Original Post Date: September 16, 2008 Yesterday, as I stood in the health and beauty aisle of one of America's super one-stop stores, I found myself confused and irritated. What I found irritating was the fact that the soap aisle was divided into two sections. One section held the liquid soaps and the other held bar soaps. There was also a section for fancy soaps in all flavors, colors and fragrances contained in fancy designed bottles. Behind the soap aisle was an aisle for toothpaste, mouthwash and other dental products - that was virtually empty. There were two continuous aisles full of assorted facial products - Olay, Neutrogena, L'Oreal and many more; facial lotions - anti-aging creams, acne-control creams, anti-blemish creams; and body lotions all very enticingly displayed. The last two aisles had four separate shelves dedicated solely to cosmetic products, lipsticks of various brands and shades, facial powder, make-up, eye-liners, and lip-liners lined the long shelves. The shelves were then divided by name brands - Ambi, Maybeline, Cover girl and L'Oreal to name a few. All this left me feeling overwhelmed. How much beautification products do women really need? What's so wrong with women and the way we look - as is? Right behind the cosmetic aisle, there was a small shelf dedicated to low-priced novels. There were about ten politically themed books - from Joe Biden's Memoir, Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics, to a book on the Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down, and the rest were a mix of cook books, romance novels and murder mysteries. My confusion lay in the fact that I was in the health and beauty section of the store looking for some vitamin pills and there wasn't much to see in the health aisle of the so-called Health and Beauty section. I bought some soap I hadn't planned on buying with the little vitamins money I had and took my frustrations to the local pharmacy. At the pharmacy, I found that the story was a little better, but not that much different from the encounter at the superstore. This shopping experience left me with one question: do we really need all this make-up? I thought back to one of my favorite poems by Maya Angelou, "Phenomenal Woman." In this poem, Maya Angelou portrays an African woman of substance. A woman of confidence. A woman of intelligence -not book knowledge, but common sense. What makes the phenomenal woman attractive to me is the fact that she exudes natural beauty, enhanced by her good character and the way she carries herself among her peers and among men. Women possessing these qualities are hard to come by in these modern times. The constant stream of beauty products on the market, and endless television and radio commercials about the latest anti-aging cream or Botox treatment, goes to show how corruptible today's women have become. We have learned to dislike the way we look instead of to dislike the way we portray ourselves to the world. We seek comfort in things that do not last and hold on to things that beautify on the outside, but fail to hide the ugliness on the inside. We have bought into things that bring us emptiness and scorned the things that bring us fulfillment and lasting satisfaction. We buy self-esteem in a bottle hoping it will last us a lifetime. I have had the pleasure of associating with women from various cultures, with different attitudes towards life and I believe it is safe to say that somewhere along the way; women seem to have lost focus of what's important in life. The things that matter most, virtue, kindness, grace, self-composure and high moral standards, hardly make the list anymore. We, women, portray ourselves as strong-willed, independent and smart, and yet we cannot withstand the pressures of society to look like something other than who we are. We allow ourselves to be yo-yoed by the beauty standards of society. We allow ourselves to get sucked into emanating the image of earthly standards, instead of focusing on the image of God's standards - women with inner beauty and charm that reflects in the way we talk, the way we walk and the way we act. Until we recognize that we are flawed internally, and that there is no amount of make-up or lipstick that can cover that up, there will continue to be aisles and aisles of beauty products targeted at women to help us cover up on the outside, but that will leave us feeling naked and ugly where it counts the most - on the inside.
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