Appearance

Karin

Does appearance affect your mood or does mood drive appearance?

AliEm14

Both!

when I am doing something I love, when I feel good about my work in the world, I tend to feel more positively about my appearance because I feel better about myself in general. I also know when I'm having a rough day, spending time on my hair and makeup and putting together an outfit makes me feel better.

I used to care a lot about my hair, and that was a huge thing for me, which I'm slowly beginning to unravel that thought pattern and where it comes from. A lot of beauty standards I find myself asking who benefits from me believing this (usually the answer is companies who can make money off of me feeling bad about myself and therefore buying the product they are selling me to fix said flaw). A lot of our beauty standards are also very euro-centric, and are influenced by things like privilege and status, which I find interesting.

I love a good glam day, and there are days when not feeling confident in how I look definitely relates to my mood, but ultimately the thing I keep coming back to is if something makes me feel good because it feels authentic to me or if its because its what I've been told to subscribe to. That's the question that makes all the difference for me.