Body, Beauty & Bravery

Body, Beauty & Bravery

There’s really nothing like feeling beautiful, is there? When you feel pretty, nothing can get you down. Well, or for a moment you feel like nothing can get you down, even if you are really down & out. That’s why I’m such a big proponent of Make-up Therapy. What is that exactly?

Well Make-Up Therapy came out of my friend Leslie Koerdt’s bad day. She came into the studio just pretty frustrated, settled into a chair to chat with me while I worked on someone else, and Leslie Hines, AB’s Creative Director just started playing around with some looks on Leslie Koerdt (I know they have the same name!). After Leslie Hines was finished experimenting with some looks on Leslie Koerdt, she announced that she felt much better about her day and herself because Leslie Hines had just given her quote unquote make-up therapy! An idea was born!

I thought I’ll bet a lot of women would benefit from make-up therapy & so I am going to offer that service at Authentic Beauty. It’s coming soon people! And speaking of Make-Up Therapy, this past Saturday at the Cure Childhood Cancer Luncheon that my friend Chris Glavine invited me to really sent that message right to my heart! The girls at Authentic Beauty and I were asked to do the make-up of the women who lost their children to cancer and to women whose children were suffering with cancer. These women had not and/or did not have time to even care what they looked like. So when each one sat in our chairs, that time was for them to be pampered. After many of the women had been made up, they literally cried with joy that they looked so good and that someone had actually spent time on them.

Not that looks are everything, but it’s a fact that women feel better about themselves and their situations if they feel beautiful. Again that’s evidenced when I did make-up for  V to the 10th, the 10th year celebration of V-Day and the Vagina Monologues for the women who suffered in Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. They were struggling to salvage the last of their belongings & their families, and were fighting Mother Nature, but they found some strength deep within themselves after one of us from Authentic Beauty had done their make-up. Ultimately, the Body, Beauty & Bravery workshop we offered last night at Authentic Beauty is about everything I have talked about…and more. It’s one thing to feel beautiful & look beautiful, but it’s another to take that to a whole other level. That’s where Project Authentic Beauty comes in.

I met Allison Cross of Project Authentic Beauty in spin class years ago when I worked in East Cobb. Allison and I hit off and we were fast friends. I told her I was launching my make-up studio, she told me she wanted to work with me in some way. Now Allison was a part-time counselor at Ridgeview and had never done any public speaking, but was speaking at her church and asked me to come. At the church, she spoke of her experiences counseling girls at Ridgeview with severe eating disorders and also spoke of living in East Cobb where there was so much pressure on women and young girls to look good, meaning really thin. Allison saw there was such a disordered image of one’s body through the media. The media has really set unrealistic expectations of how young girls & even grown women should look.

By the end of Allison’s talk, people in the audience were crying, so deeply moved by her experiences. There were also people up in arms about protecting their daughters. The 45-minute talk turned into a two and a half hour talk. The audience literally followed Allison to her car asking how can we help, how can we have you speak at our children’s schools, etc. about the epidemic of disordered body images? Since then, Allison has spoken at many schools to parents & young girls about this issue. She has also spoken to the Georgia School Counselors Association. See: http://www.myimagejourney.com/cms/authentic-beauty/project-authenticbeauty/

This is such a problem today & my mantra & Authentic Beauty’s mantra is that YOU are beautiful! Always remember that!