The Evolution of Beauty
December 2, 2009, by Prudence Baird
Prudence Baird shares an eye-opening video and her thoughts on beauty and aging.
How would your life have been different if you had seen this time-lapse video on the cusp of your own womanhood?
What if, as a young girl of 13 or 14, you had witnessed the impossibility of being that perfect face on the billboard? Would you still have lain in the sun to get that Bain de Soleil tan? Or, turned your legs (and Mom’s white sheets) orange with “QT” (aka Quick Tan)? Or stripped your hair with the spray-on Sun In, trying to look like those Nordic blondes in the commercials?
Would you have starved yourself to look like Twiggy or stretched your Dippity-Do gelled hair over soup cans to have Cheryl Tiegs’ smooth, waspy locks?
Me, I don’t think I’d have done anything different…I think I still would have broiled in the sun and sacrificed my personal development in order to please friends and boyfriends. I hope that I wouldn’t have, but as the philosopher Ouspensky said, “If it could have happened any other way, it would have.”
And, after all, what would be the point of being young if you listen to your parents’ wisdom and learn from their mistakes?
(If you are viewing this post in your mailbox, you must click on the title to get to the Fifty is the New website and view the video.)
December 2nd, 2009 at 7:46 am
Thanks for sharing it further!
December 2nd, 2009 at 7:54 am
Well, I showed “The Evolution of Beauty” to my daughter when if first came out (age 14) who said, “mom, I’ve already seen that.” How did she see it? Her elementary and now, middle school, discuss issues like body image and self-esteem with girls. Since our kids rarely listen to us, it is important that someone else somewhere (church, school, clubs) helps create and shape awareness regarding the airbrushed images they’re bombarded with by the media. Great video!
December 2nd, 2009 at 8:56 am
Great validation, Pru!!! I didn’t take the path most travelled bye, and I beat myself up over spending my life becoming a conscious, human being. I don’t have or wasn’t able to retain the other boxes that go along with mid-life.
Thanks for sharing that my evolution is unique to me and I have walked each step for it. By the way, Ouspensky wrote a fabulous short story, “The Secret Life of Ivan Osokin” if you haven’t read it, sure to be a super read.
December 2nd, 2009 at 9:18 am
Add menopause to that impossible mix, and a neurotic desire to stay young, and that’s why the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries are rolling in our dough. Fascinating. Thanks, Pru.
December 2nd, 2009 at 11:01 am
Louise, that is my all-time favorite book. I have an original edition. I understand that it has been recently re-issued. Highly recommended reading for everyone. Especially those who are grappling with regrets.
December 2nd, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Of course she looked good before all the touching up and rearranging. That’s probably true for most of us, but we’ve been brainwashed and hog tied and goodness gracious, it’s still a struggle all these years past adolescence. Pru, I remember those days of slathering on the cocoa butter and baking in the sun and the years I spent with my blow dryer blazing. Even though I find my salt and pepper locks at times very sculptural and interesting, I’m still wavering on the gray hair. Will it never end? Thanks for sharing this reminder.
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:33 pm
We also need to educate our boys. We are raising boys on false prophecies of beauty and I just wonder what will happen when they are young men confronted with the realities of what women really look like, what women are supposed to look like and they feel lied to, cheated, unable to settle down…
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:55 pm
I’ve been stressed lately and boy does it show on my 53-year-old face. I was in a department store today, and damn, do they have a lot of mirrors! Every time I caught a glimpse of myself I thought, Oh boy… This video is obviously here to give me hope that all I have to do is get myself a LOT of money and I, too, will be able to stop aging with a snap of my fingers! Take that, stress!
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Erica, you are so right. It’s not just young women who need this message…it’s young men, old men and middle-aged men. We all laugh about the 54-year-old guy with a comb-over who writes on match.com that he is looking for his soul-mate, 18 – 35, slender and attractive…and air-brushed. We all have to get real. America’s obsession with mixing marketing with mating just isn’t working. It’s produced serial generations of bulimics, narcissists, diet-pill poppers, cosmetic-surgery junkies, shopaholics and plain old shallow bitches. What is it going to take to get us off this false image cycle? (Please don’t say religion!)
December 2nd, 2009 at 8:54 pm
WOW!! My head is spinning! Even the beautiful models don’t even measure up to the “ideal beauty”. Thanks for doing us a service and showing us this short visual. It helps to keep us grounded, to see the false manipulation of images that feed off of our insecurities & promote a false belief in just one kind of beauty, on idealized face one particular image is the only desirable one. We are all so beautiful- so unique and we need to keep that message out there as Madison Ave is working harder promoting the unattainable idealized beauty to the detriment of us all- men & women all suffer with the false & phony look of beauty.
GO PRU~ “If it could have happened any other way, it would have”. Thanks for the quote. The story of my life. It should be on my tombstone – if I wasn’t donating my body to science.
December 3rd, 2009 at 1:11 pm
dear pru: you are prettier than she is, and it hardly takes any makeup at all. signed, your 55 year old man who has nothing left to comb over.
December 3rd, 2009 at 1:43 pm
“In the day” a beautiful bronze tan created by baking in the sun slathered with baby oil laced with iodine and long, straight hair were the signs of beauty. So, I baked and straightened my wild kinky hair. Today, age spots, skin damage and short, kinky hair. Would I do it again…yep!
December 5th, 2009 at 9:19 am
I recently attended a 40th reunion. I was not nervous until I got there. Some people looked so different it was hard to concentrate while speaking with them. Others looked like more comfortable versions of their earlier selves. Someone commented to me “My word, you are aging really well.” Thank you! That’s exactly what I want to do, age, but look well and feel well. No eternal youth trips for me, it’s too aging.
December 16th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Dippity Do! I’d forgotten about it. I ironed my bangs(burning my forehead), used Dippity Do and products designed to straighten African American hair in an effort to have hair that would swing and move. I’d like to say I have risen above it but I am not going to lie. I have recently been looking in the mirror, holding my skin back to see how I might lift it (the jowls and the downward smile they make on my face) – up!