International Women's Day 2013

Last year Confidence Is Beautiful female readers posted a picture on Facebook & Twitter of themselves with no makeup on to give hope and inspiration to women everywhere to get in touch with their natural beauty. 

Ladies always ask me for tips and advice on how to walk in high heels.  Rule #1 for walking in high heels is confidence! 

I want you to think about one of your favorite pairs of stilettos in your closet.  Maybe you can think back to special occasions in your life when you wore those shoes.  Even a more casual event can become special by putting on a pair of jeans and throwing on stilettos.  I can think back to many occasions of this moment when I am getting ready for the night, makeup is done, hair is ready, slip that little dress on and then test drive those stiletto shoes in the mirror before heading out.  The shoe tops off the look and you know it will be a good night.  Maybe it is not that one pair of stilettos that brings back more and more memories but maybe multiple pairs. 

But no matter how much fun those stiletto nights were, no matter how confident you were, no matter how good you may or may not be at walking in those stilettos, every woman who wears high heels whether you admit it or not has been in pain while walking in stilettos at some point in life.  This International Women’s Day let us make our stiletto shoes a symbol of a women’s life.

For March 8^th 2013 Women from all over the world will be posting a photo on Facebook and Twitter of them walking in high heels to symbolize a women’s life. #ConfidenceIsBeautiful

Men are invited to participate by either posting a photo of their women in her shoes or ladies if you want your man to know what it’s like to wear high heels this is your chance to put him in your shoes for once.  

Heart Breaking Eating Disorder

One of our Twitter followers tells her horror story of how losing weight destroyed her love life. 

Anonymous: I've always been a health nut. I mean I would eat pizza and drink sodas but I always worked out and tried to make healthy choices for the most part. Then my "first love" kind of chose someone else over me. It hurt but I moved on. The next guy I dated dumped me for some stick thin girl. That's when I started dieting more. I still ate as much as I needed to I just cut out sodas and only ate salads when I ate out, cross country helped too.  

Then I met Matt. I was so convinced that he was the most perfect person in this world and he liked me for me and I knew that, but that fear of him finding someone better was always in the back of my head. That's what started it. It was long distance, so before his visits I would replace dinners with a breakfast bar and sometimes skip lunch all together for about a week. At the time it was just a way to have a flat stomach when he got here, no big deal. Then I started weighing myself and noticing how quickly the numbers were dropping. Between visits from Matt and Skyping and taking on the phone and working and obsessing with the numbers on the scale and the nutrition labels, it got unhealthy.  

When the scale stopped going down, I stopped eating as much. It progressively got worse until I was at the point where I lived on chewing gum and water all days of the week and binged on Fridays, only because I usually spent the night with my friend and I didn't want her to worry about me. Then I'd feel guilty and starve again, nasty cycle. Everybody at school started spreading all sorts of rumors about how I threw up in the bathrooms after lunch (which is absurd considering I didn't even eat at lunch) people would ask my friends what was wrong with me.  They'd make skinny jokes and stare. I hated going to school.  Then guess what? Matt dumped me.  

I guess it was my fault. I mean I was beyond happy with him but because of my eating disorder I couldn't be open with him and I'm sure it pushed him away. Ever since we broke up I've been trying to get better but it’s ingrained into my brain now and eating is the hardest task for me. So no I would not advise any of my followers to lose weight like I did. I'm so against it. If I see a friend skipping meals I freak out it's horrible and I wish nobody would have to go through this. You don't just lose your food you lose the people you love.

Toddler Beauty Pageants

Below you will find a clip of a mother and her young daughter getting ready for a beauty pageant.  

Video: Child Abuse? Mother Forces Her 5-Year-Old Daughter TO Wax Her Eyebrows On "Toddlers & Tiaras"

Girls and boys can begin to enter beauty pageants at age 0.  The fact that babies and toddlers are competing against each other in beauty pageants, is a controversial topic.  The main issues that frightens people are sexualisation, mental health and self image issues.  

One of my concerns is the thought of what happens to the confidence of the child who does not win?  I was watching a toddler’s beauty pageant on TV and when the time for awards approached little girls were extremely sad, crying uncontrollably because they did not win.  This is a beauty competition, if a two year old girl does not win the competition that is telling the girl you loss because you are not beautiful.  I believe that all children are beautiful.  

Another concern I have: is this an appropriate way to teach kids about the true meaning of beauty.  Many people agree that the meaning of beauty has been distorted.  I also believe that understanding the true meaning of beauty is a challenge that can take many years and several life experiences to learn.  Beauty is not a subject that kids learn in school, their are many different interpretations for the definition of beauty and the topic of beauty has been evolving for generations.   As I transferred into each stage of my life my perception of beauty has shifted in several different directions.    So my point is that learning about beauty is a process, a journey and an adventure that we experience.  If learning the true meaning of beauty is a journey that can take years to learn then what makes people think their one year old has all the answers?  

This topic of children in beauty pageants can be a touchy subject.  If you disagree with this article please share your thoughts about toddler beauty pageants.  

You might also want to read: What is beauty?

Beauty Tip: Eyebrow Threading

Natural beauty methods can lead to longer lasting confidence than unnatural beauty methods.  One aspect that contributes to beauty is hair removal.  Today many different hair removal methods exist.  One common area both men and women remove hair from are eyebrows.    Traditionally waxing is one common method.  Now threading is growing in popularity all over the world.

Threading is a hair removal method which was originally popular in the Indian, Persian and Arabic cultures.  This method is preformed with only one piece of cotton thread that is winded in a way that removes lines of hair right at the hair follicle.  Since threading removes hair in straight lines, this method works best for eyebrows.  When removing eyebrow hair on men and women threading works extremely well since it can keep the natural shape of the eyebrows, only removing unwanted hair.     

Common problems occur with waxing is contamination of the wax, pulling of the skin, burns, redness, excessive pain, acne, skin damage, unnatural or uneven eyebrow shapes.  

Wax contamination is a problem that most people are unaware of.  People like to believe the wax their esthetician puts on their face and body is clean.  Even if the spa uses a different wax stick per client does not keep the wax clean.  What some people don’t realize is that for each area that a wax strip is placed the same stick is put back into the same wax that is used on everyone.  For only one person receiving a waxing service the stick is placed in the wax several times.  Would you want to eat from a dip that strangers have “double dipped”?  The only way the wax would not be contaminated is if the spa used several sticks per one person, which is a very rare practice.          

I recommend getting eyebrows threaded at an Indian salon because they are well known to be great at threading, you get to experience a bit of the Indian culture and the price is normally inexpensive.  It is easy to find these Indian salons in areas with a high Indian population.  At these salons you can expect to spend as low at $3 dollars and I recommend tipping 15%-35%.  

Threading is a great way to remove unwanted eyebrow hair because it is 100% natural, risk free, no chemicals are used, no contamination, no continuous pulling of the skin, less painful than laser and waxing, quick and inexpensive.  

      Below you will find a quick video demonstration of eyebrow threading.   If you have any questions about hair removal or anything to do with beauty and confidence, leave a comment and your questions will always be answered.         

Video Eyebrow Threading

Don't Regret Easter Dinner

It is that time of year again when families come together for Easter dinner and holiday celebrations.  Easter is traditionally celebrated with big dinners, wine, desserts and chocolate eggs.  Some people with certain health conditions or those who like to regularly eat nutritiously may face challenges when it comes to having so much variety of food, alcohol and sweets.  How do we survive the holiday without completely ignoring our health? 

We should be aware of the portion sizes we put on our plate and try to pick the healthy option.  It is Easter and some of us cannot resist a little bit of wine at dinner and what about the temptation for those chocolate eggs. 

I have some sweet news for you.  A little bit of good quality chocolate actually provides health benefits.  Chocolate is recognized to help prevent heart disease.  To get the full benefits this Easter holiday, look for chocolate that contains 70% cocoa.  Now we do not have to feel guilty about eating Easter chocolate, but only if we limit to a healthy amount of chocolate in order to receive the health benefits.  Too much chocolate can actually be harmful to our health.             

What about the guilt after you enjoyed some wine?  Red wine especially is known to actually prevent the risk of heart disease such as a heart attack, for moderate drinkers. 

The Easter Holiday is coming soon and we want everyone to have a safe, healthy and enjoyable holiday weekend.  So remember to make healthy choices without feeling guilty.  Watch the video below about the delicious benefits of red wine. 

For more information about the Easter Holiday visit: 
http://christianity.about.com/od/holidaytips/qt/whatiseaster.htm

Watch on YouTube

Health Is Beautiful

Why is health beautiful?  Last week we focused a lot on the importance of inner beauty and how much inner beauty actually affects outer beauty.    When we talk about beauty on the inside what does that really mean?  If beauty is pleasure to the senses then how can we be beautiful on the inside? 

I believe that inner beauty is having a positive, genuine, healthy and loving mind, body and soul.  This idea might sound so simple but in reality it is not.  If beauty is simple then why are there so many people struggling?  There are so many factors that are out of our control.  We cannot control the body we are born into.  We cannot control the genetics we come from.   We can’t control the country we are born into and our surroundings.  Life is challenging because there are so many things that we cannot control.  So how can we change if there are so many factors out of our control?  My solution is to work on the factors we can control which can actually influence the factors we cannot control.  So now we know that many things we cannot control affect our mind, body and soul.  My solution to affecting the mind, body and soul in a positive way is health.   Here is an example: if obesity is uncontrollably in your gene pool and becomes a challenge to deal with your weight then focus on what you can control which is your diet and physical activity. 

Health is a great example of how inner beauty affects outer beauty.  If you put garbage inside your body do not be surprised if you become unhappy about the way you look on the outside. My personal beliefs about health: Fitness and nutrition does not only have an impact on the body but also on the mind and soul.  The mind impacts the body and soul.  The soul impacts the mind and the body.  Health is beautiful so why would anyone not want to care for their health?         

Simple Way To Be Confident

A simple way to be confident is by making lifestyle changes.  I made the Permanent Confidence Balance Model as a guide that shows how I balance my life.  This balance model works for me.  The more this model is balanced the more stabilized my self-confidence will be.  This model provides a lot of benefits other than self-confidence such as positive feelings, happiness, peace of mind, gratitude, success, energy, strength, health and so much more!

The model is made up of 7 topics and 10 sub-topics.  The main topics are: quick fix, health, ego control, personality, knowledge, goal setting and positive relationships.  All of the main topics are intertwined in many ways.  For example knowledge and health, gaining more knowledge about health to become healthy.  Keeping in mind that all areas are intertwined, if I were to pick one of these categories to focus on specifically for self-confidence I would pick personality.

Personality branches off into: strength/weakness discovery, hobbies/interests, attitude towards people and attitude towards life.  I want to share with you the secret to achieve self-confidence.  Confidence is as easy as being what you want to become.  There is really nothing more genuine then confidence.  Your actions are either confident or uncertain.  Confidence shines while uncertainty is dull.  The secret to being self-confident is pretending to be confident.  If you lack self-confidence and walk with your head down there is nothing fake about walking with your head up.  This theory is just like the expression “dress the part”.  Be what you want to become.  Use the body language that a confident person would use and mentally you will become more and more confident. 

Hint: study body language of confident people.  Find some confident people and observe them.  Basic examples: a firm handshake shows that you are confident appose to a weak soft handshake.  Also eye contact shows confidence.    

This theory of being what you want to become is a simple way to be confident and can work in other areas of your life.  For example if you want to be physically fit, find out what it is that fit people do and then do it!  At the same time I do not recommend copying every move of the people you look up too.  I recommend seeking what it is that works for the type of person you want to become and finding what works best for you.  When studying these people try to spot trends within these types of people.  I am not telling you to change who you are, I am recommending a certain lifestyle and changing your traits that are not working for you, in order to be your true confident and happy self.  This is how I developed into the person I am.  I always encourage people to be genuine and to believe in themselves.



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