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Beauty Matters: What Are Your Beauty Origin Stories?
69 Plays2 years ago
How do we let beauty bloom throughout the gray journey of aging? In today's episode, Kiley and Nan delve into how we learn to define beauty and what it means in relationship to aging gracefully.
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Transcript
Introduction to Everyday Mindful
00:00:03
Speaker
Hi, I'm Kylie Wyn Efron. And I'm Nan Cavanaugh, and welcome to Everyday Mindful, a space for real talk on weaving the magic of mindfulness into our daily lives. Let's dig in.
Mishap and the Beauty of Aging
00:00:36
Speaker
Hey, Dan. Hey, Kylie. How are you doing? How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. I definitely feel like spring is in swing.
00:00:46
Speaker
I agree. I agree. So this is going to be our round two of recording this episode. I feel like we like popped our podcasting cherry, so to speak, if that's politically correct to say. I feel like every podcaster says that, you know, they accidentally didn't record an episode or something happened. And in our case, we recorded an episode and accidentally deleted it.
00:01:14
Speaker
And it was good. It was quality, but that's okay because I feel like what we're talking about is a subject that we can talk about over and over again. And I feel like it's also a subject that we are constantly renegotiating. And that is the subject of beauty and our relationship to beauty, in particular, physical beauty, physically, aging,
00:01:46
Speaker
Yeah, aging.
Cultural Views on Aging
00:01:48
Speaker
So I guess let's just start off by talking a little bit, you know, about how do you define aging gracefully and why as women are we expected to age gracefully? You know, I think
00:02:10
Speaker
Well, let's start with defining the word graceful, right? So according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, and we'll be using that because it is an American dictionary and American idea of graceful is probably a little different than other cultures. And it is, the definition is pleasing or attractive in line, proportion, or movement.
00:02:38
Speaker
And I think that, I think I've been thinking a lot about this since we deleted our last episode. And I feel like we really have to acknowledge that aging gracefully for Americans is very different than it is for other cultures because of our relationship to youth.
00:03:07
Speaker
And there are many cultures in the world, probably the majority of the world population that really revere elders, cherish the elderly, see them as intrinsic parts of the family unit, value them in a way that we don't as a society, unfortunately, or I should say we value them differently.
00:03:35
Speaker
And I think that really informs our understanding of what aging gracefully means and our deep association with beauty in youth.
Youth Obsession in America
00:03:52
Speaker
I would agree. I definitely think that as Americans, we are a youth-obsessed culture. That is something that we prize. It's something that's celebrated in our art and our media and our television.
00:04:12
Speaker
Definitely, you know, on social media, I do think in some ways, social media has democratized that a bit in the sense that there are other you have the possibility of having media and having other conversations take place. But I do think that it's very youth obsessed.
00:04:27
Speaker
And I also think as Americans, we have different standards for just beauty in general, not just aging, but in beauty. I think depending on what culture that we come from, there are different body types. There are different things that are appreciated. But I don't think we are a culture that's very focused on really extracting and honoring the wisdom that elders have.
00:04:53
Speaker
And I don't think until recently we were a culture that really celebrated like the crone, like that phase, in particular the phase of womanhood where you are entering into your mature crone stage, which is a stage of physical and internal beauty where your wisdom is at its ultimate peak and your power is at its ultimate peak.
00:05:15
Speaker
And it can still be considered a period of time where you are essential, which is not really something I think that as Americans that we grow up with very much. And I'm sure there are other cultures in America that have this issue, but I would agree with you on that.
00:05:31
Speaker
I think it's really interesting that the definition of graceful is about aesthetics, like the literal definition of it is about line and proportion and balance. And when I think about like the word grace, when you extract grace out of graceful, I actually think of there being like a softness to it, a space, I think it implies allowing
00:05:56
Speaker
for different states. When we do something gracefully, that's why I think we do it with some ease. We allow a little bit more love, a little bit more softness into that equation. So it's so interesting to me that this idea of aging gracefully is definitely very associated with aesthetics.
00:06:14
Speaker
And I think that it's very different. I think that each individual's definition for aging gracefully is different and has to be taken into consideration. So, you know, there's some people who believe that, you know, to age gracefully, you, you know, can't want to make any improvements.
Gray Hair and Beauty Standards
00:06:36
Speaker
You have to let every wrinkle shine. You have to let every gray hair grow out.
00:06:40
Speaker
You know, so can you do that? Can you not want to do that? Can you still want to engage in more tradition? You know typical beauty habits dye your hair do all those things and still be considered aging gracefully So I believe I told you this, you know
00:06:59
Speaker
I had always kind of thought that at one point I would want to grow my hair out gray. And post COVID, you know, you were really seeing a lot of people online and on social media really celebrating that, like really allowing their hair to grow in. They're really taking that time. And I've always thought it was terribly chic. I always thought it looked like a real act of empowerment to do.
00:07:20
Speaker
And so I've always known that one day I would want to do that, but I started to get to this point where I was seeing it in so I was seeing it so much. I was seeing it on social media so much that I almost started to feel a level of pressure to want to do it. I started asking myself, well, you know, am I, you know, being
00:07:40
Speaker
honest with myself, if I'm dyeing my hair and I'm doing these things, you know, am I really, can I really stand in this like wise state as this wise crows woman, as this yoga teacher, as a mindfulness coach, as a breath work coach, all these things, can I, you know, can I be wise and, you know, still continue to dye my hair. And so I made the decision to go ahead and do it maybe earlier than I would have.
00:08:04
Speaker
And as I started the process, I did not feel good. I did not feel like myself. I didn't feel like I looked like myself.
00:08:15
Speaker
It didn't feel like an outward reflection of my inner world, if that makes any sense. And I realized, but what it did do is really make me think and sit in that discomfort a little bit. And it made me reflect on what are my own standards of beauty? What are my own standards of aging gracefully?
00:08:35
Speaker
And then I just started to kind of hear intuitively, you know, you don't have to have gray hair to be wise. And I realized in through that process that
00:08:48
Speaker
I will let my hair grow gray at some point when it feels right and when it feels in alignment with me, but right now it does not. And so I made that decision to go back and start going back to coloring my hair again. And I felt like myself again. I felt more comfortable within my skin. And I know one day that'll happen and one day I will be there, but I made the decision in that moment that
00:09:14
Speaker
I don't have, that doesn't have to be a part of my definition of aging gracefully. It doesn't have to be in there and that I'm a sovereign person. I get to make the decision for myself what aging gracefully means for me. I shouldn't get to make it for you or for anybody else, but for me, it's okay if I'm 90 years old and I decide to dye my hair, if that is what feels in alignment with myself.
00:09:38
Speaker
And I have this, you know, general role too, as long as I don't feel that it's something I have to do. Yeah. It needs to feel like an empowered choice to do it. Something that makes me feel good. Does that make sense? Yeah. Do you feel like you can fight aging and age gracefully? Like I think there's a lot of women who
00:10:02
Speaker
are clinging to youthful appearance. And it's a battle. It's a lot of maintenance. It's a lot of upkeep. They're going in. They're getting shots. They're getting fillers. They're getting surgeries.
Resisting Aging and Beauty Pressures
00:10:14
Speaker
And there's a certain violence to it in a way. When you think about it, there's pain involved. Do you think the word graceful and that violent resistance to aging can
00:10:33
Speaker
I guess I just don't know if they can exist in the same space. I think that I just don't know if you can fight aging and simultaneously age gracefully. I think that there has to be
00:10:49
Speaker
There's no ease to fighting aging. There's no ease to it, you know? And if there's not ease, is there grace? Because it's happening and it's a battle. You're really fighting it. I think it depends on the energy you're bringing to it and the intention you're bringing to it. I don't think there has to be fight involved in it. I think it can be a choice. I think it'd be a choice of something that feels good and looks good to you.
00:11:13
Speaker
So I actually do I think that both can be present but I think what matters is the intention Behind why you are doing what you are doing. I agree So if you are going out and getting Botox or Juvederm or anything like that
00:11:29
Speaker
And you are doing that because you believe that you are not good enough on the inside. If you believe that you're not worthy of love looking exactly how you are, then that's problematic. Then you are fighting something.
00:11:46
Speaker
But if you were doing that and because it makes you feel good and it feels like an additive thing to your life, not a necessity in your life, then I think you can do that. Because I think that, I think if we implied that doing anything like that was, that would mean that if you wear a stitch of makeup that you're fighting aging. That would mean if you ever got your hair color that you're fighting aging.
00:12:10
Speaker
And I don't believe that is true. I actually don't think that beauty is the problem. I think it's how beauty has been weaponized against us. That is the problem. So for instance, if you look at like pagan cultures, or you look at ancient Egyptian cultures, like adornment, beauty using pigments, all of that was celebrated. But at one point, beauty was weaponized. And I think in particular,
00:12:39
Speaker
From a patriarchal standpoint, beauty was weaponized against women and the media has weaponized beauty against women. They've said, you must look like this and you must take this shape and you must look exactly like this to fit into this box. And I do think that and I'm speaking, you know, I'm speaking from my own standpoint and
00:12:58
Speaker
I think that a lot of women have been taught, especially women of our generation and the generations before us, I feel like it's changing a little bit now. We're really taught that you do have to fit into a particular box to receive the love you need and to be valued in some way. So I think if you were making some of those choices from that same place of intention, then there is a lack of violence against yourself within that.
00:13:26
Speaker
But I don't believe that every person who engages in that is doing that You know, I think I I've shared this with you in the past, you know, I had a breast lift I had it done last year and I I did not want to get implants not because I don't personally have any conflict with anybody getting in implants I didn't want to have a foreign object in my body. I am NOT a good candidate for that and
00:13:52
Speaker
I simply wanted to get a little back of my pre-baby, you know, breasts back. And I did it after my, you know, my youngest child is eight years old. I've had some time to think about this. It's not something I rushed right into. And when I did do it,
00:14:11
Speaker
I made sure I did it at a time where I would have been fine if I had not. Meaning like if I made the decision to not do it, I still recognize my breasts as beautiful. I still recognize myself as being beautiful. I did it because it felt like something that would feel really good to me.
00:14:26
Speaker
and would be a nice improvement to make. And I had to make sure that that relationship
Societal Pressure on Beauty
00:14:33
Speaker
was right with myself before I made that choice. And so I think that's a really important thing. I think intention matters.
00:14:43
Speaker
and I think understanding that. And I also think it's okay even if maybe you don't feel that. That's not to say that I just look at myself all the time and I'm like, oh, I'm beautiful, I'm perfect, nothing never needs to change. I have all of those same thoughts. I have all of those same insecurities that sometimes creep into my brain or that I need to reflect on. But what I've had to work very hard to is to not let them consume me.
00:15:10
Speaker
and to examine them and to understand them and to allow, you know, there's that word grace for myself in them. And then find a balance between the effort and the ease of accepting myself fully naturally and making improvements. I mean, I think, you know, we've talked about this in our last episode, like what happens when you're building a muscle? I think the argument we made that if you're building a muscle and you're lifting weights and you're doing all this stuff that that could be an act of violence, right? Because you're really just improving upon yourself.
00:15:39
Speaker
So I think whether something is violent or bad to the body is up to the person who's involved in it. But I also believe you need to have a strong sense of self and be able to be honest with yourself and ask the right questions when we're engaging in some of these practices. So I actually believe both can be true.
00:16:03
Speaker
Do I think that tension is always present? Yes, I do. I think the question is always present. And I think you have to keep asking yourself that. And I think we need to allow grace for ourselves in different chapters of our lives, making decisions and implementing certain things into our beauty routine that maybe at 65 we won't care about. Thinking you need to allow that space.
00:16:29
Speaker
for that and so I think it's really sitting with yourself and understanding the reason why you're doing something and I think it really comes down to is this an issue of self-love or not at the core.
00:16:45
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think it goes back to feeling graceful and the definition of the word graceful. Do I feel like I'm pleasing to the eye? Do I feel like I am pleasing in movement? But I think the most important aspect is, do I feel like I'm in balance or proportion? I think there's a lot of people, a lot of women in particular out there who are not in balance when it comes to beauty. And something that I've struggled with is
00:17:16
Speaker
just judgment as someone that um you know doesn't like I unfortunately am one of those people who rarely look at themselves in the mirror throughout the day so I will look at myself in the mirror and all of a sudden be like oh my fucking god like what is on my face or what the hell is going on with my hair why am I not paying more attention
00:17:37
Speaker
Um, why did nobody tell me? And, but I do think vanity drives a lot of people's relationship to beauty and being out of balance with what it means to be graceful.
Mindfulness and Beauty Journey
00:17:49
Speaker
Um, and I think we live in a culture and a society that like we don't like, I love an antique. I love things that are aged that tell a story to me. There's so much value in.
00:18:07
Speaker
in aging when it comes to objects and I see that same value when it comes to to beauty and people and I sometimes wonder if
00:18:25
Speaker
Whatever makes you feel good inside, but I think it's important to recognize that there are a lot of women in particular, and men too, but women in particular who are doing a lot of things to themselves in pursuit of quote unquote beauty that aren't healthy, that are destructive, that are addictive. I think we all know people who are addicted to plastic surgery.
00:18:52
Speaker
And I think a lot of it is just, honestly, it's our, just our cultural, the way, I don't know if it's because, you know, Americans, we are all about like bootstrap, you know, like, you can do it if you try the rugged individual, and we are not about
00:19:15
Speaker
like the collective care in a way that other cultures are. So our family units are different. We love our elders, but I would not say most American families cherish them in the way that other cultures do, where they are living with their elders, they lean on them for wisdom. We kind of see aging as a diminishing of a person.
00:19:42
Speaker
And we associate beauty with youth and value and objectification, you know, like being seen and being seen is beautiful. Not so much like being a beautiful person inside and out, but being seen is beautiful. There's so much importance to that.
00:20:07
Speaker
And, you know, it's something I struggle with because I don't, I see my neck, man. My neck is changing, you know? I just read something. Everyone's exchanging after Instagram. Yeah. And I just read something. I don't know what I was reading, but it was like, you can, a person's face isn't going to tell you their age. Just take a look at their neck. And I was like, shit, man. You know, and it's, it's hot where I live a lot of the time. I can't be sporting a turtleneck all day.
00:20:37
Speaker
But it's just this idea that aging is inevitable. And there's a lot of freedom. There's a lot of freedom in letting go of the conventional idea of beauty, because there is a conventional idea of beauty that's projected on us.
00:20:59
Speaker
You know, absolutely. Absolutely. To play devil's advocate, though, I could also say that there is a freedom to defining what like to deciding if that conventional form of beauty is in alignment with yourself or not with others. Like I think that.
00:21:21
Speaker
Compassion, like the best recipe for judgment is compassion. It's to be a little bit more compassionate with ourselves. And that might be that we're being judgmental of others. That might mean that we're being judgmental of ourselves. I think that when judgments arise in us, they're little triggers that are asking us to look at something. They're holding up a mirror to us in some form.
00:21:44
Speaker
And whether that's us judging what somebody else is doing to their body or whether that's us judging ourselves, which I think are present in all of us, right? Every single one of us has those thoughts. They are invitations to become mindful again. They are invitations to renegotiate your current relationship with where you are and how you feel about it.
00:22:04
Speaker
And I think that we can slowly change the definition of, I can tell you that the definition of what I wanted to look like, what I thought I needed to look like, what I wanted for my body is very different at this age than it was in my 20s.
00:22:20
Speaker
I would say I've kind of consistently renegotiated what my definition of beauty is that I want. And it has more to do with what speaks to me and what I feel like when I talk about dyeing my hair. It's like, what is my, what outer appearance is going to be a reflection of how I feel on the inside.
00:22:41
Speaker
But part of being able to do that, I think, in a safe and healthy way is paying attention when the triggers rise and asking ourselves the hard questions. I recently was doing a form of exercise, and I've always been really attracted to this particular form of exercise. It's not yoga.
00:23:00
Speaker
And I found myself always wanting to do it, really doing it. And I know it's an effective form of exercise. It gets you in great shape. I think it has many, many benefits to it. But the instructor who leads it is very beautiful and very thin.
00:23:17
Speaker
And I would find myself when I was watching and doing this workout, and all I could think about was, oh my god, I want to be thin. Like, I found myself wanting that body, her body, not my body. I wanted her body. And even though this exercise regimen probably has a multitude of benefits for myself and other people who do it, I realized it kind of triggered something in myself where I was like, you know, Kylie, you have to look at this.
00:23:46
Speaker
What are your reasons for doing this particular workout? What are you doing? And I know right now my work, I don't know why so much right now, is about letting go of my expectations to outcome. Expectations about how I'm gonna look if I eat a certain way, exercise a certain way.
00:24:06
Speaker
How successful will this podcast be? How successful will my restaurant be? Right now, my work is about just putting in the groundwork. It's just being really present and in the present moment. And I made a decision that I have to really focus the way I move my body from a holistic standpoint.
00:24:27
Speaker
What is going to strengthen my body? What is going to make me feel the most comfortable within it? And right now this particular workout that has plenty of merits is not it because it's tripping my brain into a place that did not feel healthy to me. And so I had to kind of catch myself in that moment and really reflect on it. And so, you know, now I'm doing my yoga and doing more kind of
00:24:51
Speaker
traditional strength training because I realized I needed to be focused on just building strength. That's where I needed to be placing my intention and I had to be honest with myself because the truth is my intentions for doing that workout weren't just to be strong. It was because I wanted to look like her.
00:25:08
Speaker
And so that's at the age of 50, right? At the age of 50, where I've had a long relationship with my body and my beauty, I still catch myself in those moments. But I did have the discipline to stop doing it, to say, this isn't good for me right now. Maybe it will be in the future. But right now, I know my intention for doing this. It's not what I'm saying it is.
00:25:32
Speaker
And the mindfulness to like take that pause and ask the question. Because I think it's okay. I think it is okay to want to get Botox and maybe still struggle with it a little bit, right? To want to put makeup on and maybe still struggle
Self-Love and Beauty Origins
00:25:48
Speaker
with it. Okay.
00:25:48
Speaker
We don't have to have the perfect answer or the perfect situation or the perfect solution for our relationship to beauty all worked out. You don't have to give it all up. It's messy. I don't think you have to take it on fully. I think you have to keep renegotiating it and keep being honest with yourself. And when those questions come up, you do have to ask yourself, where is this coming from?
00:26:10
Speaker
Why does being skinny look so enticing to me? And listen, I have a naturally slim physique. It's not crazy for me to go in the direction of that particular, that's not unlikely. But in that moment, my reasons for doing it weren't just because that's my natural way of movement. It's because I wanted to look at that. So it's catching myself in those moments. But I think you and I both have, you know, we have that
00:26:39
Speaker
We are both petite people. We are a slender people by nature. So we already fit into a conventional norm of beauty that a lot of women in America don't have that privilege, that their body types are outside of that. And then when I say conventional norm of beauty, it's what
00:27:01
Speaker
I mean, to be frank, it's just what the patriarchy has dictated and told us in every magazine since magazines were created in this country and it's shifting and there's a shift happening, but I think it's really important to, to really think about, you know, what it's like. Like I grew up in Southwest Florida. I'm a fair skin person. All my friends are very tan.
00:27:28
Speaker
And when we would go and being part of the pool beach culture is a big part of how we spend our time. And I never looked like anyone else in a bathing suit. I could never look like anyone else in a bathing suit, no matter how hard I tried. I would just get more freckles. I would not get a tan.
00:27:47
Speaker
Um, and freckles were not trending when I was growing up. Very clear. Um, you're very on trend now, very on trend now. Um, but not then. And I have always struggled with being kind of outside of the norm, wishing my skin was different. And as I've grown older, I was actually a friend in college, a guy friend.
00:28:15
Speaker
who was like, oh my God, fair skin, so exotic. I don't know what you're talking about. And it was like, it took someone else, a man, to tell me that my natural assets were something to be valued. And there's some sadness to that. There wasn't a point that I, and I was raised by a feminist, I was raised, I was also raised that,
00:28:45
Speaker
you know, a woman should never rely on their beauty or their sexual attractiveness and their ability to manipulate situations with their sexuality for advantage. Like I was taught from a very early age, like you hold your own, you're capable. You do, you can do the things that you need to do without, without manipulating situations through sexual attraction. That was kind of a fundamental part of my,
00:29:15
Speaker
rearing And a real like I wasn't allowed to play with Barbies as a child I I was raised by a second-wave feminist and And a badass lawyer and who did her what she needed to do You know on her own terms and I give my mom mad props for that But in that same breath, I have never felt like comfortable like putting on something really sexy, you know
00:29:43
Speaker
I have never felt comfortable really leaning into beauty. I was taught from an early age that there's something inauthentic about it, beauty in the conventional form.
00:29:57
Speaker
There's something inauthentic about it and I don't think that's true. It's not true for all people and I think it's important to really be mindful of the stories you're told throughout your life about beauty and the different ways we hear them and the different ways we experience those stories and then when we have those moments where we're being triggered, taking that pause and being like,
00:30:20
Speaker
Is this a healthy thing I'm doing, you know? Yeah. I had a similar but different experience. I was definitely raised with more of a feminist mindset on things. I was lucky and blessed to have had parents who made it very clear to me that I mattered and that my opinions mattered and that I could do anything I wanted to do and speak my mind. I grew up with a mother and a father who were very clear about that with me and I'm very grateful for that.
00:30:49
Speaker
I also grew up with a mother who was very heavy. She was a heavy set woman, very beautiful woman. And if I told you how many times in my life I heard, oh my God, your mom's so beautiful. She had only lost that weight, you know? And so I grew up with both, with parents who I love very much, but who were very concerned about me gaining weight. They did not want me to experience what my mother experienced.
00:31:18
Speaker
And I grew up with this understanding of a little bit of pressure to not want to gain weight. And so that was really implanted within me from a very early age. And it wasn't like my parents loved me. They just didn't want me to struggle.
00:31:37
Speaker
and want me to suffer. I watched how badly at times my beautiful mother was treated as a result of it. And so it planted a seed within me that I have had to continually
00:31:54
Speaker
like nurture from a place of like loving yourself and like giving myself compassion when those feelings rise up because I know what the source of them is, you know, and having compassion for why they're rising up, not being hard on myself.
00:32:08
Speaker
but also being really aware that that is the source sometimes of my desire to want to be thin or to stay thin. And so it's like kind of knowing the truth of your story. Like if you know your origin story, sometimes that really helps you be more aware. And so that doesn't mean that now I walk around all the time just being like, I don't, you know, I've really, I've nailed this whole relationship to my body thing. I have not.
00:32:37
Speaker
I have a much healthier relationship to my body than I have had in years past. But it will be a constant struggle for me to nurture that and I have to constantly revisit it and constantly look at it. But one thing I will say is that I have focused on having a more mindful life, a more meditative life, as I have learned and truly understood my self-worth that I do deserve to be loved.
00:33:07
Speaker
regardless of what I look like, that relationship, the struggle, the grip it has on me has softened so much over the years. Because I think that a lack of self-love is at the root of almost every person's problems.
00:33:26
Speaker
every problem, whether or not, let's say you can't have successful relationships. Let's say you have an unsuccessful, you know, your body image, you suffer from body image issues. Let's say you suffer from, you know, feeling like you're a constant victim. Whatever your issue is, we all have them. I would venture to say that a lack of self-love is at the origin of all of it. And most people would say, what are you talking about? Of course I love myself.
00:33:50
Speaker
Well, if you did love yourself, you wouldn't pick the relationships you pick. You wouldn't make some of the choices, have some of the friendships you have. Maybe it's lack of self-knowing. It's a lack of self-knowing and a lack of self-love. And I'm not saying that that's something that the other, I've struggled with that myself.
00:34:05
Speaker
But if we can renegotiate our love life with ourselves, and then you can start, I think, defining a more healthy relationship to beauty and start making some of those decisions from a more healthy place, from a more informed place, as opposed to letting like your narrative or the media's narrative or all those things, you know, define it for you. Because I had a similar thing. The contrary to how my
00:34:32
Speaker
you know, how I was raised about the body. I remember my mother would never tell me I was beautiful. I would never like I would ask like, Oh, do you think I'm pretty? Oh, yeah, she would always tell you your daughter sat now, you should raise other values. You're pretty on the inside. I don't know if I fully agree with it though. Because what happened is I did feel very pretty on the inside. That is true.
00:34:56
Speaker
I did grow up believing I'm funny, I'm nice, I'm kind. Like I had a good sense of that, but I also did not think I was pretty. I also, because when I would ask the direct question, am I pretty? I would hear, you're pretty on the inside. That's all that really matters. So when you don't have the emotional intelligence at a young age to understand, oh, my mom's just trying to build me up,
00:35:21
Speaker
It can sometimes create this negative thought pattern within you. So then, you know, it took me being, you know, I know it was attractive, but it took me to being almost in college when I started getting attention for the way I look to be like, oh,
00:35:37
Speaker
maybe I am pretty, maybe I am beautiful. But once again, it was coming from somebody else, like the same thing with someone telling you that fair skin is exotic, that it's beautiful. And that is false confidence. So for a while, I'm like, oh, I'm beautiful, I'm this, I'm that.
00:35:53
Speaker
until there's nobody there telling you that. And when no one's there telling you that anymore, you have to dig down deep inside and from inside determine that you think you're beautiful. Yeah, it's true. I don't know, there's tension to it, right? Yeah, there is. And I really love this idea of like,
00:36:12
Speaker
really digging into like what is your beauty origin story? Like what is the story that you, what are the stories you've heard throughout your life that has shaped your understanding
Redefining Beauty and Aging Gracefully
00:36:25
Speaker
of beauty? What is the stories you've told yourself throughout your life to be able to navigate
00:36:32
Speaker
what it means to be beautiful in the physical sense and really just taking some time to particularly at, you know, at the midlife stage, you know, as you enter, I mean, to be frank, oh, really? I don't even know how to say this gracefully. Like, just kind of a brutal, a brutal path forward when it comes to aging gracefully.
00:36:59
Speaker
I mean, age is an uphill battle. And I think understanding your relationship with beauty at this moment is really essential to how gracefully you're going to age.
00:37:16
Speaker
Agreed. And I think the more you nourish your inner life and your inner relationship to yourself, the less difficult that process will be. I think to say that it will just ... I'm not saying it's going to piece it, Kate, because like I said, I think that tension exists all the time. But I think the less
00:37:38
Speaker
The more you love yourself, the more you have a sense of who you are as an individual, and the more grounded you feel, the more safe you feel within your inner world, the easier those negotiations are going to be. So as you do get older, and let's face it, you start to notice online, you're starting to notice sunspots, you're starting to notice these things. You might have that pain, you might have that thought that says, oh, I don't know how I feel about that. I don't know how I like the wrinkles in my neck, whatever it is.
00:38:07
Speaker
But you might be able to catch yourself a lot faster and say, but you know what? I'm beautiful. It's okay. It's coming with grace. It's coming with age. And liberation. I love the idea of like, if you're feeling liberated and free in your physical aesthetic, then I think you're on the right track. But if you're feeling overwhelmed and trapped and confined and that it's like, you know, you're pushing a boulder, then I think
00:38:36
Speaker
I think that you have to ask yourself, who am I doing this for? Am I doing this for myself? Or am I doing this because some external force is guiding my choices? Definitely. And I would say that your body keeps that score for you. So your body will tell you through sensations
00:39:05
Speaker
whether or not you're being true to yourself. That's for damn sure. I mean, that's what anxiety really is, right? It's like a foil for what we don't want to look at. So if you are feeling a little anxious, a little edgy, like if a thought comes up and you're asking yourself that question, pay attention to the sensations that you're feeling within your body, because they'll tell you a lot. If you make a decision and it feels super grounded,
00:39:31
Speaker
then that's pretty solid intuitive guidance coming through. But if your messages don't come through in the form of anxiety and fear, anxiety and fear is something to look at, not to push away. A solid grounding sensation in the body when we have these thoughts or these questions rise up, I feel like that's something you can trust. So it's like if your body is speaking to you and you're feeling anxious or
00:39:57
Speaker
you're having a lot of conflict about something, wait until the conflict subsides before taking action. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. And I think being mindful of where the, what's, what's driving those feelings, you know, and, and, and then when you can identify that, then, um, sometimes avoidance is the best policy.
00:40:23
Speaker
you know? Yeah, until like, until you kind of know, like, because I've done that before too, where I'm like, okay, I want to, I want to go do this treatment, or I want to do this thing. But I'm feeling like anxious about it, or I, I'm having obsessive thoughts about it. And then a lot of times I'm like, okay,
00:40:39
Speaker
I'm going to wait until I feel neutral. And once I feel neutral, that's when you want to act because that is you're going to make a much more defined decision based off neutrality. What do you think about the generations behind us, like our kids' generations and the generations to come?
Evolving Beauty Standards for Youth
00:40:58
Speaker
Do you think that their definition of beauty is changing?
00:41:04
Speaker
I think that their definition of acceptance is changing but I think they are still reeling in the world of
00:41:17
Speaker
just the pressure of particularly in American society. I just want to be clear and I want to be, I also want to just, so I'm raising two teenage daughters and they both have very intense relationships with what it means to be beautiful and the pressures at this age.
00:41:35
Speaker
And one of my girls is, you know, just a, a full bodied woman and she has found, you know,
00:41:51
Speaker
the lot of unkindness throughout her experience as a middle school girl because she she's fit she's an athlete but she's not petite and there is a lot of
00:42:06
Speaker
a lot of exclusion and a lot of fat shaming in white culture across the board that she has to grapple with on a daily basis that she does not experience with her friends of color because they have a different relationship with more diverse body types than white culture does and beauty.
00:42:29
Speaker
And it's hard. It's really hard for her navigating those two worlds and dealing with the bullying in a graceful way.
00:42:46
Speaker
And so I also think with social media, our girls, like when we were coming up, there were girls in the class that fit the, you know, fit the cookie cooker.
00:43:01
Speaker
cookie, cookie cutter definition of part of me of beauty, the old American girl, right? You know, and then there was everyone else and there was maybe like a few of them. And that's all you saw. Like you only experienced what you saw in the magazines and in real life, but now movies. Yeah. Right. And now with social media, our children are bombarded every day with
00:43:27
Speaker
what you should look like, how to get there. Like I have my older daughter, you know, she's kind of transitioning out of this phase right now, but she really felt like she had to wear a full face of makeup for two years from the age of 13 to 15. Otherwise she should not be seen in public. And she got, you know, learned how to do contour makeup and learn how to do that. I don't, you know, I'm not a makeup person. This all came from the internet.
00:43:53
Speaker
And she was navigating her understanding. She was getting this idea of what is beautiful, what a face should look like from a space that is full of filters, is full of Photoshopping, is not real, you know, not real.
00:44:13
Speaker
And she's coming out of that, but it definitely preyed on her self-esteem and her ability to
00:44:27
Speaker
to just be herself in the world as a young person. And as someone who was not allowed to wear makeup at that age, other than like lip gloss and maybe a little mascara, I at first was like, oh, of course, you know, go for it. You know, like I'm always trying to not do, a lot of the ways my parenting is not doing what my parents did. So I'm like, yeah, you know what, have fun with it. Have fun with it.
00:44:50
Speaker
And then it was like all of a sudden to have fun with it turned into something unhealthy and I wasn't ready for it. I didn't know how to navigate. I'm like literally googling in the middle of the night. Like what happens when your daughter is wearing too much makeup? How do you talk to them? What do you do without making them feel
00:45:07
Speaker
bad about themselves, you know, in some capacity and like, you know, psychiatrist and psychologist after psychologist is like, just let her do it. Let her figure it out. She will figure it out. It is a phase. Do not. She's
00:45:22
Speaker
battling with self-esteem issues, do not pour gas on that fire by telling her what she's doing. And she felt really good going out into the world with this makeup on. Don't make her feel like she's not pretty. When you can't learn her lessons for her.
00:45:42
Speaker
No. And it did. She went through this phase. It was intense. There were fake eyelashes involved. There are still fake eyelashes involved. But she can now go out with a bare face without feeling insecure about it, which there was a window of time a year ago where there was no way in hell.
00:46:09
Speaker
Well, she's maturing too. So I'm sure that, you know, that that helps. Yeah. Because I do think that's part of it is, you know, like there are there's a shadow and a light part aspect to everything. Yeah, individuals. And that certainly includes social media. Yeah, you know, social media is a great connector.
00:46:26
Speaker
It is an opportunity to connect with people who live far away from you. It's an opportunity to find community. It's opportunity to build a career, to speak to other people on different coasts, which is a beautiful thing. But it also can start to really inform if you spend enough time scrolling, I'll find myself scrolling through and all of a sudden I'll just start feeling kind of anxious or I'll stop feeling kind of bad about myself. All of a sudden, you know, I spent the last three months trying to find the perfect makeup because all I was seeing
00:46:56
Speaker
was makeup artists after makeup artists after makeup artists say something and next thing you know just feeding you just feeding it and saturating it and after three months of going out and trying to shop for the perfect makeup I'm right back to what I had before which was perfect it was fine but because I was so what I had to do is go and clean out my feed I had to go in and just start unfollowing people and removing stuff that nothing wrong with those people individual
00:47:22
Speaker
but as individuals, but I just, they weren't, it wasn't beneficial
Social Media's Influence on Beauty
00:47:26
Speaker
to me. But once again, I'm a 50 year old woman with enough self-reflection at this point to be like, maybe I'm not feeling so good when I'm looking at this anymore. So let's change this up. That is very difficult for a teenager to do. I think it just takes time to like build that level of self-confidence. But I agree. I also think it's the journey she has to go on, right? It's the lessons she has to learn. So as parents, we have to,
00:47:52
Speaker
keep supporting them and keep providing them with the other messages and allow them to go on that journey. But it's an interesting thing. And I do think that a lot, you know, I think we have more diversity in our advertising.
00:48:05
Speaker
I think we have more body types being represented in our advertising. I think young women now are far more comfortable with their curves and with their body and showing it in all forms than say our generation was. A hundred percent. The shift is happening. The shift is happening. But it's still, but I agree with you. I think both are still true. Yes, there's more acceptance, but the obsession around beauty is still there. Yeah. That hasn't.
00:48:31
Speaker
Maybe we've just shifted our rules about it a little bit. So I feel like it's going to be really interesting to see, like over the next 20, 30 years, how that continues to shift and how we continue to redefine beauty, aging gracefully, what that means for all of us. I think I'm constantly redefining it.
00:48:56
Speaker
I just got to stay curious. Yeah. I'm just going to stay curious and just, just be mindful of the stories you tell yourself about it. Yeah. Right. The narratives, the movie pictures we run in our mind and where they're coming. Like you bring up a really good point about the social media and with the advertising, like our phones are always listening and you have like one conversation with someone about wrinkles. And then next thing you know, your feet is full of creams and potions and lotions and,
00:49:24
Speaker
You're like, Oh my God, I think I really need this. And it's all these women telling me about these miracle cures or this or that. And you're just like, Oh my God, you know, I, I'm so wrinkly and I need this, I need this thing. And then you find yourself, I find myself on Amazon reading other reviews and then I've spent like hours and I'm like, I wasn't even thinking about my wrinkles.
00:49:49
Speaker
Exactly. I was literally just going on my social media to check in on my friend who had a baby. And now I am feeling very insecure about aging. It's like, come on. Well, once again, that comes back to that sensation in your body, right? You can kind of know it. You start to feel like the heart rate elevate a little bit. You start to feel a little yucky. Yeah. I think it's like just paying attention to how you feel in the body and getting curious and keep asking yourself the right
00:50:19
Speaker
questions and like give yourself and also give yourself grace, give yourself permission to flow in and out of different stages of how you relate to your own beauty and how you define it. And don't let anybody else define it for you. That's my recipe. Yeah, I love that. I love that. It's really personal. It's really personal.
00:50:41
Speaker
It has to be, right? It has to be. Yeah. And authentic. That's what makes it authentic. Like, I think real beauty comes from authenticity. Agreed. Agreed. And it's going to be different in the different stages of our life. And we have to allow for that. Then just be kind to ourselves as we are going and, you know, and kind to one another as we're going through it because it's
00:51:00
Speaker
You know, it's hard. Yeah. And compassion is so key because you don't know what stories people have been told about beauty that are driving their choices. So you really have to approach each other. And in women in particular, we have to be, it doesn't serve to be judgmental. We have to be compassionate.
00:51:19
Speaker
And we have to be supportive of one another. Yeah, 100%. Well, this was wonderful, as always. I appreciate your time. It was a very appropriate topic for National Women's History Month. It was, it was, absolutely. My stepmother just asked me, she's like, are you going to do an episode on Women's History Month? And I'm like, well, not exactly, but I kind of think we are. Yeah, we're doing an episode on duty.
00:51:46
Speaker
We're doing an episode on our relationship to beauty, different chair. Very, very different. And I'm sure this episode was, you know, parts of it triggering for some people. Yeah. So it'll segue perfectly to our episode next week, which is triggers. What are they? How do they affect us? How do we use them? How do we weaponize them? All of it. So we'll get into it.
00:52:07
Speaker
I like it. What do they teach us? All the good stuff. I like it. All right, Kylie. Well, thank you as always for your insight and your wisdom. And I look forward to chatting next time. Me too, my friend.
00:52:25
Speaker
Don't forget to follow us on social at Everyday Mindful Podcast on Instagram and Facebook. And if you liked our little chat, please subscribe. It would be great if you gave us a review. All the stars, please. Same time, same place next week. Bye. Bye.