I’ve read a bunch of pieces online lately that have gotten me thinking about appearances, and how we see ourselves, and how much that matters, etc. I’m not sure that these articles have all that much in common, but in the weird way my brain works, they all sort of merged together in my mind, so I’m going to try to create some sort of coherent post about my thoughts on all this.
The first one I read was this post by Kristen Armstrong (ex-wife of Lance, marathon runner, mom, and excellent writer) on Runner’s World. I look forward to her column every week. The posts are running-related, but they’re also so much more than that. In this case she was writing about a beautiful friend of hers who just couldn’t see herself that way. This is the part that really touched me and made me think …
I can’t make her see herself the way everyone else sees her, especially God. Why do we do this with our beauty? We stuff it, warp it, minimize it, starve it, berate it, and then wonder where it goes. I know that she will one day be a 70 year old woman who comes across a photograph of herself from this era and she will weep as though seeing this woman for the very first time. She will weep for time lost, for days spent worrying about nothing and time spent chasing something that she possessed all along.
How many of us do this to ourselves? I know I do. In my quest to live my life with a sense of purpose and be my most authentic self, it’s just so easy to cross the line into feeling like I’m not good enough, not achieving enough, not giving enough, etc. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who does this. It’s something I struggle with every day … always trying to do better, but with the end goal of being good to myself and to others … striving for peace, not perfection.
One of the things I love about running is that it helps me focus on what my body can DO, not what it looks like. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not exempt from vanity, and I can nitpick and point out my own imperfections with the best of ‘em, but I do try to focus on how capable my body is … I try (and sometimes even succeed) to embrace my imperfections as the things that make me unique and special.
Which is one of the reasons I find the current trends in plastic surgery disturbing. Women (and men too) telling themselves that they need to look like some unrealistic ideal … that who they are is not good enough. I admit, when I see all the lines around my eyes, I’m not always happy about the changes as I get older. But I try to remind myself that I got all those lines from years of smiling … and do I really want to erase that? I am happy to try to prevent more of those lines from forming … I use sunscreen, and eye cream, and so forth. But the idea of trying to get of rid of the very things that give my face its own expression … it just seems creepy. And frankly, the results I see in women who are face-lifted and botoxed and chemical-peeled beyond recognition … well it’s just plain scary sometimes.
All that is by way of introduction to this great NY Times article I read last week … What Your Eyes Say About Your Mood.
Yale University researchers set out to determine how facial features like eyebrow shape, eyelids and wrinkles affect facial expressions. They took a photo of a woman’s eyes and digitally altered it to change the eyebrow or lid shape or add wrinkles. After producing 16 different versions of the same face, they asked 20 study participants to rate, on a scale of 0 to 5, the presence of seven expressions or emotions: tiredness, happiness, surprise, anger, sadness, disgust and fear.
I found this part very interesting …
What was surprising about the study is that many of the pictures that mimicked various plastic surgery procedures, such as eyelid surgery or brow lifts, actually generated worse scores, with study participants rating those faces as looking angry or tired.
But this is the part that really made me think …
Some people might want to think twice about eliminating some sets of wrinkles. One digitally-altered picture added crows’ feet — tiny wrinkles around the eyes — and received high ratings for “happiness.’’
At that point I went to the website that showed all the pictures used in the study. The two photos that got high ratings for happiness were the ones where the woman had either crows’ feet or slightly puffy lower eyelids … and I realized that these are the two biggest signs of aging I see in myself. I’ve been criticizing myself for the very things that express to the outside world the happiness I feel on the inside! How could I ever think about erasing the evidence that I have had so much to smile about in my life?
I may feel differently in 5 or 10 years, but for now my goal is to try to appreciate who I am, and not beat up on myself for the things I’m not.
Although it never hurts to take care of yourself. Apparently, confidence is the most attractive thing of all. It can even make you more appealing … well, it works for birds anyway, according to this article from USA Today …
Using a $5.99 marker, scientists darkened the rust-colored breast feathers of male New Jersey barn swallows, turning lighter birds to the level of those naturally darkest. They had already found, in a test three years ago, that the marked-up males were more attractive to females and mated more often. This time they found out that the more attractive appearance, at least in the bird world, triggered changes to the animals’ body chemistry, increasing testosterone. “Other females might be looking at them as being a little more sexy, and the birds might be feeling better about themselves in response to that,” said study co-author Kevin McGraw, an evolutionary biology professor at Arizona State University.
I guess the moral of all of this is that rather than criticizing ourselves for not measuring up (to what?), we should work on feeling good about ourselves and loving ourselves for who we are … and celebrate the things that make us unique.
A cliché, to be sure. But no less true as a result.
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