Our loveliness increases

An invitation to complete a marketing questionnaire fell into my mailbox yesterday. Why not, thought I, and I clicked the link. There I was faced by a question regarding what brands I was aware of whose products made me more confident about my beauty (or some such wording – that’s the essence of it). Now, I didn’t want to fill any of the boxes, but the form would not let me move on unless I selected at least one. (This in itself horrified me – that kind of validation perverts the results of the research)

I entered one brand name in order to move on.

The next question asked for the reason for my selection, so I gave it to them chapter and verse: I was forced by the form validation to give at least one brand name, so I did. In my view no product offers this benefit. It is appalling that the industry feels that it can market this stupid notion to women. It is worse that women accept that they can improve on their innate beauty by purchasing and using a product.

You can correctly surmise that I did not get very far into the questionnaire before it thanked me and said they had sufficient input and could not use my responses.

Ladies, we are all beautiful from birth. Have confidence in that fact and keep your money in your pockets.

It’s not just the industry – it’s men too. When I hear other women saying that their partners think this, that or the other needs a touch of improvement – oh, it makes me so mad. My ex Bro-in-law once asked me why all women have fat tummies. I told him that they don’t, they have womanly curves – it’s Nature’s way of accommodating and protecting the reproductive parts. If he wanted a partner with a flat belly he should have married a boy. He junked my sister anyway, just as soon as she showed signs of ageing, he traded her in for a younger model – no doubt without stretch marks and facial lines. Bastard.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever; it’s loveliness increases. Keats was right, it does not diminish.

We are currently working our way through Californication on Netflix. I keep finding myself wishing that more men were like Hank (not exactly – that would be terrible!) – in as much as they celebrate natural female beauty, understand it and enjoy it:

[su_quote cite=”‘Hank Moody'”]… I find myself telling her how beautiful she is anyway. ’cause it’s true – all women are, in one way or another. You know, there’s always something about every damn one of you. There’s a smile, a curve, a secret. You ladies really are the most amazing creatures.[/su_quote]

Man, if you don’t think your wife is an amazing creature, beautiful in every conceivable way and perfect just the way that she is… work now to find your Inner Hank and if you won’t do that, then set her free now to find her own Hank.

Does all of this sound hypocritical from the woman who revealed this very week that she has gone on a fitness and diet kick?

In my defence:

  1. I’m doing it for health reasons not for appearances
  2. We are doing it together – it is not being inflicted upon me and I am not “doing it for him”

Mr L is my very own Hank and he loves me just the way that I am and will feel the same whatever shape and size I am although he’s already sad at the thought of my physical diminishing. Mr L would never be one of those guys – the ones that start hinting that perhaps you need to  shed a little weight, perhaps even demanding it. Hank Moody would not either. Go, Hank.

Anyway, I digress. My original point was about buying something in a box and allowing the media and beauty industries to falsely feed your ego.

Do you know what the best beauty bolsters are?

  1. Sleep
  2. Water
  3. Good nutrition
  4. Good thoughts
  • There’s nothing like insufficient sleep for taking the edge off your natural glow. Get plenty of kip.
  • Hydration is the biggest beauty secret. It’s the one thing that makes a visible difference to my skin and eyes.  For as many years as I can remember I have started my day with a mug of hot water. I don’t understand why this makes such a difference, but it did and so I keep it up.
  • Soap and water is good too if you want to look pretty. Keeping clean is de rigeur in the beauty stakes.
  • It’s entirely true – junk on the inside, grotty on the outside… this counts both for nutrition and disposition.
  • A smile lights up any face and doubles the beauty quotient.

Yes, I know that I left out exercise. Exercise is boring and although I have to do it, I certainly don’t want to waste even more of my life by talking about it. Exercise bores are … boring.

So are diet bores – I’ll just note that today is our second fasting day and that the 5:2 books have arrived.

On the knitting front: Hugo is currently being bordered and will be completed soon. The rows are long now, and slow, but I hope to cast off by the end of this weekend.

There is no lunch to cook today (recycling Monday’s soup) so my spare time will be spent on the new books.

 

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