Posts Tagged ‘Magazines’

5 steps to feeling great in your skin

Monday, November 30th, 2009

What has been niggling at you for months? Is it an item on your ‘to-do’ list that gets transferred from list to list when everything else has been checked off? It it something you haven’t dared to even put on the list? Something that you haven’t even admitted that you want?

I want a new wardrobe. Not the structure to put clothes in, but the fashions to fill it with. I have clothes, tonnes of clothes in fact, but I don’t wear many of them. My wardrobe consists predominately of clothes I can breastfeed in or the crap that I haven’t sent to charity that I was wearing over 2 years ago, before I fell pregnant. So as you can imagine my wardrobe is full of stunning dresses, silks, delicate embroidery, tailored pants, flirty skirts and fitted jackets – NOT! My wardrobe has way more stretch cotton than should belong to one woman and is mostly a few basic colours that wash well and work with tan skirts or jeans.

To make my wardrobe woes worse, my body is alien. The pants I wore pre-pregnancy are too big now and the tops from the same era and way too small. (Pretty much everything else stretches, so it still fits). My hips and thighs need a L, my waist is a M and my bust is somewhere between an XL and an XXL, depending on the store and the cut. So most of the time I aim for ‘presentable’ or ‘good’ and try to avoid looking like Betty Boop.

I would really like a wardrobe that is classic, effortless, comfortable and flattering. Clothes I can wear to a café, to see a client and take the baby to the park all in a day. Why does this blog find a home in the category of personal development I hear you ask? Because I deserve clothes that make me feel good. So do you. There is nothing wrong with wanting your clothes, and indeed your style, to reflect your personality. There is no hard and fast rule, despite the glossies telling us otherwise, that says that you must be a size 0 or even a size 4 to look and feel good. Our bodies are wonderful pieces of kit – we will never own anything as versatile, useful and fun as our bodies so lets celebrate them.

As a coach I feel it is important to follow-up each epiphany with action steps. So here are my steps that I think would work for just about anybody:

  1. Make a rough list of what I wear from my wardrobe (DONE)
  2. Make a list of what is missing to mix and match with existing pieces to make desired wardrobe (DONE)
  3. Go through existing clothes, sort out what the keep, what to throw out, what to pass to charity and what to gift to friends (like the stunning designer gown my bust no longer fits in)
  4. Book an appointment (in the new year) with a stylist to do my colours and styles. (I am desperate to work with Coby from Stylewish and if you are a Sydney local you should check her out too.)
  5. Go shopping! Gradually….

We might even save money by avoiding purchases that we won’t wear more than once, time in looking for clothes because we know what we are looking for and avoid horrifying fashion mistakes. That is my justification and I am sticking to it ;)

*This blog was not a paid recommendation

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Fascinating

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

Capable of arousing and holding attention.

Capturing interest as if by a spell – bewitching.

I don’t know a woman who wouldn’t love to be considered a ‘fascinating woman’. The art of captivating others is more than a charming skill; it is a quality of spirit. There is no higher compliment, no greater task than to be so authentically you in all your intricacies that others feel compelled to watch, to be near you, to learn what it is that makes you tick.

The catch 22 is that if you are concerned with charming others, being the life of the party, being liked, being admired & being interesting then you are probably not being authentic. You may however come across as 2 dimensional, a try hard and particularly non-fascinating.

A truly fascinating woman is happy to follow her desires. She speaks her mind. She expresses her authentic emotions. She is high maintenance. She is unapologetically herself. She is not consistent. She doesn’t pander to popular opinion. She goes with the flow, but not necessarily the flow of the masses. She is unafraid of upsetting others, but she is not intentionally inflammatory.

The trick is that most of us modern women lack some of the foundational keystones to being a fascination woman; being self assured and the ability to flow with our feminine nature.

I know I am not the only one guilty of listening to a band, or reading a book (or even pretending we have) because it is so very chic’. So many women dutifully trawl the magazine pages to construct their wardrobes. Forgetting that, dressing to suit their personalities and shapes, the style icons didn’t follow trends – they started them. We adopt a seriousness designed for the workplace and allow it to permeate other areas of our lives and end up allowing that very seriousness to extinguish our playfulness. In the end we look like we stepped from a magazine spread, drinking cosmos in a tight little huddle as we compare, contrast and analyse the men in the bar as opposed to chatting to them.

A fascinating woman is mysterious, but not unattainable. She is open and warm. She radiates a vibe that draws others to her; it is possible effortless to talk to her. Fascinating women are interested in others and are great conversationalists because they don’t give everything away.

Fascinating is the reason I think we have the best night when it is not planned and that we tend to attract a man when we aren’t looking for one. When we are happy being ourselves with reckless abandon, when we aren’t worried about what others think of us & when we aren’t trying to change the situation we are fascinating.

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A step in the right direction

Friday, April 17th, 2009

I am beginning to believe that we no longer know what a woman’s body looks like. It sounds like I am about to begin a soap-box tirade about the beauty myth and the beauty industry and honestly- I’m not. That argument has gotten old. We all know that the current idea of ‘beauty’ is unrealistic. If that is news to you let me know what rock you have been hiding under – it is the best hiding spot on the planet.

The practices of digitally re-creating already beautiful women has been the subject of many an expose. As Jennifer Romolini of Shine put it recently:

We know you attach your cover models’ heads to skinnier bodies. We know you slim down their thighs and their noses and you lighten their skin. We know you smooth out all of the facial “imperfections” that make them look human. We’re tired of fembots. We can handle the truth.

I couldn’t agree more. I would postulate that many of us don’t know what a real woman’s body looks like anymore. We all (most women I know) believe our bodies are freakishly abnormal in some way; lamenting the ways we don’t live up to the impossible ideal. Understandably so, when the only comparisons we have are to catwalk models, photo-shopped magazine shoots or surgically enhanced porn stars.

While I can appreciate the beauty of the images we are presented I challenge that they represent any reality that can be maintained without cosmetic surgery, specialist make-up artists, stylists, lighting designers, control underwear, dietitians, chefs, personal trainers and often retouching professionals. Even the images touted as ‘natural’ often need a handful of professionals to create.

In a culture that could almost do away with real women in favour of infinitely more perfect digitally created ones, I take my hat off to French Elle and the amazing women who chose to pose as their real selves. April’s issue of Elle celebrates women in their true beauty; no makeup and no retouching. Granted the (brave and inspiring) women are lit beautifully by talented lighting designers and the photographer is worth his/her weight in gold and they are wearing loose clothes that hide the so-called ‘imperfections’ of a real woman’s body, but heck they look like a woman should!

Cover of April's issue of Elle France

I am looking forward to Australian and American publications following this example and wistfully dreaming of the day when it is accepted that real women have bellies & stretchmarks*, asymmetrical breasts**, blemishes and beautiful intricacies.

* & **Please note that these links contain images of partial, tasteful & non-sexual, nudity that may not be appropriate for viewing at work or by sensative readers.

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