For Women over 40 and for all the Women who will be over 40 Someday
It is totally okay. You are beautiful. Your body is perfect. You don’t have to be a size 2 to think your body is attractive. You can be a size 22, and guess what? You are still beautiful. You can’t change that fact.
It is okay if your face gets wrinkled. It is okay to have sagging jowls. The beauty industrial complex wants you to believe that you must stay slim and have tight skin in order to be beautiful. And let’s face it, in our society, we equate beauty with worth.
Stop doing that.
Your worth is not in your face or your body. Your worth is you. You are worthy, you are valuable, you are you, as you are.
Beauty has a long and rich history. Humans love beauty. We make beauty and even decide what is beautiful. It is our society’s decision that thin is beautiful, just as it is our society’s decision that diamonds are valuable. Neither is inherently true, except that our thinking makes it so.
The key word is decision. Humans make these decisions. We make these decisions as a group, or as an individual. We hope that the group agrees with us, but we do not set our sight on agreement. The thing is, when we love someone, they are beautiful.
When you look at an old woman’s face, you may think that it is less attractive. Often men age better… This is a trick of social thinking. We have all, simply been taught that men’s aging is positive, and woman’s aging is negative. This affects how we see women and men. We project this societal judgment onto how we view women and men. It’s no wonder, as men do dominate our culture.
If you wonder if men still dominate our culture, look at some of these societal features: men are top chefs (how did that happen? Women have been cooking since the beginning of time). Men are leading fashion designers (did John Galliano really put women’s heads in colored saran wrap for a fashion show?). Men outnumber women as principals of schools and yet, women dominate as teachers…
The most effective and the best thing that we can do individually is to define ourselves as valuable and beautiful. We stand as our own judgment and we choose to judge ourselves positively and powerfully, lending power to each other for each and every day.
The flower “yells” its beauty at us.
Equity, equality, it all matters. If you want to know how to make your own individual difference, tell yourself and your world how beautiful you are. Decide your own rules for beauty. Always, always lend that beauty to others.