Paradigm Shift

A paradigm shift?

As I mentioned before, social media and the Internet are slowly starting a paradigm shift regarding what is considered beautiful—for a woman that is. I’ve faced the teasing and meanness from other people (mostly from women!) because I’m not perfect, sometimes I don’t want to wear makeup, and most of the time I want to be comfortable in my day-to-day clothing. I want to help put these companies’ and peoples’ efforts, articles, videos and photos in one place, so that we can see how things are slowly changing.

I’m only one small person on this 7-billion-person planet, but I’m passionate about this topic. Luckily there are women out there who share the same passion and also have the ability to reach the masses.

People

Colbie Caillat is rocking it hard and true

For example, one of my Facebook friends and my graduate course instructor, shared this amazing article and video shared by ELLE. (Am I the only one who sees the irony in this?) Colbie Caillat is a Grammy award-winning singer and songwriter. Colbie was “Getting a lot of pressure to be someone [she’s] not.” This is a way to show the world that hey, even Colbie Caillat gets a zit once in a while!

Later in the Q&A session, she even mentioned that when she doesn’t wear makeup, people tell her she looks tired. If you’ve read my previous blog postings, you’ll notice I mentioned the same exact phrase. I promise you, I didn’t steal that from Colbie—I actually have had that said to me time and time again.

Does she feel responsible to tell the truth?

Near the end of the interview, Colbie is asked if she “feel[s] responsible as an artist… to think about the message the music videos, album covers, and magazine spreads send to fans?”

Her response is spot on.

There’s major responsibility. When I see gorgeous models and singers and they look perfect on their album covers, it makes me want to look like that, too, and it makes me feel like if I don’t Photoshop my skin on my album cover, I’m the one who’s going to look a little off and everyone else is going to look perfect. And that’s what everyone is used to seeing. They’re used to seeing people on the album covers completely Photoshopped.

 

Robin Korth bares all

Robin Korth is an international speaker and writer in her 50s. The Huffington Post recently published one of her articles entitled “My ‘Naked’ Truth.” This story was personal. She walked readers through her personal struggles of what it means to be an aging woman in today’s culture, and how she fought through the crap to finally be happy with herself and her body.

I applaud the Huffington Post for sharing this article. This is exactly the stuff we need to see more of. We must open our eyes to see and read about women who are confident and happy with what they were given.

Here’s an excerpt from her article:

I am a 59-year-old woman in great health and in good physical shape. I stand five-feet, nine-inches tall and weigh 135 pounds. I wear a size six in both jeans and panties, and my breasts are nowhere near my navel. In fact, they still struggle to make it full-up in a B-cup bra. My thighs are no longer velvet and my buttocks have dimples. My upper arms wobble a bit and my skin shows the marks of the sun. There is a softness around my waist that is no longer perfectly taut, and the pout of my abdomen attests to a c-section that took its bikini flatness -- but gave me a son.

Why this brutal scrutiny of myself? It was time to counter the damage of my culture, my own soft-held fear and to pour warm love on my own soul. It was time to claim every mark and not-perfect inch of my own body -- a body that had been called "too wrinkled" by a man who was fetched by my energy and my mind, but did not like the bare truth of me. His name was Dave and he was 55 years old.