by Kathryn Fortuna, Inner Image Consultant, Bendigo, Australia
“The most beautiful makeup of a woman is passion, but cosmetics are easier to buy”. (Yves Saint Laurent)
When I see your face…
I see so much more than just your features. I see your past, your worries, your thoughts, your fragility and your innermost beauty. I see and feel an energetic map of your lives etched across your face.
As a professional Makeup artist I have worked with faces for more than 25 years. The differences between them have been distinctive, yet I have loved every single one of them.
When I see your face, I see and feel your eyes. Your windows, your truth and often your hiding. I also feel your sadness, joy and hurt and so much more…
When I see your face, I see the Angel living inside. We all come in different forms and often the supposedly ‘plainest’ face can hold the most beautiful person beneath it. The classically beautiful face can sometimes hide a person who feels objectified, hurt and judged. When I look, I feel for your essence in there.
Often over the years I have noticed that EVERYONE is beautiful when they smile from the deepest part of themselves… their soul… no matter what they look like.
As an Inner Image consultant I have noticed that women will often apologise for how they look. They will sit down in front of me and say things like:
- I am sorry I look a mess today.
- I am sorry I am looking tired.
- I am sorry I have no makeup on.
- I am old and wrinkled, freckled, plain, tired etc.
- I am asked: what can you do with this old face?
The younger ladies will often have layers of makeup on to hide behind or feel that they may be looked at in judgement from me… they apologise also.
Well, I am here to say to you that your apology is not accepted. Because in truth, when you apologise, you are saying you are not good enough.
Women have spent their lives rubbing, pinching, applying creams, makeup, lotions, facials, hair dying, surgery, the list goes on – to have a ‘beautiful’ face.
We compare, compete and comply. With our sisters, mothers, daughters and friends.
“It’s an unspoken war on women, and we are the enemy”.
We are taught from birth that if we look pretty, attractive and sexy according to society’s definition, that there lies the answer to a successful life.
We are taught that we are better looking when we are young and as we age and wrinkle we lose this attractiveness. This is not true.
9 Reasons for Women to Smile
- Make no apology for how you look. Accept your own face the way it is. Without makeup.
- When you apply makeup – do it to celebrate your beautiful face, not to mask it.
- Know that you chose your looks for a reason.
- Start expressing your true thoughts about beauty with your friends – open up the opportunity to connect withOUT comparison.
- Accept your age, nationality and cultural features: if you feel to have surgery – instead spend the money on some loving counselling sessions to see why you choose to change your face.
- See the Angel within you. Your face will begin to make loving sense.
- Smile your big smile from who you truly are and never apologise for being uniquely, strangely, oddly, classically beautiful.
- Teach your baby daughters to love their own reflection by accepting and loving your own first. You have a responsibility to change the cycle.
- Spend a moment each day staring into your own eyes – see your innermost beauty with love and self-acceptance.
Show us your passion.
Women in Livingness Blog 
Open your eyes and feel the reflection of the love of your inner-most shining through you.
Letting go the ‘apologizing mode’ keeps us transparently beautiful in our acceptance and valuing of who we are
Thank you Kathryn, it’s a beautiful read. “Spend a moment each day staring into your own eyes – see your innermost beauty with love and self-acceptance.” This is very supportive and something I can easily do each day, I already do take a few moments to see my myself in my eyes but instead of it being fleeting I can spend some more time with myself to go deeper in self love in these moments.
One of the most beautiful things is a women complelty unapologetic of how she looks dame a women is hot when she is in her power. No apologises needed.
Never be apologetic for feeling beautiful, never bring yourself down just because you’re standing out – for when we do that we close off to the beauty of our heart, we close off from the love in our veins and there is no pain greater than that.
And we don’t need to apologise either when we are not doing so well, just allow ourselves space and love whilst we work through things.
Good point, no apologies regarding anything are required.
If we want the world to change I feel we must start with ourselves first and that does mean reflecting back to all children our own ability to love ourselves first, this naturally supports others to feel their own love. You cannot tell someone to love themselves I know this doesn’t work from my own experience it is through the reflection of someone loving themselves so much that this love can be tangibly felt and then the desire to connect to the same love naturally develops.
At the moment we are teaching kids to love others but not themselves, many parents are truly decent in the way they love and care for their kids but the problem is as kids we role model on our parents (who do not self love), and we can become self sacrificing in the same unloving way to ourselves when we become adults. Either way, we are always role modeling.
The simple act of letting go of hardness means that our true delicacy and beauty gets the space it deserves to emerge.
Thank you for not accepting the apology and in so doing offering women a different approach. I have apologised so much for my very existence and have brought upon myself much self denigration, lack of worth and derision. Now at 52, against the rules, I feel more valuable, beautiful and real than I ever have before – a series of choices and huge thanks to women around me and the work of Universal Medicine.
Apologising for myself has been a major thorn in my side for a long time and I am pleased to be extracting this now since it is a form of self-denigration that is insidious and very detrimental.
To acknowledge and accept the responsibility for change is to be greatly welcomed and not feared. It is a responsibility to be embraced regardless of any outcome.
The face is a record of the past and how we are feeling right now. That’s why an energetic facial release is so powerful, as it can release many long held tensions and strains and release the inner beauty that we all have inside.
I love the number 9 reason to smile, which I also practice everyday: even if I have a really difficult day, I can still see the love and beauty in my eyes. And that is worth celebrating! Also for men.
I know a Milion reasons why we are beautiful. Every touch, smile, step we make from the inner love touches a million stars.
There is nothing more beautiful and honouring of a woman’s beauty than to have your make-up one or haircut by a practitioner who sees real beauty. The woman who cuts my hair sees exactly that, the beauty in my eyes and the delicateness in my complexion – she cuts my hair in accordance to that and I leave feeling beautiful every time.
Apologising for ourselves does not change anything – appreciating ourselves does.
Love the title of your article Kathyrn, we could make a habit of doing the same when we hear a woman putting herself down–’apology not accepted’…..and remind each other to look deep into our eyes in the mirror and truly see what is there.
Yes victoria picone, absolutely agree….we have a responsibility to each other. Our beauty lived is a blessing to everyone.,
This blog challenges the status quo – many women are ‘sorry’ for the way they look – how horrendous is that for the young generations to feel? We need more role models claimed and accepting of there light and beauty.
I have been doing this a lot more recently and it feels very gorgeous to accept and to see the absolute beauty of my face; ‘Make no apology for how you look. Accept your own face the way it is. Without makeup.’ I have observed that the more I accept my self and am caring and understanding of myself, the more beauty I see.
I agree – this is absolutely not true; ‘We are taught that we are better looking when we are young and as we age and wrinkle we lose this attractiveness. This is not true.’ I see an absolute beauty in the face of the elders that I know.
I would absolutely agree with this; ‘Often over the years I have noticed that EVERYONE is beautiful when they smile from the deepest part of themselves… their soul… no matter what they look like.’
It should be the same for men too, to know that they are beautiful, valuable, whatever they do, and whatever they do wrong.
It can easily be said that there is not a moment when a woman is not beautiful, simply because she is. But there will be many who disagree with this because they may feel that they do not fit the media agenda of what beauty is that is being poured out to us constantly. But we are powerful. We can see these images and say no to their damaging influence, so that no young girls are raised to be fed the same insidious ideals. This is perhaps the greater purpose of our responses to the media imagery – to stop it now so that no one else has to endure it, because are we not responsible for what our young are exposed to?