Beauty, happiness and lasers

I've being doing so many different things recently (festival, holiday, moving to the other side of the country...) I haven't written a blog in a long time.
So here's an article I wrote recently -

Being a woman has never been an easy role to play in the gender wars battle, but in an age of empowering, driven independent ladies we're rising to the top and looking great doing it. However looking great amongst the photoshopped models of glossy magazines isn't always easy, and when we should be concentrating on climbing the ladder to success we get lost in the search for aesthetic perfection. Unfortunately for most women, the way we feel about ourselves is governed by how we think we look.

It's important to remember that beauty is subjective to the eye of the beholder and concentrating on wanting to appear in a certain way is not a healthy way to lead your life. As women we all come in different shapes and sizes, with lots of different lumps and bumps that we may either love to have or hate to see, but these are what make us unique and individuality is what makes us irresistible. With that said, there's nothing wrong with using the lovely feature enhancing tools we've been given to help make us stand out and show off our best bits. Make-up and hair dye, gorgeous indulging scrubs and masks and enchanting bottles of aromatic perfumes were all put on this Earth for us to use, so we can stand tall and proudly flaunt our feminine figures. Its all about balance in the world of beauty, and as long as you can recognise yourself in the mirror after a session with your favourite products you should have got that balance just right.

But what about the other tools of the beauty industry that have only come into fruition in more recent years. Today there are cosmetic clinics on the corner of every high street, and they are advertised prevalently during television breaks and on the radio. Personally I believe making a major change in your appearance isn't something that should be encouraged so lightly. Without generalising, the aesthetics of each individual woman tends to be a fairly sensitive subject. So much so that our opinions of ourselves can change quite dramatically with one single comment. With that said advertising change as an easy option to achieve beauty can be a dangerous thing. Especially because most of these procedures aren't as easy as surface value might suggest.

Feeling confident in the way we look is core to the way we act in social situations. Everyone wants to stand out and be noticed for positive reasons, and not remembered for our flaws. There is no one set way that we should look, and I think this is an idea that is sometimes forgot when we tirelessly work to achieve our physical prime. Sometimes it's what we believe to be our flaws that others find most endearing about the way that we look. Whether it's a gap in your teeth, the tone of your skin, the kinks in your hair or the way your thighs wobble when you walk, these are all qualities that build up to make a beautiful one of a kind you, and changing this shouldn't be at the top of your agenda.

This is not to say that I am boycotting the recent developments in the cosmetic industry. The fact is that a lot of these procedures can be fantastically life changing. For me, one of these procedures did just that and after suffering a life of unsightly scabs and sores on my lower legs, I was saved by laser hair removal.

My hair has always been thick and dark; which is lovely, but it comes with the price of noticeable arm and leg hair. When I was at school it was my biggest insecurity. After being relentlessly teased I grew more and more self conscious and from an extremely young age refused to enter the playground without my 50 den tights and my thick cardigan to hide away in. This made summertime sticky and uncomfortable to say the very least, and after seeing my despair my amazing mum offered to help remove the hair from my legs. Sadly all the waxing, shaving and epilating quickly took its toll on my skin. Dermatitis spread as a result of all the hair removal and the marks it left were worse than the hair I started with.

After researching every available option, meeting with my GP and waiting until I'd turned 18, I was lucky enough to undergo laser hair removal to treat my biggest insecurity. This really did change my life and for the first time ever I could be seen out in pretty skirts, flaunting my pins like all the other girls.

Laser hair removal didn't wave a magic wand and turn me into a super confident beauty queen, but it did give me the confidence to be the person I wanted to be. There's lots of things about the way I look that get to me from time to time. Its not easy to be a woman, trying to look your best all the time and the television's telling you “this is how you can change”. Nobody really needs to change. But it's amazing that advances in the cosmetic industry today can be so beneficial to the quality of life lots of people lead. Including me.