With so many “ideals of beauty” being forced upon us and marketed to us each and every day it has become increasingly difficult to feel secure and happy in one’s own skin.
The constant pressure for each of us to change our appearance according to what society and the media tell us is now deemed acceptable is becoming particularly overbearing; causing low self-esteem and the loss of our true selves.
We have all got so caught up in “putting our best selves forward” that we have forgotten who we truly are in the process.
Beauty companies and the cosmetics industry are playing on our insecurities left, right and centre by pedal pushing products at us every single day. They are fan-dangling us with new age techniques and ‘must have’ beauty buys that promise to “fix” us. They have got us hooked.
We have become imprisoned by this new set of standards that society and the media have forced upon us and it has never felt harder to truly be ourselves in daily life: that’s if we can even remember who we truly are anymore.
So I’ve decided to write a book…
I am a hairstylist and makeup artist, but most importantly I am a woman who has also struggled with confidence, self-esteem and have been questioning my own identity over the last few years.
My entire life I have played around with my own appearance and for the last 10 years I have been playing with other people’s.
I have learned a lot, but the biggest takeaway is that self-esteem and true confidence comes from the inside not what you put on the outside.
I’ve worked with actors to help get them into character to enhance their performance.
I’ve carried out makeup lessons to help busy, time-poor professionals and mum’s get a grip on their appearance each day.
And I’ve worked with hundreds of brides to help them determine their wedding day look that makes them feel the most beautiful in a way that is the truest to them.
I have worked with a variety of people and I have learned a lot from each and every one of them.
The book I am writing is aimed at ALL women who are feeling lost, confused, distracted, and struggling to recognise the person that they are putting out there on a daily basis.: They could be stay-at-home mum’s on constant demand from their children or they could be high powered business executives exhausted from putting on a daily facade of what other people want to see and hear.
Regardless of age, status or situation, the underlying issue of low self-esteem and lack of confidence is always the same.
Each one of us is born with a unique set of qualities; from the way we are programmed to think and respond to the things around us, to the individual, physical features which sets each one of us apart and makes us completely unique.
A rather frightening pattern has emerged where heavy contouring and trending makeup tutorials are producing “cookie-cutter” results within women all over the world.
Individuality is getting lost as women strive to recreate the perfect bone structure and enhance their features beyond recognition.
And while this all starts out as “play” and what we believe to be an innocent confidence booster, it isn’t long before we find ourselves swept up by it all. We have gotten lost in the pursuit of perfection and have become reliant on cosmetic products, yo-yo diets, grueling gym regimes, aesthetic practitioners and in some cases plastic surgeons to go about our daily lives and feel confident in doing so.
We have been led to believe that our true worth is dependent on how we are perceived from the outside and not the contribution we are able to give to the world from our powerful minds and souls which are inside.
We battle daily with who we actually are and who we think we should be and wind up feeling confused and unsure of ourselves.
I believe the core qualities that make us so wonderfully unique have simply become buried under our attempts to be something or someone we thought we should be.
When we were young, people pulled us up when we spoke out of turn, they told us how to dress; what suited us and what didn’t. Simply put, other people told us how to act, behave and how we should portray ourselves.
While taking this on board over the years I believe we have manifested into a hybrid of parts of ourselves and large parts of other’s ideals.
Having become accustomed to being guided through our childhood by our peers, parents and teachers, when their feedback dissipated, it was only natural for us to turn to other sources for guidance on how we should be living and designing our lives and the media was right there for us when we needed it.
We have spent a lot of effort covering ourselves up and disconnecting from our true selves because society and the media told us we weren’t quite enough as we are but having tried to mold ourselves to the media’s ideals for so long a lot of us have wound up feeling confused about who we really are and lost touch with the unique qualities that make us so individually awesome.
We have either forgotten how to be ourselves or are severely lacking the confidence to go out there each day and truly showcase the things that make us great.
But it’s all still there. From the physical unique features that help those around us connect with us, to our powerful individual minds of exclusive and interesting thought processes.
I believe that all that is needed is a little ‘re-programming.’
We just need to dig deep to reconnect with all the things that make us great, capitalise on all that great stuff, and then go on out there and truly own it.
In this book of mine, I will be serving up some facts, kicking society’s and the media’s ideals to the curb, and guiding you through some self-exploration to get you back in touch with you, the real you, so that you can regain the confidence to be wholly you once again.
CJC x
