When Chasing Beauty Consumes You
I hope that you have never had to experience cancer, either yourself or alongside a family member. If you have, you know it is all-encompassing. It dominates the patient’s life and the lives of love...
Blog
United by Ugly
She was born with a mole above the corner of her left lip. From the time she became self-aware at all, it bothered her. Her sisters told her that it was an “ugly mark” because beauty marks can only be on the right side of the face. On he...
The Pursuit of Validation
Over my many years of practice and more than ten thousand conversations with people about their perceptions of beauty, I have learned that most perceptions and insecurities about how beautiful or ugly they are come from a need for external vali...
Protective Filtering: Your Defense Against Ugly
Unless you’re a social media superstar, It is unlikely you have had to endure a viral video with thousands of comments criticizing your appearance. On the flip side, you’ve more than likely heard or seen something that made you feel bad abo...
Negativity in Our Circle of Influence
It is commonplace to hear that the media is to blame for the negative voices in our head about beauty. But it’s not just media and the movie stars, television actors, and social media influencers who shape our beauty perceptions. After cul...
Be-YOU-tiful As You Are
The person you are today is incredible. You have so many unique, wonderful qualities that it would be nearly impossible to list them all. You don’t have to be a certain size or shape; you don’t have to have a certain skin, hair, or ey...
The (Pricey) War on Wrinkles
If you’re over forty…and probably even over thirty!...I’ll bet you’ve bought an anti-aging product of some sort. There are countless products at every end of the price spectrum that claim to erase wrinkles, lift sagging skin, or er...
The Social Media Smokescreen
Imagine that you had to re-live your teenage years today. Just like the teens of earlier decades, you have insecurities about your appearance. You have an idea of what it means to be beautiful based on input you receive from television, mo...
You’re Being Sold!
How many ads do you think you see each day? 100? 500? Before you answer, consider everywhere you are exposed to advertising and marketing. Do you listen to the radio? Scroll through social media? See billboards or signs wh...
Global Beauty Standards: The Pressure to Measure Up Is Everywhere
Around the world, the perception of what makes someone beautiful changes with geography and culture. Each culture has its own beauty standards. The Western ideal of beauty is the dominant standard to which many around the world aspire (big e...
