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.
We’re creatures of the physical as well as the mental and emotional, and so it’s not surprising that we are hard-wired to find certain qualities attractive based on their implications for passing along our genes. We’ve talked about this at some length in our book. We know that men are drawn to a certain hip-to-waist ratio and to glossy hair because both suggest that a woman is healthy and fertile. We know that women tend to be drawn to size in a man as well as maturity and material wealth because both suggest the ability to protect and nurture offspring. We might not love the idea that our perception of beauty hinges on ancient evolutionary imperatives, and that’s not what we’re suggesting; there is clearly much more to attraction and romance. But initial, visceral attraction is clearly fueled by primal instincts. We’re not really all that far from the veldt and the savannah, after all.
But when matchmaking takes its first tentative steps into basing the art of the hookup on the science of evolutionary biology, some folks get uneasy. We find it fascinating, because anything that casts new light on why we find some people magnetic and irresistible…well, it’s our raison d’etre. In the latest issue of Time, we found a story about a Swiss company called GenePartner that uses genetic matching to help people find that partner who makes their heart go pitter-pat.
The company partners with several matchmaking websites to test the DNA of applicants and matches people based on their genes for creating HLA, or human leukocyte antigens, a key component of the immune system. The idea was sparked by the famous 1995 experiment in which women who were not taking birth control pills (and so were experiencing their normal hormonal levels) preferred the scent of men who had certain genes that were different from their own. Based on the notion that “opposites attract” has a genetic component, GenePartner thinks that people will be attracted to others with different HLA genes than their own, because the couple’s children stand to inherit a more robust immune system and therefore be more resistant to disease. It’s that survival of the fittest thing again.
The company has developed a computer algorithm that matches the lovelorn with ideal potential mates based on HLA profile. This concept is hardly demonstrated conclusively, but it’s certainly interesting. From a scientific perspective, it may not explain attraction but it could certainly shed some light on why some parents have better luck with healthy offspring while others seem to have nothing but health disasters. What about HLA screening to predict the chances of immune disorders like lupus and multiple sclerosis? Dating is peachy, but that seems more important to us.
If nothing else, this technology could save a lot of people the time and trouble of filling out a long questionnaire or writing up a charming profile while trying to locate that one photo where they’re not making a funny face. Just pony up your $99, get your kit, swab your cheek for a tissue sample, mail it to Switzerland and get your very own GenePartner ID. Sweaty t-shirt not included.
The global news cycle has been dominated by one name since June 25, of course: Michael Jackson. Our deepest condolences go out to his family and friends, and especially his three children. What a sad end to a brilliant and troubled life.
But we come here to dissect the King of Pop, not to praise him. More to the point, to take a look at Michael Jackson from a beauty perspective, because it’s hard to think of another person in recent times who better embodied the self-destructive power of a cancerous sense of Inner Beauty. As you know from our many discussions, Inner Beauty is the core of all true beauty, and it’s within our minds and hearts. It’s the most vital aspect of the Beauty-Brain Loop, the interlinked quartet of Inner Beauty, Health, Outer Beauty and Environment that creates every person’s total beauty picture.
The foundation of Inner Beauty is self-love. Call it self-esteem, self-worth or whatever you like, the idea is the same: you must cherish who and what you are and find yourself precious. That’s not to say you can’t and shouldn’t improve yourself, but if you’re healthy that improvement will stem from the desire to be the best person you can be. When self-change comes about as a result of self-hatred, desperation to please others, or the desire to change and leave a poisonous past behind, that’s when it can mutate into something dangerous. We see that regularly in patients who have substance abuse problems. It’s all born of the same impulse, to become someone else, anyone else.
It’s not a stretch to say that the late Michael Jackson was the patron saint of such self loathing. Just look at how he changed physically from his 1979 Off the Wall album to the bizarre and sad years and months before his death. In 1979, we saw a young, slender and handsome African-American man. But over the years, Jackson slowly whitened his skin, shaved down his nose until there was almost nothing left, and seemed not only to want to shed his tumultuous family past but his race, his gender and even his humanity. What was left in his later years was a pale phantasm who rarely went into the sun, wore a surgical mask over his face, and looked more like a figure at Madame Tussaud’s wax museum than the stunning, beautiful young man who brought us Thriller in 1982. Eva lived not far from the Jackson family and witnessed Michael’s overworked childhood and meteoric rise to success. That cold, disruptive upbringing most likely led to an inability to develop a healthy self-esteem.
What was Michael running from? What had corroded his sense of Inner Beauty so terribly that he could not stand to be who he had been born as and seemed to be obsessed with morphing into something new each minute? What had caused him to develop not just body dysmorphia but what could be called “self dysmorphia?” When he looked in the mirror, what did he see? The sad irony is that, even as he became stranger and stranger in what seems to have been a desperate attempt to transform his identity—to be happy, one assumes—popular culture began to see him less as a genius and more as a sideshow. His obvious self-hatred overshadowed and eventually eclipsed his incredible talent. He was a casualty of life, unable to see in himself the beauty and electricity we had seen in him.
The global pop culture machine will mourn for a while. Quick books will be turned out. Commorative DVDs and plates will be stamped out. Spontaneous shrines will linger for a while. Television retrospectives will air and perhaps a tribute concert will be staged. Eventually, something else will dominate the news. But while we won’t ever forget Michael Jackson and his music, we should also never forget his lesson. Success is defined within, not by record sales. If the King of Pop couldn’t find joy and self-love with his riches and fame, no one can. Inner Beauty is more important than money or notoriety.
We’re entering the summer travel season, and that means a lot more time in airports, packing luggage while trying to figure out what you can leave behind (answer: always more than you’d like to), and attempting to eat and drink healthy while you’re going 100 miles an hour with your hair on fire. Even with the recession, you’re probably planning on taking at least a scaled-back vacation, probably someplace sunny and warm. And even though there may be relaxation awaiting you, let’s face it: getting to and from your destination can tax even someone with near-perfect, serene Inner Beauty. So, from us to you as we think about our own escapes to some paradise where mobile phones don’t work, some travel tips for keeping staying beautiful everywhere from the rental car desk to a white sand beach:
Take just the essentials. You’re not going to be able to take your entire medicine cabinet, so just choose the skin care products you must have: sunscreen, moisturizer (moisturizer with sunscreen is even better, as long as it’s broad spectrum), cleanser, and some basic makeup like foundation, lip liner, and so on. You’ll have less to carry and spend a lot less time of your valuable vacation in front of the mirror. Plus, fewer items means fewer chances of getting stuck at airport security.
Protect yourself from the sun. We won’t even go into the risks of melanoma; you’ve heard those before, and there’s no more important reason to minimize your sun exposure. But beyond that, there’s the simple fact that if you’re lying on the beach for a week with unprotected skin, you’re doing damage. In the short term, you’re going to burn and peel, and along with being miserably painful that is never attractive. In the long term, you’re damaging collagen and dehydrating your skin so that you’re more likely to develop crepey, leathery skin on your face and chest as you age. Be smart: wear a sunscreen with at least 30 spf, reapply it every 2 hours, wear a sun hat and when you’re on the beach, sit under an umbrella.
Hydrate. The air in an aircraft is less humid than outside air, so it’s a perfect place to start drinking extra water and to keep hydrating throughout your trip. Hydration keeps your digestion consistent, plumps your skin, cools your body when you’re in the sun, and curbs your appetite so you can resist going crazy on your cruise ship’s 24-hour all you can eat seafood and dessert bar.
Bring healthy snacks. My oh my, the things we eat when we’re on the run. We grab a soda at the airport store, a soggy wrap on the plane for $8, a bag of nuts in the destination airport, then a late sandwich or pizza at the hotel, because the restaurant is closed when we arrive. At all adds up to more sodium, fat, and calories than we need, which can mean extra pounds at the end of a vacation, and that’s not good for anyone’s inner or outer beauty. So pack healthy snacks from the start: fruit, nuts, nutrition bars, whole juice (not apple or grape juice, which are packed with sugar), even healthy sandwiches on whole grain bread. You’ll eat better, save money, feel better and look slimmer when you head back home.
Take it all in stride. Inner Beauty may suffer most during travel. Nothing ever goes perfectly: there are delays, baggage problems, botched orders, more delays, and so on. If you go into your trip assuming you’re entitled to have every stage of your journey go perfectly, you’re going to be miserable and make everyone around you miserable. Instead, remember to be Zen about your travels. Accept that some things will go wrong, but keep in mind that they are small bumps on your way to a wonderful respite from daily life. A little perspective will reduce your stress level and help you feel more beautiful when you arrive.
Be kind. We once heard an airline pilot share the key to getting great service at the airport: be kind to the airline staff. When there’s a flight delay or some other problem, passengers inevitably treat airport staff like dirt, call them stupid, shake their fists and so on. What the pilot meant was that being kind—and we mean over-the-top, “Can I get you a drink, you look like you’re having a rough time” kind—to airline gate agents and other people can really help you get where you’re going. But more important than that, it makes you feel better. Why stand around with your teeth clenched getting angry when you can be nice to someone else and make yourself feel wonderful as well?
Unplug. You’re on vacation. The office will function and the world will turn even if you leave your mobile phone, Blackberry and laptop at home. We all work hard 50 weeks a year; for two weeks, we need to focus only on ourselves, on the present moment. Disconnect from the grid and practice mindfulness. Savor the moments of your trip. You might not get another one for a while.
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.
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 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.
