Barre with Justine

I read an interesting email the other day from Jessica Ash, in which she described feeling let down by the movement towards removing or scrubbing away the “art of beauty”. The email is titled “Has The Crunchy Community Missed The Mark?” and she writes:

“In an effort to remove all of the “bad things” from our homes and our beauty care routines—and for some of us even our clothing—we’ve lost the truth that beauty is an art“

This email resonated with me because I have also seen the shift towards workplaces with no-scent policies, the movement towards imposing guilt for using anything that isn’t PURE – this can bring on a certain guilt about taking time for beauty rituals. There are so many ways that makeup and fragrance can be used to make us FEEL more beautiful, so it makes me sad to see the trend towards a more sterile, unscented world.

Beyond the pure and unscented trends, there is a lot of divisive discussion about what it means to be feminine. We only need to look to the #tradwife controversy to realize that it’s a contentious issue that goes back decades. I’m not a fan of creating an idealized world of what a woman should do or how she should act, but I still can’t resist dressing up in pretty clothes and wearing makeup. I feel conflicted about this at times, especially raising two young daughters (one who loves makeup and one who is too little to care yet!).

Take a peek at this 1947 article from Life Magazine – a collection of the “fresh, spring crop of feminine beauty”:

A product of its time, but many of those same ideals are still with us. I think that every woman has her own vision of what beauty is and who embodies those qualities. And I think women have complicated relationships with the term femininity because it’s often a concept that feels imposed on us, rather than something we choose to embrace.

When I was in university, a Sociology student was doing research on femininity and she asked other students who they thought of when they thought of femininity (I only found out about this from my husband who was friends with her!). I guess my name came up more than once…I don’t know if it’s because of the way I dressed in a ton of pink or the fact that I was very naïve and shy. Maybe it was a compliment, maybe not?

For me personally, I feel better when I take the time to care for my skin, apply perfume and pick pretty things to wear. I don’t think I do this as much for other people as I do for the way it makes me feel and the confidence it gives me. (though author Jessica Defino may disagree with my assertion that I do it for myself! Read her take here: https://jessicadefino.substack.com/p/i-do-it-for-me-beauty-delusion)

Conflicted though I may be, I believe that you can embrace beauty and girly things but still:

• have a problem with the beauty industry
• hate the push to resist aging (at any age!)
• resist a standardized idea of what it means
• worry a bit about why you are doing it.

As in everything, there is so much nuance to beauty and femininity as it relates to how we dress and what we do with our bodies. The nuance never seems to make it to social media or into the news, unfortunately. I have found a few wonderful social media accounts that balance the recognition that beauty is important (if not essential) in our lives with a recognition that there is nuance to the conversation. I think of Emily Davis and Lee Zavorskas who are aestheticians who share so many interesting takes on what it means to care for your skin in a culture that forces us to “fight” against it. Melissa L. Johnson is an author and counsellor who brings in a spiritual element to the beauty conversation,

In a blog post she writes: “…maybe that’s what loving ourselves looks like, to be present to the beauty in and around us. To accept and live in and bask in the beauty, as you would any gift. In that kind of love, there is no striving.”

I think that’s a beautiful way to look at beauty.

As always, thanks for reading!