New Year...New you??

Happy New Year!!  With those three little words we automatically feel the need to improve our lives, health, jobs and relationships.  What if we regress rather than move forward???  I've heard it said that change for the sake of change is not always a good thing.  What if progression for the sake of progressing were the same way??? This thought got me to wondering...what if I make a resolution to regress rather than progress???  How would this be perceived??  How would I be perceived?  What would my friends and family think?  How would this affect my clients in my salon??  Would anyone even notice???

Being in the beauty industry, image is everything....truly. As a salon owner and stylist, my job is to make others look as beautiful on the outside as they are on the inside.  I love what I do and the instant gratification that comes along with it...but, I've begun to notice how wrapped up we as a society are becoming over our looks and all that comes with that.  I began to notice how many people are so worried about "looking the part".  I see so many naturally beautiful people who have little to zero self confidence and I wondered if it all went hand in hand with our need to "look beautiful".  Have we forgotten the real meaning of beauty??  Do we know what it means to be beautiful??  How confident would we be if we stripped down all the things that made us beautiful and just lived our lives and truly sought out the real beauty in life..???    

So....I've decided to begin this stripping down process.  For the next 90 days I will be stripping down and regressing in areas of my life that may or may not be related to my physical appearance.  First thing to go is my makeup.  To some this may sound like no big deal, but to me, its huge.  I've worn makeup ever since I was 17 years old...I'm 35 now, so that is a long time. In this process of stripping down things, my goal is to blog the responses, if any, that I receive.  I thought long and hard about why I wear makeup and what it is that I feel as if I gain.  I have come to many different conclusions.  One, makeup makes me feel as if I can camouflage my physical flaws, whether real or perceived.  I feel as though I am able to face the world with a renewed confidence when I am in my makeup.  Am I truly this confident with my makeup or is it simply a perceived confidence??  I want to get to the bottom of this very question in this regressing project.  We see so many confident men out in the world...and they generally do not wear makeup, so what gives??  Are women the weaker sex and lacking in natural confidence that we feel the need to build ourselves up in whatever way possible with makeup and 'beauty' products??  Do women lack the self esteem to just be real and completely natural as most men??  Is the 'double standard' that we all gripe about something that we as women created or is it what men prefer???  

Stay tuned to this blog for more stripping and regressing and the reactions that may or may not happen.  I'm hoping for an enlightened perspective on what true beauty really is.  I hope that in this project, I am able to re-define beauty as we know it, or at least in my own eyes.