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.
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.
So the news broke this morning that President Obama will nominate Sonia Sotomayor to fill the Supreme Court vacancy about to be created by the retirement of David Souter. Reactions have been all over the board depending on which side of the political aisle you’re on, but we think it’s a thrilling choice for women. Sotomayor, if confirmed, would become only the third woman ever to sit on the land’s highest court, following Sandra Day O’Connor and Rose Bader Ginsburg, possibly the next justice to retire.
What makes this such an exciting choice is that it represents another instance in which a woman is being considered for an imporant position based solely on factors that have nothing to do with her appearance. On the heels of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, that’s extraordinary.
For Sotomayor, the only thing that matters is her legal, judicial and intellectual pedigree, and by any account it is exceptional: rising from a modest upbringing in the Bronx and overcoming diabetes to attend Princeton, graduate from Yale Law School, edit the Yale Law Review and go on to become a New York district attorney. She is largely regarded as the most important Hispanic jurist in the country at this time. Aside from the abortion or gay marriage questions that will be posed by some special interest groups, those are the only qualifications that matter for Sotomayor. That’s marvelous.
As we have said before, intelligence is part of Inner Beauty, which informs and shapes overall beauty. A women like Judge Sotomayor makes us hopeful because whether she is ultimately confirmed or not, her selection sends yet another message to young women that what you achieve in this world is less about how pretty you can make yourself look and more about what you have between your ears, what you accomplish with the gifts you’re given, and most important, what you give back to others. As Obama introduced his nominee, her mother, Celia Sotomayor, sat in the front row of the press room, weeping tears of joy for her daughter. Only she knows all that Sonia has had to overcome to reach this pinnacle.
So this is a day to celebrate. Another woman of incredible substance and accomplishment stands ready to join the ranks of the finest leaders in the country. It’s a truly exciting time to be a woman…and an American. We’ll keep you posted on the comments, attacks, and news that comes up about her progress toward a Senate vote.
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.
Documentary films are held to a different standard than the latest summer box office fluff or even the “serious” films of November and December. Because they are journalistic in nature, docs are allowed to be quirky and relentless and violate taboos that would never wash in a typical Big Hollywood film. For example, take any romantic comedy. Are the main characters ever homely? Even remotely? We’re not talking about the quirky sidekicks; they’re allowed to be goofy-looking and have zero fashion sense. But the leads, especially in a film like “He’s Just Not That Into You” are uniformly gorgeous. When you look at films and TV series that all feature great-looking young guys and gals, you start to wonder if beautiful actors and actresses are a finite resource that we’re about to run out of.
But we digress. The point is, Hollywood rarely does ugly, and it certainly doesn’t do deformity. That’s why it was so wonderful to see the film “”Smile Pinki” win the Oscar for Best Documentary, Short Subject. The 40-minute film, which follows a poor girl in India who receives free surgery to correct her cleft lip, brings the viewer a microcosm of a larger world in which thousands of children from impoverished areas receive free surgery each year to correct cleft lips and cleft palates—birth defects which, in their own cultures, can mark them as pariahs and open them to discrimination and misery. The film is so deeply touching because Pinki, the young girl whom the film follows, is so beautiful even before she receives her new face from plastic surgeon Dr. Subodh Kumar Singh. Her smile is radiant throuhout the film, before and after.
But “Smile Pinki”’s victory highlights something more subtle than the hopeful trend that Hollywood will reward inner beauty as well as outer beauty. The film and the efforts to help the more than 4 million children around the world born with cleft lips and cleft palates reveal to us that beauty matters. These children, by and large, are otherwise healthy. Why make such a fuss over a face that doesn’t conform to our innate beauty standards? Doesn’t character matter more than anything else?
No, though it should. We haven’t come that far yet and perhaps we never will. We are still swayed by beauty and repelled by those who don’t fit the ideal, and this is especially true in the Indian provinces we see in the film, where children born with a defect are often shunned. Beauty does matter. It still suggests virtue and worthiness to us, and while we would never suggest that children born with a visible cosmetic problem should just live with it, the question should be, “Why is it so hard for them to do just that?” That’s not just a question for the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, but for the U.S. as well. We don’t exactly reach out to our disabled—the people who remind us that we’re all just a genetic dirty trick away from a missing limb or a cleft lip. We don’t make movies about them, and we should. We should celebrate their beauty, which is just as great as Kate Winslet’s or Hugh Jackman’s. Maybe one day, someone else will make a movie like “Smile Pinki” that wins Best Picture. Until then…
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.
Unless you’ve been living in seclusion on a deserted tropical island for the last year (lucky you), you’re quite aware of the Big R: Recession. We’re in one, it’s ugly and it looks like it might get a lot uglier. People are cutting back on everything from travel to buying new appliances, rediscovering frugal activities like gardening and do-it-yourself repairs, and clipping every coupon in sight to try and save money. You may already be doing some or all of those things yourself in an effort to survive the tough times. So what are we to make of this news?
According to a survey of more than 11,500 people in more than a dozen countries including Brazil, Greece, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia, Turkey, Britain and the United States, people are still spending the same amount on cosmetics and other beauty products as they did before the economic collapse. The data show that 41% of the people surveyed planned to maintain their spending levels on beauty products such as cosmetics, skin care products and hair care products, while 55% of respondents said they would spend more on healthcare products and only 17% would spend less.
What does this say about us? Does it makes sense that we’re cancelling vacations, not buying cars and washing machines and counting pennies at the supermarket, but still shelling out for Garnier and Neutrogena? We think that it does. Everyone needs to feel they have a sanctuary, especially when times are hard or frightening, as they are now. For women, that sanctuary often becomes the knowledge that no matter what else happens, we are taking care of our appearance and our health. It’s an aspect of control; we cannot control the Dow Jones average, the housing market or whether we’ll be laid off next month, but we can control how we care for our skin, watch our diet, style our hair and so on. Paying attention to and money for self-care products gives us a psychological safe harbor for our Inner Beauty, a little bit of armor for the world that lets us say, “At least I look and feel good,” no matter what else happens.
So shop smart and save where you can, but if you feel the drive to care for your looks and your health while you’re cutting back everywhere else, don’t feel guilty. Allow yourself a little indulgence. Keep taking your vitamins and omega-3s, keep using moisturizer and sunscreen, and treat yourself to some time getting your hair or nails done once in a while. It doesn’t make you wasteful. It makes you wise. Spending a few dollars on beauty is a small price to pay to keep your spirits up and help you feel like you can take on an increasingly harsh world.
A few weeks back, we blogged about a new reality show, “True Beauty,” premiering this year on ABC. Supposedly, the show would feature the usual collection of contestants who, while they thought they were being judged on their external good looks, were actually being judged on their “inner beauty.” Well, we’ve seen the premiere episode and it wasn’t exactly what we were hoping for. We applaud the producers, including Tyra Banks, for bringing the issue of inner beauty to the fore, but we had something different in mind. And since we try to be positive on this blog, we’re going to offer our constructive criticisms on how “True Beauty” could become a truer test of bona fide Inner Beauty.
Make the setting more natural. Right now, the show’s setup is pretty typical: take a bunch of people, stick them in a house, and let personal conflict erupt. Instead, we’d love to see the show be more natural and unforced. Follow the contestants around in their personal lives with hidden cameras and audio to see how they interact with others. Inner beauty is about self-esteem and seeing the beauty in other people and the world around you. Do the contestants treat themselves well or engage in damaging self-talk? Do they treat others with compassion and respect? Do they maintain a positive frame of mind? Those are questions you can’t answer in an artificial setting.
Expand the palette of people. This might not be able to happen until next season, but we’d love to see people who aren’t all great looking be on the show. The contestants right now are all varying degrees of gorgeous, and that doesn’t reflect reality. It sends the message that inner beauty only matters if you also have outer beauty, and that’s not a healthy message to send. Add a plus-sized woman, a geekier guy and maybe even a disabled man or woman to the cast next year and we think viewers will relate much better.
Take more time. The first contestant was expelled from the program after one week and after one not-so-beautiful act (failing to hold a door for someone). Even though it follows the the “Survivor” format of “knock ‘em down one at a time,” that doesn’t seem fair. Inner beauty is a matter of thoughts, attitudes and actions over a long period, not one isolated incident. Heck, even the most inwardly gorgeous of us is inconsiderate or mean-spirited from time to time. Again, we know this violates the “who’s going to be booted next” ethos of reality TV, but it would give each person a fairer shake.
We’re not TV producers, and we haven’t thought these ideas through completely, but we think that in general the result would be a “True Beauty” that was more true to its name: a test of the genuine inner beauty of a group of people. It would also send a more positive message to the audience: that real inner beauty is its own reward, even if you don’t win a spot on People’s Most Beautiful list.
