Beauty treatments have been practiced by humans for hundreds if not thousands of years. There’s a reason why. Beauty is a celebration of life, or helping us feel our most expressive selves, and of giving us the power to show who we really are. It’s not hard to see how that can cross societal or historical borders.
That said, it’s true that beauty is, thankfully, a more diverse pursuit than ever. No matter what your skin tone may be, or even what gender you are, beauty treatments are an excellent way of helping reaffirm your self worth – and they bring us together.
However, as this wonderful opening up and accessibility has helped more people than ever utilize the benefits of ‘beauty’, how should we define what it means to us? After all, sometimes when the gates are so wide, it can be hard to see where we fit within them, or if we should experiment and try something new. In this fun piece, we’ll discuss a few ways to determine what beauty means to you.
Routine Comfort
Of course, beauty treatments do take time and money to take part in. For this reason, it’s good to find a routine that works for you, one that helps you enjoy a baseline level of beauty without feeling as though you have to overextend yourself, or that you’re ‘not good enough’ if you fail to meet something of a pre-portioned standard.
This might involve using The Ordinary Skincare products each morning to help you get set up for the day, as well as when settling down from a busy and productive working week. Routine comfort in beauty may mean finding makeup techniques that work for you each morning, so that you don’t have to spend hours getting ready. Furthermore, routine comfort as a priority can help you focus on what is most important to you, and how you feel most confident. No one can determine that for you, it’s a fun process of self-discovery, sometimes one that lasts for years. Don’t be afraid to try it!
Empowerment
It’s honestly quite shocking that it took pioneers such as Rihanna to fully and uniformly standardize makeup for those with darker skin tones and complexions, as up until recently makeup and beauty products have always been curate for those with fairer skin.
This means that empowerment not only enables us to focus on who may deserve and need beauty treatments, but that we use our purchasing power to enact the standards we wish to see. Of course, ethical, vegan makeup is also becoming the hot new standard, and it’s amazing how these developments, though they seem ‘trendy’ on the surface, are here to stay, and speak to a consumer base willing to demand more from the products they purchase.
It might be that you believe another standard can be met, and being vocal about it helps companies know exactly what their clientele is looking for. This doesn’t mean you have to feel like an activist each and every time you undertake a beauty regimen of course, but it can provide you food for thought to consider.
Nourishing Care
Self-care is very important in today’s world, particularly as many of us are struggling with the long-term impacts of an international pandemic and have had our lives turned upside down in the last twelve months. For this reason, nourishing self-care can be a tremendou way of focusing on ourselves, and distancing a little bit from the world around us.
This might involve partaking in excellent face mask treatments that help us and our skin feel totally nourished. It’s also important to remember that sometimes, having makeup-free days can help our skin breathe a little, while also giving us the chance to feel more confident as our own, beautiful, natural selves. After all, if we don’t practice feeling beautiful without all the products we use (which you are, have no doubt about that!) then it’s difficult to feel beautiful with it.
In this way, prioritizing nourishing care can help you understand that you come first, not the products you use.
Experimenting & Having Fun
Is there a ‘right’ way to dress and enjoy fashion? Perhaps. We all know that we don’t wear trousers on our arms or hats on our feet, and that’s for a good reason. Beyond the fundamentals, however, having fun with fashion is important. It’s always changing, like the seasons. Some people may consider focusing on fashion to be a vapid approach, but really, it’s just a celebration of life, aiming to add more color and worth to each and every day.
So far, so good. Why can’t we feel the same way about our makeup and beauty regimens? Experimenting and having fun can be a great idea, perhaps to embark on a fun cosplay outfit for our social media pages, or perhaps to feel glowing for a date, or just to try a new means of wing eyeliner that helps add a little sass to our outfit.
When many of us figure out our makeup routines that work for us, it’s not hard to stick to that forever. But it can be that we outgrow that look, or that we’d be better served by trying something new, if only to break through the limiting impressions that can grow over time. If you’re not having fun with beauty, odds are, you might be doing it wrong.
To conclude, it’s often totally dependent on who you are and what you’re looking for when deciding what beauty means to you. With this guide, we hope we can re-emphasize the fact that nourishing care, empowerment and ethics, routine comfort and experimenting or having fun are all amazing contributors here.
This way, you can figure out what sustains you, how it influences or is influenced by your identity, how to stop taking yourself so seriously while also looking like the actual beauty you are. If that can help you feel more confident and enjoy the process of wearing makeup more, well in our eyes, you’ve won through and through.
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