Pretty Hurts

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Hurts_(song)

 

Conform. Sit still and look pretty. You must be pretty if you want to be loved. If you're not pretty, you can't even love yourself.

 

Well, you know what? Pretty hurts. I'm not talking about being beautiful. I'm talking about being forced into a box of how to feel and be. Of resenting people who are free, because of course we would all like to be like that, but you can't be free if you're trying to be pretty all the time.

Women (and men) are literally broken down into checklists and numbers. 5.0 or 9.5. Graded on our worthiness based on being pretty. Yes, a lot of it is looks. Industrialized looks. But a lot of it is deeper. What if thin lips could be beautiful? What if uneven skin could be beautiful? "No!" they say. It's all science. We aren't intelligent beings, we're animals. We can't help what we like. If you don't conform to what homo sapiens like, you will be unacceptable, unlovable and alone.

 

It comes almost true.

 

You fall for someone. You think they're great. But do you know what they think of you? They think your hair is the wrong color. So it doesn't work out.

 

It's heartbreaking.
You don't know yet that it will go deeper.

 

You fall for someone. You think they're great. This time, your hair is the right color. But do you know what they think of you? They think you're not entertaining enough. So it doesn't work out.

 

You start googling what you're doing wrong. There are plenty of people happy to tell you.

 

You fall for someone. You think they're great. This time, your hair is right. You work hard to be fun and spontaneous for them. You know they like this. But you didn't know that they like you to tell them that they are always right. So it doesn't work out.

 

You stop falling for people.

 

You start falling for the lies.

 

You study and shape yourself. You say it's self-improvement. It works.

 

But it makes you cry that it works.

 

You hear a song from years back every once in a while, or run into an old friend. It makes you nostalgic for yourself, before you knew what people liked.

 

It's hard to reconcile the likeable person you can be if you try and the unlikeable person you can be if you don't. We should try. We should be kind. We should have courage. We should be pretty.

 

You meet someone, but you don't fall.

 

You study. You feel something, so you calculate. You think.

 

You don't say too much or too little. You look good but hide the appearance of maintenance. You laugh but hide the frowns. You're pretty.

 

It works.

 

You keep them at arms distance but get terrified when they move farther away than your arm can reach. You are cool and unreachable, then you're desperate and irrational. You don't know why.

 

They stick around though. After a while, your arm gets tired of holding them at a distance. They're pretty cute, too, you want to be a little closer.

 

But what if they see? What if they start seeing the frowns? Or the pores? Or the moodiness? What if they see, Heaven Forbid, the dance moves???

 

Then one day it happens. They see something. Maybe it's a frown, or a rude remark. Maybe it's eyelashes with no mascara or a stretch mark. You freak out. Because you know what that will mean. That it won't work out.

 

Your knowledge comes from experience. It's not book knowledge, it's wisdom. It's truth. It's reality. We can't control what we like.

 

But then they don't go. It's confusing.
It's scary.
Because you know they will just see more. Then they will go, and you don't want them to. You never wanted them to.

 

They'll start saying things. Like that they don't care that you're not pretty. You never realized that that was what you wanted to hear all along.

 

Not that, "You are pretty."

That they don't care that you're not.

 

They think you're beautiful. They think your smiles and your frowns are beautiful. They think you're beautiful when you've shaved and when you are paying homage to your cold climate ancestors. They think your cuteness and your independence are beautiful.

 

You'll remember how it felt before you judged yourself. Before you decided only certain qualities could stay. Before something like the color of your hair could make you cry. You'll remember fearlessness. You'll remember confidence. You'll remember yourself like an old friend. You'll remember strength, not prettiness.

 

You'll still cry sometimes. You'll still get scared and crawl into your "pretty" box for protection. It's hard to believe, but you will see it with your own eyes. Your knowledge will come from experience. It won't be book knowledge, it will be wisdom. It will be truth. It will be reality. We can choose what we love.

 

Pretty girls make me cry. Because pretty hurts. Deeply. It doesn't hurt to put on mascara. But "pretty" girls put on mascara to cover up the pain of when someone said their eyelashes were short and it didn't work out. It doesn't hurt to exercise. But "pretty" girls run to run away from the pain of when someone said they were too fat and it didn't work out. Plastic surgery hurts. But not as much as the pain of someone not loving you because you're not "pretty."

 

Pretty is a mask that hides deep wounds of not being loved. But if we can be brave enough to put down the mask, someday we will discover that we're worth more than pretty. We're actually beautiful.

 

<3<3<3 

What If We Chose How We Look?

I was ready to leave for work this morning.  I had gotten all packed up for Thanksgiving break so I could head straight for home right after closing time.  I was standing in the living room, eating my cereal mentally scanning for anything I forgot to pack.  The sun was coming up and soft morning light was coming through the windows, and I could see the frost on my car outside.

I have a big, rectangular mirror hanging on the wall in my living room.  As I was finishing my cereal I absent-mindedly started gazing at myself. I was having those rolling, dreamlike thoughts, the kind you're barely aware you're having.  I had my hair pulled back in a bun with no make up on except a little red lipstick.
I was thinking to myself, "Yeah, I look pretty good:)  I like the way I look.  I mean, if I were choosing, I'd probably have tweaked a couple things a little differently...." Then I chuckled at the thought of my spirit in Heaven before I was born getting toddler-excited and picking out a bunch of crazy features:)

But then I stopped and thought, "Well, why not?"  I'm pretty dang sure this is false doctrine, so most def don't quote me in general conference when you become a general authority, but I thought, What if we did?  What if, in Heaven, we got to choose how we would look?  And everyone picked out what their tastes truly dictated was the most beautiful to them?  And we didn't think otherwise until we came to Earth and society imposed false standards on us and we lost our ability to see all beauty?  What if we are all the most beautiful?  And some of us just forgot? What if we picked everything about ourselves?

Food for thought:)

However, we are all created in the image of God by a loving Father in Heaven.  Isn't that kinda enough to make you accept the beautiful gift of your body?

In Defense of Dove's Real Beauty Campaign

http://realbeautysketches.dove.us/

There has been a LOT of backlash against Dove's Real Beauty campaign piece "Real Beauty Sketches."

I know there are flaws in this campaign.  But it is still such a good thing.  Such a powerful, bold thing.  I think critics overlook the good in this campaign in the frenzy to point out why it's not optimal.

I don't know if the way I interpret this is right, but I've spent a lot of time in my undergrad in public health learning about media messages and how our thought processes and emotions are affected by them.  This is what I think.

• Some of the things others have been criticizing that I don't think are worthy of criticism: use of beautiful women, focus on beauty as the most important value, lack of diversity, and they are created by a beauty company.

• Some of the things I see wrong with this campaign: research design, artist bias and reporter bias.

• Some of the things I see right with this campaign: focus on the emotions the women are feeling, focus on how destructive self-perception can be, bold stance against the beauty industry standard.

Let's get started. First, I want to clarify two points. (There's a whole post about how our brains interpret this.)  

Number one:  "Society" (meaning: industry, commercial ventures, media, cultural beliefs) tells us that beauty is a definable, measurable quality.  You can systematically rate how beautiful a woman is.

Number two: We are bombarded with the message every day of our lives that a woman's worth is measured by her beauty-- and it does affect us.

Soooo many women think they are above being affected by this.  It makes me sad.  Because rather than learning to rebel against the system, they feel guilty for worrying about their something as trivial as their appearance.  And they feel guilty for not being perfectly "beautiful." (Read The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf.)

Criticisms I think are invalid:

The campaign only uses traditionally beautiful women.    

I want to be very clear.  The women in this campaign are lovely.  None of them will ever model for Victoria's Secret.  

These women are short and tall, young and middle aged, big and small...they are different.  Have you ever seen a line up of models?  It's like they dyed one girl's hair a bunch of different colors and put new makeup on her for each image to save on model salaries.  They look EXACTLY the same.  The modeling industry is very explicit that there is only one standard for beauty, only one way to be beautiful.  If you don't fit the bill, well, you can try to buy products to turn you into that ideal so you'll look less embarrassing, but you'll still probably never measure up.

There is no diversity. 
Okay. The simple answer is that there is more diversity in this quick clip than in 10 hours of beauty advertisement. The women shown for the longest period of time are white or white-esque people.  White washing in the beauty industry is a big deal.  I would just like to point out (again) that there are women in this clip that are different.  They aren't all white-esque. Could it use more diversity?  Most def.  But there is some diversity of race, age and build.  No one can deny that.  Baby steps.  People don't seem to understand that this is a process.  If there were a bunch of traditionally unattractive, unkempt women ranting that beauty is not important, it would just reinforce that beauty IS important. (This also applies to those who criticize Dove for editing real beauty images.)

They focus on beauty as the most important value. 
People are so upset that Dove's message is "You are more beautiful than you think," rather than, "Beauty is not important, so stop thinking about it."  Sorry, Dove's mission isn't "How to Be a Great Human Being." We're talking about beauty here. That's why we're focusing on it and not other important qualities.  I don't think anyone working on the Dove campaign thinks beauty is more important than being a good person. But I mean, I don't know them all personally, so who knows?:)  This is a beauty campaign, it makes sense that it should focus on our ideas about beauty.  It's not a life campaign.  I just want that clarified.

It's created by Unilever. 
There have been complaints that since Dove is owned by Unilever, it's an untrustworthy campaign.  Once again, Dove is part of the beauty industry, something it's never sought to hide.  The campaign is by Dove, not Unilever.  Yes, the Dove company is owned by someone who owns other companies.  I don't think this is worth losing any sleep over.

Criticisms I have for the campaign:

The criticisms I have all deal with the research methods used in this "experiment." This experiment is not scientific.  They didn't want to test a hypothesis.  They set out to make this campaign piece and manipulated the data to prove the point that they wanted.  I'm not too worried about it, because I think it's a pretty universal truth that women are self-conscious when they should be more confident about their natural beauty, and about other aspects of themselves too, of course.

Participant selection:
Not random.  They had to volunteer, then the volunteers were weeded through, then the footage was weeded through until Dove had exactly the proper evidence to support the universal truth they set out to prove.  Not scientific.

Artist bias:
The artist was biased.  He stated that he was interested in the campaign and wanted to help women (his daughter included) learn to feel better about themselves.  He knew when he was drawing a woman describing herself and when he was drawing a woman described by the stranger.  He used a lot of artistic techniques that probably had nothing to do with the descriptions and more to do with proving the point that women are more beautiful than they describe themselves.


Reporter bias:
The strangers who described the women are here for a campaign to support true beauty.  Are they going to be that critical jerk that says the woman was ugly?  No.  They are going to focus on her positive, inviting attributes and happy, open personality.  Since they knew the basic purpose of the campaign, they weren't free to be totally unbiased.
The women who are describing themselves are also aware of the campaign.  They know perhaps, that they would be called out if they weren't totally honest about how they look, rather describing themselves as they hope or want to look.  Again, biased by knowledge about the campaign (if not about the specific experiment.)

Take home message: 
This "experiment" is biased, and not 100% reflective of real life. But I think the point they're trying to prove is valid: we often think our "flaws" are a big deal when they're really not.  So, they are trying to promote a good, healthy message, but they are going about it in a non-scientific way.

The Good Stuff

Whew, that was a lot of negativity!  Let's talk about the things that are right with this campaign:

The focus on emotion: 
The filming in this campaign is incredible.  It captures emotion.  It says things that words are not saying.  I love how accurately it shows the women as they are talking.  It shows the guilt, the embarrassment.  When the women are talking about what they would change about themselves, when they are admitting to possessing features that are not traditionally considered beautiful, their eyes flit nervously to the side and shamefully to the floor.  They bite their lips.  They fidget   They obviously look uncomfortable, embarrassed.  The point being, they shouldn't feel this way.  They are lovely.  They need not be so ashamed of their deviations from the prescribed epitome of beauty. It shows the smile fading as a woman realizes she doesn't think she's beautiful.  It shows a smile grow on a woman's face as someone describes her positively.  It shows a broken nail, messy mascara- the unending, unwinnable battle to be perfectly beautiful. This is why the campaign exists: to help women with these destructive emotions.


The focus on destructive self-perception: 
The Real Beauty campaign tries to help women understand that they worry way to much about being beautiful.  This is a good message.  It supports the criticism some have had that it should not focus on beauty as the most important thing.  * Reemphasize: if you're not worried about your appearance, it becomes much less important.  If you are worried that you're not beautiful enough to be accepted, successful, a good friend, a fun person...it will be a self fulfilling prophecy.

Bold stance against the beauty industry: 
Dove is a beauty company.  They sell soap, shampoo, deodorant and the like. But they are fighting against traditional messaging that you need a product to be more beautiful.  Since advertising has existed, the hook for beauty products has been: buy this.  It will make you more beautiful = accepted = happy.  Dove says, we support women the way they are. If you think that's good, support us by buying your toiletries from us.

And I totally do support that.  That's my stance.

How our Brain Interprets Media Imagery

Without getting too scientific, there are biological reasons that we respond to messages about beauty.  

There are three primary sections of the brain we're going to focus on.
Forebrain: the most developed part of the brain. It's logical, and thinks critically.  It remembers and works out problems.
Middle brain: this brain interprets thoughts and produces emotion.  It is illogical.  It can't reason.  It responds to external and internal stimuli (like seeing an image or thinking a thought.)
Brain stem: the least developed part of the brain.  It's primitive, concerned mainly with keeping your DNA on this earth by keeping you alive (chances to eat, being aware of danger) and reproducing (chances for potential mates.)

Thinking is learned.  Did you know that? We learn how to think and interpret what we think.  Our thoughts have patterns. Critical thinking is taught so we learn to question if our thoughts are valid.  We can learn to have positive, constructive thoughts rather than negative, destructive thoughts.  We are pretty good at manipulating the forebrain.  But the middle brain is a little more elusive. The words we think are concrete.  The feelings we feel are more abstract. They are harder to recognize and regulate.  And very difficult to manipulate with logic. 

So here's what happens.  A woman sees a picture of a beautiful woman- or a picture of a beautiful woman receiving attention from a man.  Her primitive brain recognizes it a something sexual and desirable.  It says "Hey, midbrain, we should be like that so we can keep our DNA on this earth." Midbrain passes along the message to the forebrain.  Forebrain is logical.  It says, "Mmm, we don't look quite like that woman.  Since all we get from this imagery is that she's hot (we know nothing about her morals, sense of humor, intelligence) I don't think we can be quite like her."  Midbrain is a little childish and gets upset when forebrain says this. It reacts with emotions.  "Why aren't we like this? Why can't we be? It's not fair!  We don't deserve a mate!" Sometimes forebrain hears these rants and tries to calm midbrain down with soothing thoughts, "It's okay, she's photoshopped, no one looks like that in real life, we're desirable and worthy of a mate just the way we are."

Many times, we're distracted though, and don't realize that midbrain is having a meltdown while we're watching our favorite TV show or reading a magazine.  And midbrain doesn't really understand what photoshop is.  Brain stem really doesn't understand.  There was never a biological situation before this time where it was necessary to distinguish a real image from a false image.  When we see a human being, our primitive brain can't tell it's not real.  Read: even when we logically understand this is an impossible standard of beauty with which to compare ourselves, our less developed brain areas do not.

Some women struggle because they know that logically, it's impossible to look like a photoshopped, make up wearing, posed, well lit image of a woman, but they don't know it emotionally.  They are confused because they think they can outsmart their brain's natural processes.

What can be done then?  Are we all just victims in an increasingly oppressive beauty society?
No!  There are some things we can do.

1. Limit media exposure.  Just say no to exposing yourself to unrealistic images and conceptions of women.  In our society, it's impossible to escape advertisement.  But a lot of what we see we choose to see in film, magazines, TV and other media.
2. Listen to your midbrain.  Become aware of when you feel sad about how you are/look.  Address those feelings.  Allow yourself to feel that way.  Understand why you feel that way to stop feeling that way in the future. (E.G. Please, please, pleeease never watch the Victoria's Secret fashion show.)
3. Think and say positive affirmations.  When you notice yourself thinking, "Wow, I should really lose some weight," or "I need some new wrinkle cream," or whatever...stop.  Pause and consciously send a message to your subconscious   Say, "I am beautiful and worthwhile the way I am.  I am enough.  I am valuable.  I am not a victim of society's standards." Etcetera. 
4. Be real.  Live in the moment.  Be connected.  Spend time with real people, helping, serving, interacting.  It will help you keep a proper perspective and remember what's really important.
5. Help other people struggling with the same issues.  We all have times of strength and times of weakness.  Be a beacon to others when you can, and allow yourself to be lifted by others when you are feeling weak.