Press department
Louise Obery, a social media creator under the pseudonym @MyBetterSelf, is the author of: Mirror, mirror, tell me what it’s really worth By Editions Leduc and the InPower podcast. He shares with us his ideas about beauty.
“Louise, you’d be so much prettier if you took care of yourself,” laments my mother, sitting on the couch sipping tea during my Sunday visit. I answer him with a big smile. “But I actually take care of myself. I do sports, I see my friends, I visit a psychologist; I am completely satisfied.” My mother dismisses the argument with a wave of her hand. I smile again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that by taking care of ‘me’, which includes my whole being, you actually meant my appearance.” But I don’t know if trying to get rid of cellulite through painful procedures or refusing to eat when I’m hungry is really taking care of myself.”
Pursing his lips, he leans over to the kettle to refill it, a sign that the debate is over. One of the first things that struck me when I was researching my book was how we as women are raised to think that it is our responsibility to be beautiful. As if there was nothing more natural than not being. But to quote American writer Erin McKinney, “beauty is not a rent we have to pay society for the simple fact of being a woman.” What worries me about the beauty imperative is that it makes us care more about how we look than how we feel. Having a formal dinner?
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We know we’re going to wear heels even if our feet are already sore. The waiter arrives for macaroni desserts? We refuse, even if deep down we are still hungry. In fact, everything is simple. beauty as it is framed today forces us to consider our bodies as objects and not as subjects. Like appearance, not substance. This was already explained by Plato when he distinguished appearance and essence; substance represents what we are, appearance what we appear.
This is where, in my eyes, the essence of the problem is, therefore, the solution. if beauty is freed from its shackles, it can become a means not of conformity, but of self-expression. The fact of being “too much” or “not enough” will no longer matter, this judgment can only exist in relation to a standard of reference. The day when there are no more arbitrary standards, then beauty can be perceived not as a model to follow, but as a model to create. Not as conformity, but as freedom. It’s time for beauty to stop being a way to limit us and instead become a way to express ourselves.
Source: Le Figaro
