Beauty for everyone

Earlier this week, I attended a screening of Miss Representation, a recent documentary that profiles women in the media and how they are grossly misrepresented in movies, politics and business (get it, get it?).

I went in to the movie with low expectations, anticipating an hour-long lecture of how women are mistreated and abused: poor defenseless animals in the big bad world of entertainment and politics.

Admittedly, there was a lot of this – facts and figures citing female presence in the U.S. House of Representatives (it’s 17 percent), amongst Fortune 500 CEOs (3 percent) and power positions in the mainstream media (3 percent again). The numbers were startling, but the statistic that really spoke to me was the fact that 78 percent of 17-year-old girls are unhappy with their bodies, up from 53 percent of 13-year-old girls.

78 percent! Sitting in the dark theater I thought to myself; if insecurity rises in just four years, what share of women in their 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond are unhappy with their bodies? 

Afterward, I checked my email and found an offer from Out Front’s executive editor, Holly Hatch, in my inbox, asking me to write a monthly beauty column. Oh, the irony.

I was conflicted. Should I recognize my newly formulated feelings of female empowerment in this first article, or disregard them altogether, instead making my pilot piece about the best color of lipstick or diet tips of the stars? I desperately wanted to write this column, but not in a way that contributed to the growing culture of image-obsessed America “Miss Representation” was commenting on.

After some deliberation, I decided I would become Out Front’s new beauty contributor, but on my terms. Being silent would only endorse the thought beauty magazines seem to push upon their readers, that an acceptance of one’s body and beauty is a form of weakness and complacently. I wanted to debunk the overriding notion in publishing that one must always be striving for an inhuman standard of beauty, spending thousands on products and procedures along the way. I wanted to do something different.

So let me begin with this: You are beautiful, just the way you are.

Cheesy? Yes. Start of an awful boy band song? Yes. But also true. It will be my goal for this column to help you enhance this beauty, not cover it up or hide it with layers of makeup. Offering health tips, skin tips and more, I want to make you all feel 100 percent happy with your body, every day.

So the introductions and awkward beginnings are through. My name is Kelsey, and I am a beauty columnist. It is a pleasure to meet you, readers of Out Front. You beautiful people you.