I’m going solo on this blog posting because as those who know me know, the last year of my life has been an emotional hurricane that I never saw coming. I certainly didn’t have time to evacuate. But rather than dwell on the crises, I want to talk a little bit about what they have yielded for me: a new independence that I have never known before and have come to treasure.
I’m on a Costa Cruise through the China Sea from Singapore to Shanghai with stops in Vietnam, Hong Kong, Okinawa and Taiwan. Amusingly, I’m eating spaghetti Bolognese while seeing Asia. It’s one of the greatest adventures of my life, and I’m sharing in with more than 850 other passengers (only 63 Americans), including my own incredible group of eight women and girls and two kids with disabilities. As we were passing over these waters on the Fourth of July, it occurred to me that this marvelous journey would not have been possible had I not rediscovered my own independence through the most painful emotional experience of my adult life.
In the last year, my marriage came to an abrupt, agonizing end. But even as my world was turned upside down and shaken, I slowly came to realize that this experience had the potential to become a blessing if I chose to make it so. There’s the key word: chose. That is where this comes back to my favorite topic, Inner Beauty and the Beauty-Brain Loop. Because one of the most vital aspects of Inner Beauty is choosing a healthy, self-affirming way to respond to the things that happen to us as women. We have little control over the things that will happen in our lives; we have total control over how we prepare and respond. In fact, those may be the only things we have control over.
When divorce shatters the world you knew, your Inner Beauty dictates how you respond. Do you blame yourself or sink into a self-recriminating depression? Do you lash out in anger at everyone and anyone who crosses your path? Or do you use the crisis as an opportunity for self-discovery and self-reinvention, clearly the healthiest path? If your Inner Beauty—your self-love, compassion, empathy and belief in your own strength—is robust, you can choose to make a dark time into a time of renewal.
After a natural period of anger, grief and confusion, that’s the choice I’m trying to make. I think I’m doing pretty well, and that brings me back to independence. In the past year I have tried new things and had new adventures I might never have tried before. I truly didn’t know what I was missing until I realized that the only factor limiting me…was me. In doing things like this cruise, I’m spending time in the company of loving, beautiful women and literally testing new waters. I’m free to become who I want to be at a stage of my life when many of us cannot or will not evolve. Talk about a blessing.
As you know, everything flows from Inner Beauty. I’ve tried to give some attention to every aspect of the Beauty-Brain Loop. I saw a new dermatologist and got some new skin products that I adore, exercised, saw my doctor, and made sure I got the kind of healing sleep most of us busy people deny ourselves. I gave up my occasional glass of wine and spent more time in deep talks with friends. I spent time with family, talked with my therapist, made some new friends, cleaned my house…cleaned the cobwebs out of my mind and my life. Spring cleaning for the self.
My new sense of independence and possibility has helped me focus on taking great care of my Health and my Outer Beauty, and certainly when I look around me and see the people I am with, I am deeply grateful that my Environment is starting to reflect what I feel inside. It’s been a difficult road to the deck of this ship, but it has most certainly been worth it.
May is National Tennis Month, which means it’s a good time to talk about this wonderful game and how marvelous it is for all aspects of the Beauty-Brain Loop: Inner Beauty, Outer Beauty, Health and Environment. Eva, in particular, has a special interest in this, being an admitted tennis junkie, but we are both big fans of the game and love the fact that it fosters professional female athletes who are as strong, fierce and exciting to watch as men.
The United States Tennis Association is sponsoring the special month to increase participation in tennis at all levels, from community tennis clubs to the professional circuit. All around the country, USTA chapters will be hosting festivals, clinics and tournaments to teach young people the game and encourage adults to get reacquainted with a game they may not have played in years. But to us, tennis is one of the most beauty-friendly of sports. We’ll tell you why, starting with the most obvious stage of the Loop:
Health—Take a look at pro tennis players and it’s obvious that the sport is fantastic for fitness and cardiovascular health. To play tennis for an extended period of time, you have to be fit. You also need to be strong, flexible and quick. Regular tennis encourages physical fitness and delivers an amazing workout. Health as it relates to complete beauty is about vitality and maximizing one’s physical potential. It isn’t about being model-slim, but about being the best you can be. Venus and Serena Williams aren’t built like models; they are powerful athletes. But because tennis has helped them make the most of their physical gifts, they are two of the most stunning female athletes in any sport. Tennis is a wonderful activity for improving the health of the whole body, and health is beautiful.
Inner Beauty—The most important aspects of Inner Beauty are qualities like confidence and self-esteem, and tennis brings these out in abundance. Playing regularly and improving one’s game requires enough discipline and commitment that people who achieve a high level of proficiency usually also gain greatly in self-confidence and a sense of their own ability to overcome obstacles to achieve a goal—the greatest source of self-esteem. Tennis isn’t easy; it’s a blindingly fast game that demands great concentration and skill. Mastering it even at low levels is something that men and woman should be proud of. Regular tennis players that we know tend to be fit and happy with themselves, which makes them more appealing to others.
Outer Beauty—The health-promoting effects of tennis are wonderful for the skin and exterior beauty as a whole. The sport is fantastic for weight control; the average person burns more than 500 calories during one hour of singles tennis. The exercise tightens and tones the muscles, which improves overall appearance. One caveat: you should always wear broad-spectrum sunscreen when playing tennis, because the extended time in the sun can damage your skin.
Environment—Tennis is a communal game that’s played in the social environment of tennis clubs, where people teach each other, engage in good-natured rivalries, and in many cases help their local communities. The environmental aspect of beauty is about relationships in great part, and tennis is the door to many wonderful relationships for many people.
If you don’t play, May is a great time to learn. If you already play, it’s a perfect time to teach someone else how to play and bring a little more activity and health to your world. Find out more information at the USTA website.
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.
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.
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.
It’s a myth that women worry more than men, but being more communicative than men, women do tend to talk about their worries more. And while talking about our worries can ease them, it can also reinforce them as we hear about the troubles and concerns of others. So how can women break the cycle of worry—or from a mental and physical health perspective, stem the damage that can occur due to unrelenting anxiety, especially in a time of such dire economic difficulty? Since worry seems to be rampant right now, we thought we’d answer some of the most common worry-related questions that we hear:
Q: How can women stop worrying so much?
A: It takes a great deal of self-awareness to realize that you are a chronic worrier. The trouble with worry is that our culture tells us that responsible people are supposed to worry, so if we’re not worried, we feel as though we’re ignoring problems. However, worry accomplishes nothing. It is a useless emotion. One way to stem the tide of worry is to be aware of the uselessness of worry, but one of the best ways is to find ways to relax what Buddhists call the “monkey mind,” the racing thoughts that lock us in a maze of anxiety like rats. Meditation is wonderful for this.
Q: Is worrying “contagious”? Is there any way to avoid catching it?
A: It can be, if you let the worries of others start you worrying about the same issues. This can be a sign of a generalized anxiety disorder, in which people worry about extremely unlikely events. One of the best ways to avoid the worry “contagion” is just to avoid spending time with people who are chronic worriers.
Q: Are people born worriers, or made?
A: A little of both. People who worry constantly about even the most remote possibilities may suffer from generalized anxiety disorder, a medical condition that we think can be inherited. But worry is also a habit, and women who grow up in an environment where one or both parents worry about everything and instill fear of the unknown in their children may see that as a normal way of thinking and regarding the world. So worry appears to be part nature, part nurture.
Q: What do people do when they worry—eat more, drink more, etc.?
A: There’s no single pattern of behavior. Look at your own friends: some are probably “stress eaters,” who eat more when they’re worried, while others lose weight during stressful times because they can’t eat a thing. Where we become concerned as physicians is when someone begins doing something potentially self-destructive because of worry, like self-medicating with drugs or alcohol.
Q: Have any studies or polls been done on worry?
A: Yes. One of the more recent ones was a study of global poll results done by the University of Kansas working with the Gallup Organization. It found that the link between positive emotions and good health is very strong. You can find more about the study at www.news-medical.net/?id=46535 or at the University of Kansas website, www.ku.edu.
Q: Do people worry more today than in the past? Did people worry a ton during the Great Depression?
A: There isn’t much hard data about worry rates from today versus 60 years ago. But the consensus is that people today tend to worry more than their parents and grandparents did because of global media and the Internet. For example, during the Depression there was no TV or Internet. Most people’s worlds were confined to their neighborhoods or cities. So while they may have worried about their own economic situation, there was probably less of that “the sky is falling” anxiety that we find today when every news report talks about rising unemployment and the moment a financial collapse occurs, it’s all over the Internet in minutes. With more knowledge and more awareness of the world come more reasons to worry, if you’re looking for them and if your emotions overcome your rationality.
Q: Can worry impact your looks? If you’re constantly furrowing your brow, can it cause wrinkles? I’ve heard that if you force yourself to smile, you activate areas of the brain that make you happier, plus you avoid those worry wrinkles to boot. Is this true?
A: Worry can indeed impact your looks, but not as directly as you might think. Frowning and furrowing your brow can certainly imprint lines in your face over time, but wrinkles are really caused by the natural effects of aging as our skin becomes less elastic over time. You can’t avoid them. The more direct impact of worry comes when worry causes you to neglect your self-care: to eat poorly, not cleanse and moisturize your skin, abuse alcohol, take up smoking or fail to protect your skin from the sun. Also, keep in mind that frowning and worry affect your Inner Beauty, too, as people perceive you as someone negative who is not enjoyable to be around, regardless of your looks. As for smiling, it’s always a good idea, because smiling tells your brain to release serotonin and dopamine, the feel-good neurochemicals that improve mood.
Q: What worries have you struggled with in the past and how did you cope?
A: We all struggle with the worries that come with aging: parents becoming ill, our own bodies starting to show signs of age and the loss of some of our youthful beauty, and certainly right now, economic worries. In general, we find that no matter what the worry is, the “Three Ps Rule” really helps us handle whatever comes along: 1) Perspective. Step back and get some perspective on the situation. Is it really as bad as you fear? What are the facts? 2) Plan. What scenarios could play out and what will you need to do to be prepared for them? 3) People. Don’t try to deal with things alone. Share your fears and talk to the people who care about you. It’s amazing what a difference support makes.
Sometimes, pop culture and science meet in ways that are pretty ridiculous. The latest example is the renewed attention being given to a study conducted in 2005 by doctors Leif Nelson and Evan Morrison and published in the February 2005 Psychological Science (the abstract of the study can be found here). The study says that in essence, when economic times are hard—or in what the researchers called “times of resource scarcity”—men prefer women who are heavier by a whopping two or three pounds. So ladies, the strategy is clear: hit the Hometown Buffet near you every night for a week, then hang out at the unemployment office and you’re sure to meet that future Mr. Right…or Mr. Sort-of-OK.
All kidding aside, is this science? It seems like the worst kind of pop sociology to us—data applied liberally to a barely-known aspect of human behavior and then broad stroke conclusions drawn. But Dr. Terry Pettijohn II has a theory about what might be at work here. He’s a psychologist who has done research in the same vein and his opinion is that when men are flush, they are attracted more to women who are childlike: slender, willowy, nubile. But when times get rough, men become more like women, who are hard-wired to gravitate toward strong men who can be good providers for them and their offspring. Pettijohn thinks that a few extra pounds make a woman seem sturdier, tougher, more able to survive hard times. Translation: when money is short and jobs are insecure, men want a woman whom they don’t have to “take care of.”
So what does this mean? That the recession is going to be a boom time for women with normal bodies of all shapes and sizes and the decline of the size-zero waif? Probably not. Studies like this inevitably overreach, and this one is probably no exception. We suspect something else may be at work here: low self-esteem on the part of economically depressed men. We live in a culture where men in particular are defined by what they do for a living and how they provide for their loved ones. After all, men can’t make babies. Instead, they build, create, innovate and invent (women do those things, too, but bear with us). When they are unemployed or in dire career straits, men feel less attractive because society tells them they are less desirable. So they unconsciously set their sights lower, figuring a truly “hot” woman wouldn’t be attracted to them because perhaps their financial desperation is written on their faces, their slumped shoulders, and their worn shoes.
That makes as much sense to us as any theory and ties in perfectly with our beliefs about Inner Beauty: when you feel confident, you are beautiful to yourself and others. With so many millions of men and women feeling powerless in this terrible economy, it’s going to be a challenge for this generation to find their own inner beauty and self-esteem…and it’s better if they ignore questionable pop-culture science like this.
No surprise here: women differ from men in the way our brains respond to beauty. In yet another blow to the attempts to create a gender-neutral society where men and women are basically identical reflections of one another in different clothing, a new study has discovered that when they see beauty (as in a painting in a museum), men’s brains light up in the areas linked to absolute spacial location, while women’s brains activate in areas connected to determining relative location. It’s a subtle difference that may reflect the evolutionary differences in the two genders.
The study, which can be found here, was conducted at Spain’s Universitat de les Illes Balears and published on February 23 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was small but provocative. Ten men and 10 women looked at images of modern and classic paintings, as well as photographs of landscapes, artifacts and urban scenes, while the researchers recorded their reactions with a magnetoencephalograph, which monitors real-time neural activity by measuring magnetic fields generated by electrical currents in the brain. This is superior to using functional magnetic resonance imaging, which reads blood flow to brain areas and has been somewhat discredited recently.
Across the board, beauty produced coordinate-processing activation in both men and women, and category-processing in women exclusively. The reseachers speculate that from an evolutionary and survival perspective, this may stem from differing roles that males and females played in hunter-gatherer societies. Men were the hunters, and so had to develop strong spatial senses to find and kill prey. Women, meanwhile, had to survey the landscape for safe tubers, roots, berries and nuts to gather, and so had to use comparison-centric parts of their brains more adept not only at location but memory and analysis. Fast forward 5000 years and you get different brain responses to beauty.
Interestingly, the differences don’t seem to affect how men and women preceive or react to beauty. Both sexes described their perceptions in the same way and described beauty as pleasurable and stimulating. So from a Beauty-Brain Loop perspective, what does this mean for us? It does suggest that we women are wired to find beauty on more relative, subtle terms in both men and women—it isn’t as absolute as a perfectly chiseled chest in a man or a long pair of legs in a woman. We’re more apt to think in terms of beauty in categories and to find different types of beauty in our environment, while men’s definition is more narrow. Hence the male role in the dating scene as the hunter, the search-and-conquer soldier on a mission.
We won’t suggest that a study like this defines anything about how we ultimately see beauty. First of all, it was small and needs to be replicated on a larger scale. Second, we don’t believe in being so reductive about women, men or beauty. We are partially shaped by our hard-wired brains, of course, but also by our experience and our choices. How we choose to define beauty is ultimately what determines the beauty we see in others and ourselves.
We’ve said all along that aging wasn’t strictly a biological issue. Now there’s some proof that we’re right. A new study (read the story about it here) by Dr. Bahman Guyuron, chairman of the department of plastic surgery at the University Hospitals of Cleveland and Case Western Reserve University, has revealed that identical twins, who are genetically programmed to age in the same way, can actually show different facial signs of aging depending on their lifestyles and life experiences. We find this especially interesting because it suggests that your choices on how to view the world and your relationships with others can have a tangible effect on your Outer Beauty, and indeed can affect the entire Beauty-Brain Loop.
The researchers recruited nearly 200 sets of identical female twins who were attending an annual twin festival in the aptly-named Twinsburg, Ohio. They collected photos of each set of twins and asked an independent panel to review each pair and assess whether one twin looked older than another.
They found several factors influenced facial aging, including sun exposure and smoking. Based on the assessment, 10 years of smoking added about 2.5 additional years of aging to a twin’s face, compared to a twin who didn’t smoke. Sun exposure, particularly among those who spent a lot of time outside playing golf or tennis, also increased the appearance of aging.
Stress also appeared to be a factor in aging. Divorced twins appeared, on average, at least two years older than a twin who was married or widowed.
The study also found that users of antidepressants such as Prozac also appeared older, raising speculation that perhaps the chemical components of the drugs affected facial muscles or tissues in some way. Interestingly, weight loss was both white and black hat in terms of aging. Women who lost weight before age 40 looked younger, but women who were heavier after 40 actually appeared more youthful than their slimmer siblings, suggesting that fat loss may somehow affect collagen and the skin’s natural moisture content.
What’s really interesting about this is that it puts responsibility for how your face looks as you age squarely on the shoulders of nurture, not nature. Sure, genetics play a role in everything from your odds of developing skin cancer to your propensity for developing bags under your eyes. But overall, the choices you make for your diet, your recreation, your relationships and your attitude toward living are what really determine how well you age and how your face shows the years.
It makes sense that stress is a major factor: the release of powerful stress hormones like cortisol can cause the body to release oils, provoke breakouts and damage skin in the long-term. And there’s nothing worse than smoking, which produces an oxidative reaction that damages the skin and collagen at the cellular level. What’s positive about this news is that it means you can control, to a remarkable extent, how your face ages with the choices you make. It means that your Inner Beauty—your self-esteem, love and ability to see beauty in others—directly impacts your exterior.
So to give yourself the best odds of aging gracefully, stick to the basics first. Eat well. Exercise. Protect yourself from the sun. Don’t smoke. Breathe. Live with joy and find healthy ways to manage stress. Find a doctor you trust and maintain your overall health. Anything else you do on top of those choices, from spending on cosmetics and skin care products to choosing dermatological procedures, is only going to be effective if you’ve given yourself a great foundation for lifelong beauty.
Haven’t we been over this before? We mean the whole battle over smoking being cool. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, when we beauty docs were either little girls or not even twinkles in our parents’ eyes, smoking in movies and TV was all the rage. If you were a femme fatale, detective or tough guy, you had to be wreathed in cigarette smoke. But by the 1990s society and public health efforts had effectively countered the image of smoking as the essence of coolness, in part with smoking bans and advertising like the famous faux-Marlboro billboards where one cowboy says to another, “Bob, I’ve got cancer.” Essentially, we thought we had this smoking thing licked, but apparently—and disturbingly—we were wrong.
Now comes a study from the University of Staffordshire in the UK showing that Brits age 17-24 worry about the effects of smoking on their appearance but most don’t intend to consider quitting until they see visible signs of damage. Now, smoking has always been more of an issue in Europe, where it’s widespread, but this is a very dangerous attitude, especially if it’s reflected here in the U.S. First of all, damage to skin and teeth occurs at the microscopic level long before it’s visible to the naked eye. Second, and perhaps more important, smoking may be the single most damaging thing you can do to your general health, and as we’ve said before, health is beautiful. Health is a stage of the Beauty-Brain Loop, so if you negatively impact your health, you’re going to harm all the other aspects of your beauty.
Public officials in the UK have said that they intend to use the results of the study to create a series of new public service advertisements highlighting the ways in which smoking can damage the looks of appearance-conscious young people. Well done, but why wait? Let’s bring the news to the people right now! These are some of the major ways in which cigarette smoking damages your skin, hair, teeth, and overall exterior:
Smoking releases free radicals in your lungs, producing an inflammation response throughout the body. This affects the skin by accelerating cellular breakdown, producing wrinkles and the gray pallor commonly known as “smoker’s face.”
It reduces the level of oxygen in your blood and thus depletes the collagen in your skin. This can cause sagging and a premature aging.
The reduced circulation caused by smoking also causes the skin to become thinner, making fine lines and wrinkles more noticeable.
It yellows teeth and causes bad breath.
Smoking is also highly addicting because the nicotine and other addictive chemicals go right to the lungs and bloodstream, so it’s very easy to get hooked. Young smokers are very vulnerable to this rapid physiological addiction to tobacco.
We could go on, but why? It’s common knowledge that smoking is terrible for your body, inside and out. We’re not sure that any public service ads are going to dissuade youth, who always think they’re immortal, but it’s worth a try. If you think about the effect that smoking has on Inner Beauty (making you feel bad about being a smoker and not being able to quit) and on Environment (repelling other people who hate the smoke and ruining the area around you), there may be nothing more toxic to the Beauty-Brain Loop. We’ll keep an eye out for similar research in the U.S….and hope for better results.
