Want to look good everyday? Time to change your definition.

5 steps to redefine beauty on your own terms, and rock your insecurities like a champ.

Be honest– how many times a week do you catch yourself being overly critical about your appearance? Now that we’re stuck in quarantine, it’s easier than it’s been since 7th grade to find extra minutes in the day for agonizing over stress-breakouts, our lopsided home haircuts, and the unplanned weight we’ve either put on from mistaking potato chips for dinner several nights in a row, or the weight we’ve unexpectedly lost because, anxiety be that way sometimes.

How about the woes we collectively shared before quarantine? Stretch marks, laugh lines, bloat, acne. The old, “I’d look great if it wasn’t for my [insert personal qualm here]”. For me, it’s my pock mark scars– the ones I have on my forehead leftover from untreated acne rosacea in my late twenties. I still blur them out of my photos, even though they’re minor and have gone unnoticed with plenty of my friends. Why must I– a lover of short bangs and harsh middle parts– suffer with a face that looks like the bad guy in Grease? Okay, okay, my face is nowhere near that bad.

Hold on, did I say “bad”? 

This is the meat and potatoes of this whole concept. What if, what we currently think of as “bad” was really not so bad at all? What if we made the whole thing up? What if this means that we can change our definition of what looking “bad” and therefore, what looking “good” really means? What if I found another excuse to use italics in this paragraph, hmmm?

A sweet girl wrote to me recently with a problem. Or at least, what she perceived to be a problem. She was 16, overweight (by her standards) and therefore she was convinced that clothing simply did not look good on her. Imagine the agony that thinking this way could bring? Maybe you don’t have to imagine– maybe this is your reality now. 

How many of us have found ourselves standing in a heap of clothing in our bedroom or perhaps, a dressing room downtown, with our hands on our heads saying those dreaded words “NOTHING LOOKS GOOD ON ME!”? Our words are powerful. They help us manifest our reality. But sometimes the key to manifesting the reality we desire lies in changing how we define the words we speak. 

The big question here is, how exactly do you define the word “good”?

Though we all grew up watching cartoons that say otherwise, there really is no universal “good” or “bad”. For every one person who hates a thing, there’s another person that supports it. This yin yang way of life is why politics exists, why “bad people” still have friends, and why I’m a freak who personally dislikes weed, greasy food, and videogames– the holy trinity of at least 50% of the internet. That goes to say, even though I might define a dank night of bong rips, cheese fries, and Call of Duty as a totally bad time, the only thing keeping the person next me living their best life is simple– their opinion.

And yes, we all have experiences that shape our opinions, but this doesn’t mean we can’t change them. For instance, I used to hate pickles, but today I can put away a garlic dill like nobody's business.

But I digress. If we want to love ourselves for who we are, we have two choices: we can either change what we dislike, or we can change our opinion. 

Why does the former sound so much more exciting than the latter? Changing what we dislike about ourselves is a personal choice, but it often comes at a cost: expensive surgeries and radical dieting. And do the effects even last? I’ve yet to see a person cease self-obsessing after a cosmetic procedure. If anything, it seems to only magnify the issues they already carried about themselves. Beauty runs deeper than a new nose.

Ironically, changing our opinion is not only cheaper, the results can be instant– that is, if we’re willing to do the work. Ready to have a healthier outlook on my own outlooker (my face, was that not obvious?), I dove in. Here’s what I learned:

I identified the issue:

What’s eating you? Let’s momentarily make insensitive light of harmful thoughts by turning our self-loathing into a Madlib. Ready? Fill in the blank: 

My _______ doesn’t look good. 

See? That was a little too easy.

I defined “good”:

What does “good” look like to you? You’re the only one here who gets to decide. In most cases, you’ll probably find that your definition of “good” lives on the opposite end of the scale from whatever feature you Madlibbed in above. After all, the grass is always greener for those who’ve got what you want, which is why I’m linking Philosophy of the World by The Shaggs here. If it’s tough to define, try listing 3 words that come to mind when you picture whatever you wrote above looking “good”? Bigger, smaller, paler, darker, shorter, and longer are just a few jump off points.

I considered where my definitions stemmed from:

To me, with my pockmarked forehead (geez, what an intro…), “good skin” means smooth skin. What’s funny is I have no recollection of ever consciously making that decision. It’s something I’ve been indirectly taught for years through cosmetics ads and listening to my friends complain about zits in highschool. Infact, I’ve shaped much of my personal opinion of my 33-year-old self around the mean kids on my school bus who made fun of my 8th grade acne. Da fuck? It turns out that many of the shitty opinions I’ve had about myself were actually just rubbed off on me from people and things I’ve encountered in the past, and I have a feeling that you’re no different. Who shaped you? You’re old enough to shape your own beliefs starting today. 

I redefined my standards:

Somewhere in the world there’s another person walking around living their lives with the same feature as you, only in their world, they're thriving. When I realized the only visual I had of “kicking ass with a crater face” was Freddy Kreuger, I knew I had some work to do (notice characters with bad skin are always villains? No wonder my self opinion is so narrow). 

Looking for virtually any excuse to spend time on instagram, my quest to redefine textured skin as a thing of beauty led me deep down the #acnepositivity hashtag trail, all the while wondering where this movement was when I was 13?? I immediately felt ashamed for entertaining the notion that beautiful girls don’t have acne, as I merely skimmed the surface of a 50,000 post deep feed featuring nothing but smokin’ babes, all with skin that was anything but smooth. 

It turns out, it’s not that my textured skin isn’t beautiful. It’s just that all this time I’ve been unconsciously choosing to limit my idea of what beauty really means. Which was directly impacting how “good” I thought my skin looked at any given moment. 

What examples can you find of beauty that redefines your current beliefs? I challenge you to find 3 beauty inspo’s that are rocking what you’ve got. Some of my favorite unconventional beauties include Beth Ditto, Sophia Hadjipanteli, and my friend Jillian Mercado.

I rewrote my goals:

In my deep dive into the skin posi movement, I learned that it’s okay to still reach for obtainable goals with the way we choose to look. But the healthiest path to take toward reaching what we desire is to first, accept the parts of ourselves we wish to improve. I still dream of one day getting my scars filled professionally so I can have a smooth and rubber-ball like complexion, but if it’s simply looking good that I’m after, it turns out I already have that in the bag and so do you. 

So go on with your bad self– cover up your acne, straighten your hair, and keep on your healthy diet plan if it makes you happy. But remember, it’s up to you to choose how to feel about yourself deep down underneath, and when you choose to see beauty, looking good becomes a whole lot easier.