What Pretty means...

PRETTY. What a loaded word. But the reason I chose it- is that it has nothing to do with any specific standard of "beauty". When someone is pretty, it just means that they glow from the inside. There's no connection to age, weight, race, social status- any woman can be pretty.

These days, women are being asked to conform, more and more, to a standard of beauty that is not only unnatainable, but harmful. I know, because I have spent the better part of my life trying to attain it. What scares me is that it starts much much younger now- girls as young as 5 are "aware" of their beauty or lack thereof and want to take "steps" to change that (diets, dress, and god knows what else). I ALSO know that we, the female population are indirectly responsible for this. The proliferation of imagery through the net and hyper-media of today dont help, but we have a part to play in it.


I am starting this blog based on my own somewhat personal desire to contribute to a positive image for women, to empower me to see myself, and hopefully each other differently. Differently than what you say?

Than what we've been told we NEED to look like to be attractive
Than what magazines and media tell us is the "standard" for beauty and attractiveness


I am also going to post articles. pics that both expose how media manipulates images to make us strive for a standard that doesnt exist, as well as laud those that promote healthy, real images.

We women are the consumers- statistically, 85% of purchases are made by women....so that must mean..WE BUY ALL THE MAGAZINES THAT PERPETUATE THESE IMAGES...


I have to hope that the bottom line is that we'll all start feeling better about ourselves, allow our young girls to define themselves differently than they do today and provide some positive imagery for us to refer back to.

Welcome to Pretty. Where we explode the beauty myths and create new ones.

Well- I wanted my first blog post to address notions of beauty. And then I'll move into what I'd like to see going forward. So to do that, I needed to address what my thoughts of "beauty" were growing up.

Ofcourse, for me, it was Barbie. (The irony is not lost on me today that I have long, some might say strawlike- very light blond hair). Thats not a coincidence, to be sure. In any case I digress.

This picture  provoked lots of thought on my end. I thought- what if this Barbie actually existed? No one would buy it. No one wants to face the reality of aging. We like our fantasies and our perfect women.

I guess the weird thing is that for those of us around the corner from aging (or some might say fully engaged in it) its not that scary, kinda weirdly...empowering. But certainly from a 25 year old's perspective,there was nothing scarier to me than getting "old", and all the connotations that that brought with it.

This other image is one I remember seeing and thinking- HOW revelatory.

So I grew up thinking, this is what I SHOULD look like, or the beauty ideal. Yes, I had great role models, strong women around me, but being a person who's always looked at the black and white of things, I saw a few things very clearly, from a young age: 1. People are nicer to people who fit the social esthetic of "beauty and 2. I wanted to be that.

So how do we get away from it? By exploding the beauty myths. Looking for, and sharing, examples of beauty mythology at work -photoshopped models and celebs, and celebrating examples of great female role models - Dove commercials for one. Adele for another. (She was on the cover of Vogue)