Beauty and Self-Acceptance

Lasting Beauty begins with Self-Awareness, going beyond Self-Consciousness to Self-Acceptance

The greatest obstacle to beauty is the beast that looms behind your mirrors and lurks in the shadows on your mind that goads self-consiousness to rear its ugly head. Time and time again, this beast may roar, "I hate my nose and my eyes are too small". Like a troll, it threatens to eat you alive each time you try to cross the bridge to the other side - where beauty lies.

By learning to love what others see on the outside, you open the avenues for expressing what you are inside and have others see your "whole self" as beautiful. We were all born beautiful by virtue of what every newborn represents - the miracle and promise of Life itself. Unless they are told otherwise, little children believe in themselves and are filled with the joy of living. A part of that joy is feeling they are pleasing to behold. You may have forgotten that as you grew older. The key is to be able to recapture the childhood view; to "see" your beauty once again. The easiest way to do this is through the universal language of art.

Beauty is an ArtWe can all learn to see the beauty of our faces and bodies, as ordinary as they may seem, through the language of art. Even if you have never seen beauty there before, you will..! For this, you need to understand the seven elements of art: line and space, shape, proportion, scale, color and texture. All humans share these design elements; it is how they are arranged in our physical makeup that makes us each unique.
The artist sees that the way your body is put together creates an exciting design pattern of these elements; and that this design pattern is alive with your unique expressive qualities. The artist would say:
"It will not be so much a question of painting that nose as it will be painting the expression of that nose".
In other words, to the artist, there is a special expression found in every feature of your body, and in the colors or texture found in your skin, hair or eyes. The artist tries to capture those expressions in his art; you need to learn to capture them in the art of dressing.

Discover Your Body's Design Pattern
You need to discover your body's design pattern through the seven elements of art, learning very specifically things about your body, and in the process, develop self-acceptance. This in turn will lead you to your ultimate goal; to be highly selective with your clothing choices; to choose only those clothes and accessories that balance or are in harmony with your body's design pattern. There should be a visually pleasing relationship between you and your clothes so that your total presentation looks stable and in proportion, and that your clothes are "in tune with" the design elements found in your facial features and body. Self acceptance and selectivity are the basic prerequisites to the development of individual style.