It was in late summer 2004, on my 50th birthday, that I discovered the secrets of how to be gorgeous.
In spite of following a strict natural beauty regime for most of my life I could see signs of aging beginning to show. A few more fine lines had appeared around my eyes, a few more grey hairs and I’d been dreading the thought of turning fifty. Now the dreaded birthday was actually here it seemed everything was on a slippery downhill slide from now.
My husband, in his infinite wisdom, paid for me to have a spray tan as a birthday treat. What followed over the next few days and weeks contributed to a natural beauty transformation that I can only describe as magical.
My message to you is not to go have a spray tan, however. This only triggered an incredible chain of events. My message to you is this: to look good – you have to feel good and to feel good – you have to look good. This is the very essence of natural beauty.
It’s also a never ending circle that gathers speed and momentum like a wheel and it either works for you or against you. If it’s working against you, like it was for me, you have to take positive steps to turn everything around. It can be done and you can do it too.
Soon the compliments will start. This is when I began to feel pride in myself. I felt better about my looks – and guess what? I began to look even better. This led to even more compliments. This, in turn made me feel fantastic about myself.
It doesn’t matter how old you are, what shape you are or even what color your skin is.
Everybody can do this – even you.
When you look in the mirror – what do you see? Is the face that looks back at you dull and stressed out or is it alive and vibrant? Are you glowing with natural beauty?
Whatever’s getting you down, be it problem skin, advancing years, flabby muscles and dull skin, or just a general feeling of being unattractive then knowing the secrets of how to be gorgeous will give you the body and looks you’ve always dreamed of.
First you must make a decision – a decision to do something about it.
Once you have made your decision the next step is to take positive action that will improve your looks, your body shape and the way you think of yourself.
Don’t get me wrong here, it didn’t happen over night. I had to work for it.
It takes time to change your physical looks and body shape. Some improvements showed almost immediately such as how I felt inside. Other improvements took a few weeks.
It takes three weeks to change your complexion because the skin has seven layers. As each layer sheds a new improved layer from underneath shows itself. It takes three weeks for the whole process to complete so that the layer that benefits the most from your hard work i.e. the deepest, works its way up to the top.
Muscle tone is the same; it can take four weeks to improve your body shape by toning up sagging muscles. However, this time scale can be shortened if you are dedicated and really want the end results.
With all things in life, you only get out of it what you are prepared to put into it.
Don’t do what I was doing, blaming everything on my age. After all I was almost fifty, what else could I expect except pale, dull lifeless skin, a tired expression and muscles that were just a little too relaxed?
Age is just a number. Your body is fully equipped to repair itself it just needs a little help as you grow older.
Incidentally, growing older is OK. We all do it, its natural. Natural beauty is not striving to look seventeen when you are in fact fifty.
Growing older doesn’t have to mean bowing to the pull of gravity and letting our bodies go either.
Jane Fonda, Sophia Loren and Joanna Lumley are all growing older, but when you look at them you don’t see their age you just see their natural beauty.
It is possible, I know because I’ve done it and you can do it too if you want to.
Knowing the right things to do at the right time can change your whole appearance naturally.
By: Elaine Woosey
Posts Tagged ‘Shape’
Beauty Tips and Lip Plumping
January 15th, 2010
Lip have been the most important part of a woman’s beauty since past. Every girl today admires one or the other actresses in the Hollywood and wishes to have lips like theirs. These actresses have a specialty of having protruded lips or full lips. Every girl wishes to have these full lips. These lips increase the beauty of their lips and make them more kissable and lustrous. Moreover they apply cosmetic to their lips to make them further more beautiful. Cosmetics like lip gloss, lipsense, lip pencil, etc are used for this purpose. Lip gloss moisturizes the lips and make them prevents them from dryness. Some lip glosses which contain oil also provides shininess to the lips and make them look more beautiful and lustrous. Lipsense imparts a semi permanent color to the lips and make them look attractive. Unlike the normal lip stick, lip sense penetrates the epidermal layer of the lips and the color becomes more effective and does not smear off easily. Lip pencil is a cosmetic which outlines the lip line and distinguish the shape of the lips on the face of the woman.
Woman who do not have full lips naturally can adopt one of the techniques used for making lips into full lips like lip augmentation, lip coloring, lip implants etc. but these techniques have their own side effects. Thankfully a technique called lip augmentation has been introduced recently. Through this technique one can achieve fuller lips easily and that too without any side effects. More over, it does not alter the look of the lips and makes them look as natural as they were before applying the technique. A great plumper is a must for effective plumping of lips. Lips plumper which contain harsh drying agents are strictly not suggested. Hydration is very important to keep the lip plump. A lot of water should be drunk from time to time to keep the lips wet and moisturized. While applying the plumper, the mouth should be opened as wide as it can be so that the plumper does not creates cracks on the lips. But they should not be over opened because it will result in the formation of blisters on the lips. They actually inject the plumping agent into the skin of the lips and make them protrude. Though they do not have any side effects but then also they should be applied carefully.
By: Robin Brain
Black Beauty Standards
December 29th, 2009
The black is beautiful movement has gone a long way towards reminding us that black beauty standards are as worthy of being respected and loved as any other skin color. And here’s a deep Truth (and by deep Truth I mean a truth that holds true for all cultures, for all people through all periods of time, in other words it doesn’t change according to some or other societal whim) – we are all beautiful Sacred Beings regardless of our body size or shape or it’s exterior color. Now those beauty standards are ones I can buy into!
Black beauty standards in rural Africa
I grew up, a White small country girl, in apartheid South Africa – a place where by far the majority of the population is Black. One vacation I came home from boarding school to be greated by Violet who wrapped me in her big black arms, and chortled with delight, “Utyebile kakulu ngoku!” In English she was telling me that I was very fat now. I was devastated – after all, I had gained weight but I desperately wanted to be thin. It would take me years to realize that Violet was complimenting me – her black beauty standards were very different to mine.
Part of the beauty standards in Violet’s rural Xhosa culture of the 1970’s when she passed this comment, is that ‘fat is beautiful.’ To be large in her culture was considered desirable and beautiful. It meant: you were healthy, you didn’t have AIDS. It meant you were fertile, sexy and womanly enough to attract a good husband – one who is wealthy enough to provide well. It meant you were wealthy enough to eat well.
The media and black beauty standards
What I remember most about Violet (and the other Black women who I came into daily contact with) was that they never questioned that black is beautiful – they weren’t immersed in a mainstream Western media that seems to rank skin colors and body sizes as supposedly more valued and worthy the whiter and skinnier you are.
How can any one skin color, or one body size or shape determine a person’s worth? Why would our great Creator create any one race or culture to be more Sacred than another? That’s all just nonsensical beauty standards made up by misguided humans.
Violet was my black beauty standard
I can still clearly see Violet’s ebony skin – it had a glow to it that was almost iridescent. And when she smiled (which was often) she had this row of startling white teeth all without the latest teeth whiteners. They say beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder – I loved Violet’s blackness. White wouldn’t have suited her. I loved the way she walked, tall and proud. She could balance a bucket of water on her head and walk as gracefully as a dancer.
And she made me laugh – like the one time she came across me sun-tanning and teased me about how I liked black so much that I was trying to get the sun to help me. And when I started perming my hair and she asked me why I wanted curly hair like hers.
Here’s what I think is so sensible about rural Black African women. Firstly, they don’t have scales they hop on and off of and that determine their mood for the day. They don’t swarm to shops bursting at the seams with the latest one-0-size-fits-all fashions. They don’t have mirrors that lie telling they are fat and ugly. They don’t spend hours on magazines and tv that continually bombards them with the message that only a certain shape of thin is beautiful. Their beauty standards are far more realistic.
Beauty standards can determine our stress levels
Instead they live in tune with the rhythms of the seasons and their bodies. Violet didn’t have the ongoing emotional stress of living in a large body which was continually insulted, stigmatized, hated or rejected either by themselves or others. This means her parasympathetic nervous system wasn’t constantly releasing stress chemicals (like noradrenaline, adrenaline and cortisol) into their bloodstream which would raise their health risks.
And interestingly enough, the Royal College of Physicians official medical report of 1983 found that rural Black South African women might well have a high prevalence of obesity but that it comes without the apparently inevitable poor morbidity and mortality. Makes you think about the value of living in sync with natural rhythms, rather than stressing about being skinny – doesn’t it?
Because they are immersed in their big is beautiful black beauty standards, they feel good living in their bodies. They’re thus continually flooding their biolological system with life-supporting molecules of emotion (like endorphics) that enhance their immune systems, and enhance their health.
Do you want to get off that treadmill of creating stress hormones about your body? You’ll find much more about this by following some of the links below.
By: Cari Corbet-Owen
