Beauty fatigue

A SYTYCB entry

I am suffering from “Beauty Fatigue”. It started after I had children and went from being somewhat well-groomed woman to a tired, unshowered milk machine. It was then that I realized my body had so much more value than the way it appeared to others. It could actually FEED SOMEONE! All by itself!!! And it could pick up things from the floor that were REALLY HEAVY! After a few years of parenting it could PICK UP TWO KIDS AT THE SAME TIME…WHILE HOLDING GROCERIES!! And my face, the one I plucked, primped, coated with paint, and attacked with retinol, could make my boys feel safe after a boo-boo and soothe a temper tantrum.

So that is the secret the beauty industry doesn’t want us to know about-that we are actually more than a vessel for their products. We have actual worth beyond our appearance and that how we come, straight out of the box, is beautiful too.

Now, I am suffering from “Beauty Fatigue”. Because once you see beyond the pressure to look amazing at all times, you see how much it is being presented to you as important. And that is totally exhausting. I want to watch TV, but I am slammed in the face by commercials of shiny, white-teethed celebrities shaking their equally shiny hair at me and impossibly young women with impossibly big breasts reporting on the news stories or playing the wife of a balding 40-something “Average Joe”. I want to read magazines, but there are images of models that have been photoshopped into Barbie-like proportions and those annoying insert cards sticking out telling me to buy eyeshadow or diet pills. Even driving by a billboard or going grocery shopping allows me no relief from the constant statement that BEAUTY IS IMPORTANT (but YOU will never be beautiful enough). Even in the escape of books, please find me a heroine who’s beauty isn’t described the first time she appears in the story.

I’m tired of thinking/talking/worrying about what is beautiful. We are ALL beautiful because we have these amazing bodies and faces that have wonderful woman superpowers, like balancing on one leg to shave the other, and healing wounds with kisses. THAT is beauty.

Maybe someday we will all get tired of this same old message that being pretty equals value, and won’t that be a beautiful day.