Beyond Beauty. Introducing a new identity.
I’m not as worried about AI taking over, as I am about humans themselves becoming robots, through both their relentless pursuit of modifying their physical appearance and living their lives as if they are machines. For the purpose of this particular article, let’s try to get our heads, and particularly our hearts, around the former, although they are so intrinsically linked that I might insert a few lines on the latter here and there.
I’ve been pondering lately on how far and wide my understanding (at a deeper cellular level) of BEAUTY has emerged in the context of the creative environment I have been working in for the past 10 years, but also in the context of my inner landscape, that has been shaped and carved, excavated into, but also finessed, in the past 40. I’ve also been thinking about the given name of my newsletter (“Beauty with a Twist”). I feel it doesn’t reflect who I am and what I stand for (any more). Better said, what I pour into it, and into the world at large, has outgrown its name. Or it might be that it didn’t do it justice from the very beginning, and I wasn’t ready (fear of rejection) to make a bolder and clearer statement. Maybe it’s also a bit of an identity crisis, as I work in an industry that doesn’t feel quite aligned to how I see and feel beauty, yet it’s also a platform that propelled my creativity to levels I wasn’t even aware I had lurking inside. So it is within this paradox that I strive to make sense of everything, although I know it’s a dangerous game to try to reach out for a perfect answer. All in all, I am worried BEAUTY is being stripped off of its essence.
We live in a BOTOXED SOCIETY. It’s what I told my therapist in one of our sessions, in an attempt to voice out my sadness (dressed up as frustration and anger) with the current state of humanity, an emotion that is inexorably linked to the intensity with which I question my own stance (and purpose) in the beauty industry. By the sudden uplift in her energy, my therapist seemed to have indulged in the way I labelled our society. It was as if she, not I, the patient, had had a revelation. She acknowledged how I was feeling. And I felt heard. Yet the sadness remained. We are living an epidemic of altered realities, which further weaves itself into an epidemic of loneliness, one of alienation from the self, nature and communities. And I often feel there’s no cure for it, as it’s only getting bigger and more difficult to break. We freeze our unwanted emotions in the same way we freeze our facial features and the ability to integrate a fractal of colours and sensations into our lives.
On the street, in the tube, not to mention on social media, I’m yearning to catch the gaze of a familiar unaltered face (or an unobstructed, raw emotion, for that matter) and I find myself amidst a dominance of monstrously deteriorated lips, make-up used as a mask, and sameness. I also see bodies and minds entrapped in an aimless scrolling, oblivious to their surroundings, which is very often a trigger for our distorted perception of selves. “Technology is rewriting our bodies to correspond to its own interests—rearranging our faces according to whatever increases engagement and likes.” writes Jia Tolentino in The Age of Instagram Face for The New Yorker. Truth is, the more we scroll, and the more we are willing to bend over backwards to meet some unattainable beauty standards and fall victim to a dysfunctional society’s subversive conditioning, the more inadequate we will feel and the more our (real) lives will appear as lacking in colour. This has become the norm now and I often wonder, in disbelief still, when has this soul mystifying fire taken such a proportion that it became inextinguishable.
I wholeheartedly prefer to see pimples and wrinkles, and all these perceived monsters, than ridiculously modified facial features, women spending a lot of their energy on Instagram’s face imitation game, or than piles of coverage that not only look bad and sad, but they more often than not have the adverse effect – exacerbating rather than toning down (and no, by this I don’t mean you should be learning how to perfect the art of coverage!). That’s not to say I am glamourising a suffering skin, but we are directing our resources and energy in the wrong place, instead of boiling it down to what is causing that suffering in the first place. But no, we don’t have time to go deeper into the layers of both our skin and our soul. There's too much to do, and we strive to keep ourselves in this artificial busyness state so that we don’t end up facing our truthful needs. We are in this continuous tug of war between the need to be seen for our essence and the need to be perceived in a way that conforms to a certain external standard. The irony is that the more we stress about how we are perceived, the more we mould ourselves into that illusive perception and the further away we get from the essence of our being. The more likely it is that we’ll lose the ability to feel empowered by that very essence but also to show kindness to its/our imperfect nature. And yes, the more we run away from ourselves, the more unloved pimples and wrinkles will show up on our skin.
“The first step to accepting an “imperfection” is reframing it. Most of what beauty culture calls flaws – pores, wrinkles, under-eye bags, cellulite, adipose tissue (fat) – are just basic human features. They’re positioned as flaws for profitability’s sake. (Think of all the money you’ve spent on creams and concealers to “fix” a fixed, and therefore unfixable, trait.)” Jessica DeFino for Ask Ugly
There’s this woman who has been coming over to my home studio for makeovers for about 1.5 years now. She is consistent in asking for my service. I was avoiding her request in the beginning. I was inventing excuses for not being available. She didn’t feel like my ideal client. Although, to be honest, the syntagm “ideal client” doesn’t quite sit well with me either. It feels so transactional and void of substance. I'm looking more into creative partnership and symbiosis, shared ethics and values. Furthermore, to set another thing straight, my so-called ideal client is not just someone who would remunerate me in accordance with my expertise and the quality of my services. It would (also) be someone I would align with beyond the material side of things, and that alignment can vary according to the context. I was put off by the selfie my not yet client shared with me in one initial email exchange – visibly botoxed and posed (I’m involuntarily trying to imitate a duck face while I write this, and the muscles in my face are clearly resistant to it). The highly self conscious type. On top of it all, she was asking for natural make-up that would take years off her face – hence making her look younger. Nothing in her request quite clicked with me. For someone with a face full of fillers – hence denial of one’s natural beauty – to ask for a natural make-up is an oxymoron, don’t you think? Generally speaking, I’m all up for a debate and agreeing to disagreeing, and I know reality is usually nothing but perception and interpretation, yet no matter how you put it, natural make-up is natural make-up – it’s there but it’s subtle, barely visible. You can’t ask me for contouring and layers of coverage, then write “natural make-up” in the same sentence. There’s a big misunderstanding there. Before aspiring to be a copy-cat of Kim Kardasian and asking me to make you look like her (I’m not going to do that, by the way), maybe you should know how much of an exploitative human she is and what a system of oppression she has created in this world.
Moreover, when someone is so desperately trying to look younger and is asking me to achieve that through make-up (we’re not talking about character make-up here, that’s a different story) they are passing on a responsibility I don’t want to take in because I would be reinforcing something in asymmetry with what I stand for. She kept on emailing me about availability and so I eventually gave in. I let her in. I thought that since she had already seen my work and liked the way I do things, then all is not lost. There was room for something there. Fast forward to the present moment and I feel we are in a very interesting relationship. We are still miles apart in our perception of self and the world around us, and there’s a dense armour that she puts on that I find hard to stay with, yet there’s also a good share of honesty, fun and self-irony that has evolved between us. Almost every time she comes for a makeover, she asks me to make her (perceived) sagging eyelid disappear – she claims there’s a bit of skin on her right eye that bothers her deeply. As we have reached a certain point in this relationship (although I’m also practicing being assertive when something doesn’t feel right) I am telling her that I will pretend I saw that too (there’s nothing there) and that I will work something out. You might think this is ridiculous. I think it’s important. She laughs about it. I laugh about it. We get giddy together. And although we don’t necessarily end up agreeing there’s something wrong with her eyelid, this lightness of being pierces a small hole in the armour, and has the potential to shift one’s perception of beauty.
At the same time, though, my heart shrinks. She’s a beautiful woman. I say this because I'm able to see beyond her embellishments (fillers, fake eyelashes). I can see beyond the surface as she allowed me in her personal space and shared uncomfortable things about her environment. Although I am aware that botox, and everything related, is a systemic issue, very hard to be healed when there’s so much pressure coming from everywhere, I wish she stopped modifying her face, not just because I think it makes her less beautiful than she actually is, or for the simple fact that she’s injecting these foreign bodies mistreating her own, but because I know it won’t help her feel better or more adequate or more loved, on the contrary, it will keep her soul and freedom caged. She is feeding into the vicious cycle.
I often still wonder what drives her to come back. Sure, she’s always telling me how much she loves my energy (and that of my home), she finds it soothing and uplifting. Clearly, she also loves how (my) make-up makes her feel. Beyond all these declared reasons, might it be she’s coming back because, deep down, she wants to be convinced otherwise?
You might tell me it’s none of my business what someone chooses for themselves, but how can I, as a human being so nurtured by nature, not feel this phenomenon deeply? We are not talking about choosing a career over another here, or trousers over a skirt. How can I not voice out my concerns when we are on our way to all look like plastic, just like the one we consume in alarming quantities? Or when young girls' main preoccupation is to shed their own skin and way of being in order to become someone they don’t know, just because this is a trend they are pushed into? When all these so called influencers with perfectly filtered skin and sculpted bodies, suggestive of a perfectly lived life, and movie stars in a constant pressure to upgrade themselves, become role models for these young girls? When their own mothers encourage them to get plastic surgery, in an attempt to “correct” in their child a feature they weren’t able to accept in themselves? How can we assure our young girls that it’s ok their body will go through changes and that hormonal acne is just a phase (which we don’t aim to plaster and “cure” with detergent-like skincare ingredients, steroid creams, or antibiotics, which are not just likely to exacerbate the acne and create even more issues, but will deplete the skin of good bacteria and hinder its natural ability to heal), when all they see on social media and maybe also within their circle of friends is that the only way to succeed and be accepted is to look FLAWLESS? Shouldn’t we, instead of pushing them into the perfectionism and narrow beauty standards trend, teach them how important nutrition and sleep are for the health of their skin, while we will intentionally embrace and even (gently) push forward those girls who are endowed with a more sensitive soul? Because a sensitive soul whose needs are not met, and is dismissed rather than appreciated, will very often translate into a sensitive skin and a damaged perception of her inner and outer universe. More on this topic and a personal experience in a future newsletter.
This is not being judgemental, IT’S PURE GRIEF. And yes, it has become my problem as well. Our problem.
And so how do we change the course of this river? How do we redefine the way we see beauty? How do we cultivate more beauty in our lives? What is it actually that we fear when we say we fear aging (anti-aging or put-a-positive-spin-on-it terms like “pro-aging” and “aging gracefully”, all mean the same thing, they’re all lies.)? Is the answer in the question itself? Why are we so obsessed with achieving immortality? What is actually missing in our lives?
I love everything Ted Gioia writes, but this has struck a very sensitive cord: “In ancient times, you attained immortality by doing great deeds. Today you attain immortality by getting blood transfusions from teenagers, and freezing your body for later revival. Needless to say, there’s a huge difference between these two strategies. In the first case, you serve others by your great deeds—eternal renown is your reward for this. But folks seeking immortality today are the exact opposite. They have reached peak narcissism—other people are, for them, literally just a source of fresh blood (or stem cells). But there are some similarities between ancient heroes doing great deeds, and today’s Silicon Valley transhumanist. They both want to be like the gods (only their methods are different). Also, they are both admired leaders in their respective societies. That’s the part that troubles me most. If the dude slurping up stem cells in a bunker was just another crazy person, I wouldn’t worry about it. But, unfortunately, these unhinged narcissists include some of the most powerful people on the planet. We should all be concerned about that.”
And now, let’s turn the lens, because despite the dread and anxiety I am feeling at the moment towards the dire state of humanity, my spirit is made of hope. All is not lost and I wholeheartedly believe it is BEAUTY, and our capacity to feel, express and share it, THAT WILL HEAL THIS WORLD that is now on the verge of collapsing on so many levels.
Beauty is not a concept or a surface, it’s a felt sense. It’s in the soul of the beholder. We are not lost on beauty, despite the horrors, big or small, taking center stage. It’s in everything and everyone. It’s often (almost) imperceptible, that’s why it’s important to slow down on our worries and fears and judgments, slow down our living (we are so obsessed with aging and immortality, yet all we do is rush through life) and amplify all our senses, so that we are able to grasp it from a distance even. Beauty is, without doubt, in our innate connection to Earth. Plant your feet on the ground, hug a tree, listen to the birds’ choir, contour the shape of a cloud with your fingers while staring at it in wonder, and you will feel that connection. Beauty is in our perception of selves. The more we are able to see inner beauty, the easier we’ll grasp it in the outside world and see through the cracks of “ugliness” and suffering. When nothing makes sense anymore, we can access that inner strength and build another story. If your conditioning and personal stories of pain makes it difficult for you to catch the essence, ask for support, find something or someone that reflects your inner glow. Nature always does it for me, it’s taking me back to what matters. It reminds me I am HER and SHE is ME, and what that means. It settles me. It softens and empowers me at the same time. Often it’s subtle, sometimes I’m walking along with this aura of energy and light all around me and the fact that I can sense it, and sense that others sense it too, is the most beautiful feeling.
One can’t improve the Self. “You can’t add to what is already whole. It can only be rediscovered.” It’s the same with beauty. We need to go beyond our conditioning in order to find that sustainable fulfilment. We have become estranged from what beauty truly means, so it’s vital to shift our perspective in order to see beyond the surface.
🌱 What does beauty mean to you?
🌱 What makes you feel beautiful?
🌱 How do you cultivate beauty in your own being and life?
🌱 What makes you unique?
These are questions I always address, with curiosity, during my holistic workshops, and, in a more subtle form, in almost any interaction I have, whether that’s with a person in my make-up chair, a friend or a stranger. I invite you to sit with them too, and I would love to open a conversation on it, here on Substack, or in a private message.
I don’t know many other beings capable of feeling and talking about beauty in a more poetic way than the late John O’Donohue, so I’ll leave you with some of my favourite quotes from his book “Beauty: The Invisible Embrace”, which I invite you to read whole.
“When we emerge from our offices, rooms and houses, we enter our natural element. We are children of the Earth, people to whom the outdoors is home. Nothing can separate us from the vigour and vibrancy of this heritance. In contrast to our frenetic, saturated lives, the earth offers a calming stillness. Movement and growth in nature takes its time. The patience of nature enjoys the ease of trust and hope. There is something in our clay nature that needs to continually experience this ancient, outer ease of the world. It helps us remember who we are and why we are here.
The beauty of the imagination is that it can discover such magnificent vastness inside a tiny space. Our culture is dominated by quantity. Even those who have plenty hunger for more and more. Everywhere around us, the reign of quantity extends and multiplies. Sadly the voyage of greed has all the urgency but no sense of destination. Desire becomes inflated and loses all sense of vision and proportion. When beauty becomes an acquisition it brings no delight. When time seemed longer and slower, the eye of the beholder had more space and distance to glimpse the beautiful.“
“Beauty does not linger, it only visits. Yet beauty's visitation affects us and invites us into its rhythm, it calls us to feel, think and act beautifully in the world: to create and live a life that awakens the Beautiful. A life without delight is only half a life. Lest this be construed as a plea for decadence or a self-indulgence that is blind to the horrors of the world, we should remember that beauty does not restrict its visitations only to those whom fortune or circumstances favour. Indeed, it is often the whispers and glimpses of beauty which enable people to endure on desperate frontiers. Even, and perhaps especially, in the bleakest times, we can still discover and awaken beauty; these are precisely the times when we need it most. Nowhere else can we find the joy that beauty brings. Joy is not simply the fruit of circumstance; we can choose to be joyous independent of what is happening around us. The joyful heart sees and reads the world with a sense of freedom and graciousness. Despite all the difficult turns on the road, it never loses sight of the world as a gift.”
“More amazing still is our ability to make everything so familiar and normal that we actually succeed in forgetting how strange and wondrous it is to be here. Rilke said: 'Being here is so much. We turn the mystery and strangeness of this world into our private territory. We make a home out of the world. Life becomes predictable and we function automatically within our frames: route to work, colleagues, friends, patterns of thinking and feeling, the faces of the family, etc. Without sensing it, we become lost inside the automatic traffic of functioning. It is tragic that something has to go wrong before we can realize the gift of the world and our lives, gifts we could never have dreamed or earned. When something goes deeply wrong, the realization it forces is inevitably learned at the grave of loss. If we were able to live in a deeper state of awareness and wisdom, our days on earth would find a new frequency: spaces would open naturally for beauty to touch us and we need beauty as deeply as we need love. Beauty is not an extra luxury, an accidental experience that we happen to have if we are lucky. Beauty dwells at the heart at the heart of life.“
“There is an uncanny symmetry between the inner and the outer world. Each person is the sole inhabitant of their own inner world; no-one else can get in there to configure how things are seen. Each of us is responsible for how we see, and how we see determines what we see. Seeing is not merely a physical act: the heart of vision is shaped by the state of soul. When the soul is alive to beauty, we begin to see life in a fresh and vital way. The old habits of seeing are broken. The coating of dead dust falls from the windows. Freed from their dead forms, the elements of one's life reveal new urgency and possibility. The graced eye can glimpse beauty anywhere, for beauty does not reserve itself for special elite moments or instances; it does not wait for perfection but is present already secretly in everything. When we beautify our gaze, the grace of hidden beauty becomes our joy and our sanctuary. “
“Beauty loves freedom; then it is no surprise that we engage beauty through the imagination. The imagination always goes beyond the frames and cages of the expected and predictable. The imagination loves possibility and freedom is the ether where possibility lives. Most of us move now in such a thicket of excess that we can no longer make out the real contours of things. Where there is entanglement, there is no perspective or clarity to make out the true identity of anything. “
SPARKS OF BEAUTY
For an extra dose of honesty in the beauty/creative space (and beyond), here’s a small but mighty handful of people who, I believe, have the soul, wisdom and talent to change the course of the river. I invite you to familiarise yourself with their VOICE:
💛 I have quoted her before, in this article and previous ones, yet anything from is worth a read. It’s essential actually, in my opinion. You can find her here, on Substack, or at a special column in The Guardian. All she writes is documented at a high level, to which she adds a rich personal experience.
💛 has such a tender way to feel and express beauty in all of its forms. My nervous system is always soothed when I read her newsletters.
💛 is one of my favourite creative souls and human beings. She is capable of articulating everything from the mundane to dressing-up, neurodivergence or ways of the human soul, in the most poetic, tender and magical way.
💛 Ezgi Günyel is the fairy behind the botanical skincare Earth To You. Not only that I love her products, as I can tell how much wisdom, energy and alchemy she pours into their creation, I am also always delighted by the beautiful and insightful way she writes about skin. This is one of my favourite articles.
💛 ’s universe is so rich in wonder, creative passion and humanness. She is able to sooth and beautify even the most rigid or suffering soul. She is holding a special workshop on the 21st of April, which you can attend for free if you (pre) order her new book, “The Book of Alchemy”. I’m so looking forward to it!