetheless, I want to imagine people dressing on their relaxed days. There is a place, time, and situation for how we present to in our society. I value the woman that put their feet down by not giving in to the soup of chemicals that women are exposed to 'look better' and more acceptable. They are being true to themselves and to what they believe. They know that what they have to share is more valuable. Yes, we are treated how people see us, but is that on them or us? We can not control how people see us, can we? My goal is to change my mindset, to look beyond looks.
Thank you for reading.
Like, comment, and share.
With love,
Iliana Lanuza
Links:
https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/beauty-personal-care/worldwide#revenue
https://www.girlsinfilm.net/videos/what-is-beauty
https://www.vogue.com/article/what-is-beauty-global-open-call-2023
https://explodingtopics.com/blog/beauty-industry-stats
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/wellness/1987/01/27/beauty-through-history/301f7256-0f6b-403e-abec-f36c0a3ec313/