This week, the news media has been abuzz with coverage and analysis of Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office. While that’s traditional, we would like to start a new tradition of feting the First Lady after her first 100 days as the nation’s most visible wife and mother. And who better to start with than Michelle Obama? There’s probably never been a woman in a better position to transform the American image of beauty—on the inside and the outside—than the First Lady.
Let’s break it down according to the four stages of the Beauty-Brain Loop, which we introduced in our book, The Beauty Prescription: Inner Beauty, Health, Outer Beauty and Environment…
Inner Beauty: There has never been a first lady in our lifetimes who has been such a powerful person in her own right. Maybe Eleanor Roosevelt was as strong an influence on culture, but she didn’t have Michelle’s style and grace to go along with the strength and resolve. Ms. Obama exudes confidence and a sense of purpose, but it goes beyond that. Perhaps it’s because of her generation: she’s the first First Lady to come of age in the feminist era when it was no longer acceptable for women to smile in the background while their husbands dominated the podium. Were she not Mrs. Barack Obama, Michelle would still be arresting and no doubt leave a big mark on the world.
But as the wife of the president, she has done more to show her Inner Beauty. She has somehow managed to strike the perfect balance between the brilliant lawyer, the career woman driven to bring positive change to the country, and the wife and mother trying to help her family get through the impossible transition into the White House as easily as possible. As her husband was entering the Oval Office, her focus shifted to her daughters: getting them set up in school, getting them a dog, making sure they had time with their father every day at the breakfast table and doing homework. She was a mother and wife first, a First Lady second. Perhaps that’s why, according to America Online, her approval ratings are higher than the president’s. She knows what matters most to her and gives her joy: her family. That’s where her attention goes. She has already declared that much of her attention will go to helping American families—especially military families. Part of her Inner Beauty is knowing who she is, what she is and what in important to her and apologizing for none of it.
Health: One of the first projects Michelle took on was to plant a “kitchen garden” on the White House lawn with the aid of some DC schoolchildren. She said that its purpose, other than to give her family fresh vegetables to eat, was to promote healthy eating and home gardening. Can you imagine Laura Bush or Hillary Clinton down in the dirt planting carrots? Neither can we. The insistence on being her own person, despite what protocol or tradition might dictate, is as much a part of Michelle’s Inner Beauty as her dedication to Health. And after all, her husband is pretty much shattering tradition as the first African-American president.
The First Lady, because she tends to focus on “soft” issues such as school and healthcare, can have a huge impact on these vital areas of our country. It’s great to see Ms. Obama already working on spreading the gospel of health and living a healthy, balanced lifestyle in what can be the world’s most stressful environment.
Outer Beauty: This is the most obvious difference in Michelle versus past First Ladies. She’s not dainty. She’s bold and beautiful. She’s got curves and she’s not afraid to show them. She’s also got biceps and she’s not afraid to display them, either. And of course, she’s African-American. She is already setting a new beauty standard for black women in this country, a standard that implicity says you can be feminine and stylish but still strong, forceful and proud of your heritage.
Certainly, Michelle has set the fashion world on its ear with her bold style, starting with the still-talked about dress she wore on election night. She’s no wallflower, no Jackie O with pillbox hats. The first Michelle Obama fashion book is about to hit bookstores, and she’s all over the covers of major magazines from Vogue and Ebony to Essence and People. But it’s not just her striking looks or sense of bold style that makes her so magnetic, we think. It’s also that she’s so grounded, so clearly happy. Half of her magazine covers are shots with her family, and she clearly loves being a wife and mother. That makes her gorgeous. There are plenty of women in the world who are more physically stunning than Michelle Obama; there are few if any in the public eye who seem so radiantly happy, balanced and confident in their looks and their lives.
That said, she’s also making it more than OK to be a statuesque, curvaceous, toned, strong-boned lady. She’s taking back some of the territory claimed in recent years by the underfed, size zero waif, and that’s just fine by us.
Environment: What could say more about Michelle’s effect on the Environment than the fact that she still has date nights with her husband, even if they are in Prague? The world’s most powerful man and his wife still find time to snuggle over a romantic bottle of wine? OK, it’s a little less romantic when you add all the Secret Service agents, but that’s not the point. The point is, it sends a message: if the president and First Lady can find time in their schedules for some alone time, can’t the rest of us turn off the TV, quit Twittering and sit down over candlelight with the ones we love?
Michelle Obama seems determined to use her place as an icon for women and African-Americans to make the world a better place. Whether that comes as a result of her total devotion to her family, her dedication to healthful living, her style, her work with families or some other project, she is sending a powerful message to the world through her example: no one can define you but you. It’s an incredibly positive message for self-esteem. During the campaign and after, political pundits have tried to define her as an angry black woman, an America hater, someone who defied protocol and so on. Michelle hasn’t cared, and she hasn’t apologized. She has nothing to apologize for, because no woman should ever apologize for takign on the role and following the path that fills her life with love, purpose and joy.
You go, Michelle. We give you an A+ for your first 100 days as one of the defining new icons of beauty. We can’t wait to see what the next three-and-three-quarters (and maybe more) years will bring.
You’ve probably seen her. If you haven’t, go to YouTube now, type, “Susan Boyle” in the search field, and watch her appearance on “Britain’s Got Talent” (the inspiration for “American Idol.” Go ahead, we’ll wait…
Now, wasn’t that amazing? OK, for those of you who haven’t seen the video and are in a situation where you can’t watch it right now (like at work), we’ll recap: Susan Boyle is a 47-year old virgin spinster from a small village in Scotland, and she’s not what you would call a superficially attractive woman. She’s stocky, beetle-browed, has a hairstyle right out of the 1950s TV series “Hazel,” walks strangely, and has a cocky, cheeky attitude that just begs to be made fun of. In other words, in our beauty-driven culture she’s good for only parody, sympathy or outright scorn. That’s how shallow we have become; if you’re not gorgeous, you can’t possibly be talented or worth paying any attention to.
That’s what made her appearance on “Britain’s Got Talent” so amazing. She walked out on that stage and you could feel the stereotyping going on in the minds of everyone from the judges to the folks in the back row: “She’s frumpy and ridiculous, and she has no idea. This is going to be excruciating.” And don’t even get us started on the double standard for men versus women on these talent shows; were Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard dreamboats? Hardly. But that’s a post for another day.
Clearly, the judges were humoring her, assuming that a woman who looked like Susan and carried herself with such oblivious self-assuredness had no business being in their spotlight. They were going to grit their teeth, let this self-deluding little woman shatter her dreams all over national television and move on.
Then Susan Boyle opened her mouth and started to sing. And she changed. She became beautiful as an incredible voice soared out of that squat, pudgy body. The best part wasn’t watching her sing, but watching the judges’ jaws hit the floor. We were both delighted beyond words as we watched them realize that they had pre-judged this woman’s talent based solely on her looks—that because she wasn’t pleasing to look at, she also couldn’t be stunning to listen to. And they were so, so wrong. She brought down the house with a voice that belonged on Broadway. And it wasn’t a coincidence; search “Susan Boyle Cry Me a River” and you’ll find a recording she did of the torch song standard for a fundraiser in her town. This woman can sing: sultry, plaintive, and gorgeous.
Instantly, the crowd was on her side. No more making fun, no more snickering. Susan Boyle had become beautiful through the power of her voice. The video of her appearance is the most popular clip in the history of YouTube and she’s become an overnight celebrity. Why? Because she shamed us and reminded us. She shamed us because we, too, assumed that this dowdy “cat lady” would croak out a song in a warbly soprano and make a fool of herself, and we assumed that because we equated appearance with virtue and ability, as we’re prone to. But she also reminded us that within every single woman and man, no matter how plain or beautiful, dwells something of incredible beauty: talent, compassion, charisma, something that has the potential to knock people off their feet with admiration. That’s what we call attractiveness. When she strutted off that stage, Susan pulled TV networks and print reporters into her orbit like she was Jupiter, when before they wouldn’t have given her the time of day except to laugh at her.
Susan Boyle’s mind-blowing performance reminded us all that everyone has the power to be attractive and magnetic and earn a standing ovation because of who we are and what we do, not how we look. But it also serves as a marvelous, stirring, tears-in-the-eyes reminder never to underestimate anyone because of their looks. We’re hard-wired to respond to beauty, but we can choose to overcome that wiring and honor the potential of the person within. That’s Inner Beauty…something Susan Boyle clearly has in spades.
Imagine the stereotypical Botox patient. Go ahead. Are you seeing someone from “Real Housewives of Orange County,” a woman whose face is immobile after countless invasive plastic surgeries and who is so obsessed with defying the aging process that she’ll mutilate herself and inject her body with dangerous toxins to avoid a furrowed brow?
That’s the stereotype all right. But it’s false. It’s a phantasm born of a dozen bad reality TV shows. Sure, there might be some women for whom Botox is one part of a shallow, self-absorbed trek into deep denial, but the huge majority of women who get the procedure are normal, healthy people who just want to look better and feel better. Yes, we said feel better. In The Beauty Prescription, we talked a little about research that showed that having Botox treatments actually made women feel more positive. Now there’s more evidence that the phenomenon is real .
Research results published in the March issue of the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology suggested that based on a controlled study, people who received injections of Botulinum Toxin A (Botox is the brand name) to paralyze the muscles in their brows and make them incapable of frowning actually showed fewer negative emotions and experienced lower levels of depression and anxiety. Twenty-five volunteers participated, and while 12 recieved Botox, the control group got facial peels and other therapies for “frown lines.” After two weeks, all the patients filled out surveys on their emotional states. The patients who got Botox scored much lower for depression, irritability and anxiety.
What we find very interesting is that the Botox patients said their improved mood didn’t stem from feeling more attractive after the treatments. We agree with the researchers who surmised that the effect probably came from a kind of “feedback loop” (our Beauty-Brain Loop in action) in which facial expressions that reinforce positive emotions stimulate more of the same in a person, while expressions such as frowning stimulate anger, fear, irritation and stress. Essentially, when you frown, you might be cueing yourself to feel like there’s something to frown about, which makes you frown more. As goes thy face, so goes thy mood.
This is a small sample size and there’s more work to be done, but we find this research incredibly promising for promoting the idea of holistic beauty. In a holistic system controlled by the Beauty-Brain Loop, how you react to your environment stimulates your inner beauty, which affects how you look physically. Your appearance sparks a reaction from the people around you, who are also part of your environment, and that reaction feeds back to you. Simply put, think beautiful and smile, and you become beautiful. The evidence is piling up that this is so, and it offers wonderful possibilities for women and men to take control of their own internal and external beauty simply by making new, conscious choices for how to view life, people, and the events of the day. Imagine if you could be more beautiful on your own, without injections, by choosing to smile instead of frown.
Either way, Botox or no, it’s exciting. We’ll keep you posted on more research of this kind as it comes along.
Eva here…I had a delightful encounter that I thought was perfect for the blog, because it says so much about inner beauty and the myths of aging. We spend so much time dreading age and the effects of aging that we forget that age can bring with it so much beauty, wisdom, poise, knowledge, class, and charm. No one dresses with more panache than a woman who came of age in the time when ladies wore minks, pearls and hats to the opera or theatre. No one is more courtly, polite and winning that an older man who grew up in a period when men still held doors for women, called everyone “Ma’am,” and knew that a wink and a smile was infinitely more powerful than a lewd comment. Nothing against feminism or modern culture, but sometimes, I wish we could find a balance between those old ways and today’s society.
A week or so ago, I was at lunch and saw a very handsome, dapper older gentleman. I sat down and we started speaking, and I found out that not only was he 83, but a former mayor of Miami Beach. We chatted for a while and he was very charming and debonaire, and then a beautifully dressed and made-up older woman came along, politely interrupted us, and he excused himself and left with her. Later, I ran into this woman, and out of curiosity (people are my profession, after all), I started talking with her. Not only did I find out that this simply lovely elderly lady was 103 years old (!), but I learned that she lives at The Flamingo, an apartment complex for young singles!
A while later I ran into my older gentleman friend and teased him about abandoning me for this astonishing older woman. He smiled and said, “Sorry, I like older women.” Talk about charming. He was old enough to be my father and she to be my grandmother, yet they were just about the most attractive, fetching people in the restaurant. Age had nothing to do with it, and neither did a sense of curiosity that they were up and around at advanced ages. They were turned out in a way that showed they cared about how they looked and what others thought of them. They were witty, had savoir faire, and a sense of humor about themselves. Talk about inner beauty.
It was wonderful to see that not only could old age (and even extreme old age) come complete with a sense of fun, attractiveness and even playful sexiness, but that a woman of 103 could have the moxie to live in a building with a bunch of twentysomethings and feel right at home. If Debi or I are lucky enough to live that long, I want to be just like the lovely lady who stole the ex-mayor’s heart right out from under me.
Unless you’ve been living on the moon, you know by now about President Obama’s unfortunate Special Olympics comment made on The Tonight Show. Obama was talking about his weak performance on the White House bowling lanes and said that it was “like the Special Olympics.” The presidential spin machine went into overdrive immediately, knowing that what would be a forgettable flub from anyone else instantly becomes national news when it comes from the mouth of the Most Powerful Man, etc. While we know that the president was not trying to be derogatory or cruel to people challenged by mental or physical conditions, the incident serves as a reminder of how easy it is to hurt such men, women and children with thoughtless words.
This issue hits home with us because Eva’s daughter, Marissa, was born with hemiparesis, weakness on one side of the body. She was teased about it from a very young age, and though she has been extremely courageous in dealing with this condition and has grown into a proud and lovely young woman, it has still been hard for her and her parents to deal with the comments, the looks and the self-consciousness that comes with it. We’ve touched on this question before, but it bears asking again: why is it so hard for us to find beauty in those who are different from the mainstream?
Of course, the irony is that we’re all different in some way. No one is perfect. Everyone has a blemish, a tic, a scar, a stutter—something that makes them less than ideal. So why has the Special Olympics, one of the most admirable organizations in the world for the way in which it helps people with intellectual disabilities compete in sports, get physically fit and bolster their self-esteem, become synonymous with lack of coordination? For that matter, why is it OK to ask someone who fails to see something obvious, “Are you blind?” when millions suffer from visual impairment?
Our view is this: we all deserve to be recognized and respected for the beauty within—the beauty of our actions. No matter what a person’s physical or mental condition, every one walking this earth has something about them that’s beautiful, admirable and unique. That deserves recognition, not idle, even unintentional scorn. Some people may accuse us of making a mountain out of a molehill, but the fact that Barack Obama or anyone else can even casually (and later, regretably) toss off a comment about the Special Olympics, AIDS, deafness or any other condition tells us that deep down, we still only value physical and psychological perfection…or at least the appearance of it. We are still shallow. We still venerate celebrities who look flawless while exhibiting emotional problems and snicker at physically challenged individuals who exhibit compassion and kindness that humbles the rest of us. If we’re ever to truly mature as people, that’s something that’s got to change. And it’s something we’re going to continue to call out.
It’s always nice to know that the theories we put into our book, The Beauty Prescription, actually make sense in the real world. In one of the chapters, called Beauty 911, we talk at great length about taking care of your inner and outer beauty in times of stressful transition: death, divorce, job loss, etc. During such times, it’s easy to let your beauty go, to neglect your health, to succumb to anger and sadness, and to self-medicate with alcohol or drugs. Our advice was to be mindful of these truths and to take steps to preserve your physical health and appearance as well as your emotional equipoise, because when you can keep control over something while everything else around you is spinning out of control, you feel better. And you are better.
A woman we know named Ann (we have changed her name to protect the not-so-innocent) has become our personal poster child for the principles of Beauty 911 because of something that happened to her a couple of weeks back in Miami. Ann has been going through a terribly traumatic divorce, the kind of personal betrayal that is emotionally shattering. For many weeks, she was depressed and couldn’t stop crying. Life as she knew it had been upended by the dissolution of her marriage. Frankly, we were worried about her. She’s a strong, smart lady with tremendous inner and outer beauty, and to see her thrown for such a disabling loop was a reminder that every one of us is just a phone call or a test result from having our existence cast to the four winds.
Fast forward to a few weekends ago, when everything seemed to change. Ann had started to get her sense of self back, get her feet back under her and find some of the fire we knew well. She had stopped being a victim and was beginning to morph into a fighter. It was good to see. To blow off some steam, she went out on a Saturday night with some friends to some nightclubs in Miami’s wild South Beach district. Now, if you know anything about South Beach, you know that it’s like Mardi Gras year-round. This is a place where the plainest women become objects of fierce sexual attention from gorgeous men, and Ann is hardly plain. She had decided for the evening (and here’s where the principle of Beauty 911 comes in) to adopt a new identity—to give her divorcing self a night off and cut loose as someone else for a while. So she introduced herself as Asia D’Cuba and had a great time.
About midnight, “Asia” tired of the scene and headed for the street. But as she stood there she was having trouble fastening her sweater. She didn’t see a huge white Mercedes pull up, but a deep voice from the darkened car said, “Can I help you with that?” Ann, tickled by the attention, leaned forward provocatively and a huge, dark-skinned hand came out of the window, fastened her sweater clasp, then moved to her breast. That was more than she had bargained for, and she jumped back. The voice and hand, it turned out, belonged to a professional football player about 25 years old (who shall also remain nameless) and who Ann knew had just signed a multi-million dollar contract. He invited her to check out his car, but she politely declined. After all, there are only so many things a middle-aged woman under an assumed name will do on a Saturday night!
Still, Ann was secretly thrilled. She, a fortysomething soon-to-be divorcee who had been feeling old and unattractive, had been hit on by a twentysomething NFL stud! We thought it was hysterically funny and really sweet, and wonderful for her growing self-esteem. We also think it’s a perfect example of Beauty 911 in action. Ann took herself out of a comfort zone that had become depressing, took a risk, found her playful side, and rediscovered her self-confidence. All these things combined to make her atttractive enough to capture the attention of a rich young man who could have picked up on any woman in South Beach. Crisis? What crisis? The only person we feel sorry for now is Ann’s soon-to-be-ex.
