It's Friday. And if you're so inclined, it can be Fresh Face Friday. I offer up Lynda Carter as inspiration.
Lynda Carter was in our Who's 60 Now? gallery. And she looks amazing at 61, including when she's not wearing any makeup.
Miss Representation – the organization, the film, the movement — started the Fresh Face Friday campaign via a 15-year-old, Shea Backes, to "reduce pressure" on women and especially girls trying to emulate the societal propagation of beauty.
Shea and her friend's beauty philosophy is very sweet and well worth a read.
Astrophysicist Carl Sagan explains it another way: "It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
But it's also just a good idea to take a break from all the potions to let your skin, and yourself, breathe a bit.
In fact, there seems to be a kind of movement going on. Former supermodel Cindy Crawford has decided to take it easy on the makeup – which makes sense since she 1. has a young daughter, & 2. has a skin care line called Meaningful Beauty, with the underlying assumption that if it works, and your skin looks better, you don't need makeup so much. In fact, a reader wrote in to say how much she loves the line.
There then are the women who challenged themselves to stop looking in the mirror.*
And, a book just arrived on my desk called The Beauty Experiment by Phoebe Baker Hyde (Da Capo Press). Hyde decided to give up the trappings of "beauty" — makeup, new clothes, jewelry, haircuts – on a quest to find the true beauty, her inner beauty.
More on this after I've delved into the book, but let me say this: I support Fresh Face Fridays. But I'm not against makeup. If I had a daughter, I wouldn't want her to feel like she had to wear makeup to be beautiful. Even though I have felt that way. And I often wore red lipstick in high school, in part because I loved 1940s movies.
Here's what: There are as many paths to finding inner beauty as there are women who have it – and that's all of them. Us.
Experiment. Play. Test. Push boundaries. And envelopes. Bust most most most of all, let other women do the same, even if it's not the same way you would do it.
More perspecives on inner and outer beauty:
- *Could You Give Up Your Mirror for a Month?
- Who's In Your Mirror?
- Salma Hayek: Makeup or No Makeup?
- Do You Look Better With or Without Makeup?
- The Keep It Real Challenge - Women in Magazines
- How To Look Better Without Makeup
