By Elizabeth Cooper
Editor emeritus of EW Chloe Angyal recently wrote a post and recorded an online TV clip for GritTV about how women and girls alarmingly prioritize beauty over health, and what we can do to change this problem. According to a study at East Tennessee State University, warning women about “the risk of age spots and other forms of damage to their appearance” was more effective to get them to stop tanning than warning them of the risk of skin cancer. She also discussed a report by the Girl Scouts Research Institute which found that of a thousand teenage girls surveyed, 47% think that “the fashion industry body image looks unhealthy,” yet 48% wanted to look like catwalk models.
I agree wholeheartedly with her uplifting conclusion that we can reprioritize values other than beauty, such as health, learning, and social justice. Chloe then does go on to say that “we can appreciate ourselves, and each other, for the beauty that’s harder to see, but much cheaper to maintain.” I think we should go further and redefine both inner beauty and physical beauty. Who says that thin equals beautiful? Individuals have individual tastes in what they find attractive, so why not focus on this aspect of beauty as well?
Readers, what do you find beautiful, both on the inside and outside?
Image from Christian Bauer
I think beauty can be determined/measure by a lot of things: clothing, confidence, hair, smile. For me, one’s overall beauty is a mix of many things, and in the end, (this is so cliché), one’s ‘inner beauty’ counts much more than anything else.