Dilshad 0:00

Welcome to the Delicious Dignity Podcast. Let's settle in securely and ever so nicely into the brilliance of our own dignity. Hello, lovelies. I feel like I haven't spoken to you in years, but I only just recorded a podcast episode a few days ago, so I... I don't know why I feel like I haven't spoken to you in years, but here we are. So today, I just want to say upfront, I wouldn't call myself graceful from any angle. I'm a quick walker. I walk like a duck or a crab, depending upon my hormonal cycle. You know, I either walk sideways or I do this little shuffle when I walk. I'm a quick talker. I gesture and I talk pretty loud. So I don't think I would... call myself graceful in the traditional sense in any shape or form. But as far as aging goes, I feel like I'm doing it rather gracefully. And whatever that means to me, right? I mean, graceful aging might sound something completely different to you, but to me, it feels like I'm doing it pretty gracefully. And I just thought I'd talk about that today. And before I I say anything at all. If you're still listening to this show, I think you're such a champ just because we've been tackling one controversial topic after another. I feel like every episode it's been, let's bust this lie. Let's bust through this false belief. And if you're still listening, I think you're just an amazing person, honestly. I just want to say I'm not a beauty influencer by any stretch of the imagination, and I'll talk more about why that is. This is just... An episode for those of you who, like me, you're confused and a bit saddened, a bit grieving by the beauty industry. How other people are handling age, how your body is handling age maybe. And maybe you want another approach to beauty that doesn't feel like you're running a rat race. This never-ending, always conflicting... always contradictory, temporary fixes that constitutes the beauty industry. If you, like me, are wanting and craving a lovelier, deeper, sweeter approach to beauty and aging, this episode is for you. Because I've been so confused by the beauty industry, and if you find this world confusing and sometimes foolish, and sometimes even disturbing, then I just want you to know that you're not alone. And for those of you who, like with the previous episode, or like with any episode you listen to on this show, if you know deep inside of you that you are someone that feels easily criticized or just tender about a subject, you feel very strongly about a subject, and listening to somebody else's point of view might trigger... you to feel badly about yourself. If you know you're that kind of person, then please don't listen to any of my episodes. You know, the last thing I want to do with this podcast is make you feel like you're bad or wrong or in any way less than someone else. That's the opposite of what I want to do with this show. Okay, so I just wanted to say all of that upfront because like I said, this episode is for people who want just a different approach, a lovelier approach, a more soulful approach to beauty and aging because I don't want to attack my body. I don't want to try to fix it every time I see what is a problem. And the only reason I see it's a problem, it's because other people have made me feel like it's a problem, right? I don't want to keep on treating it like it's some kind of mechanical device that I just tweak and, you know, apply some lube here and staple it here and fix it there. I don't want to see my body that way. I forget who said this, but there is someone that said that a lot of women and just people in general see their bodies like one of those butcher diagrams. I think I saw this one time when I was in Seattle. There was a butcher and there was this picture of the different sides of the cow and the different sides of... Oh yes, I know where it was. This was a restaurant in Seattle. It's called How to Cook a Wolf. And on their menu... It was just a brand thing. They didn't actually serve wolf meat, but it was a brand thing where they showed the different parts of the wolf, the flank, the stomach, the this, the that, you know, and they were showing that if you were a butcher, what parts of the wolf you would chop up. I believe that was the kind of the idea. They were kind of trying to mimic a butcher shop that shows a pig and it shows a cow and it shows different sides of the animal. to ask you what type of meat you want, whether you wanted the front, the back, the sides or whatever. I'm vegetarian, so I don't really know. But that diagram is how other people see their body. I've noticed, look at what this part of my body is doing. Look at what that part of, they see their body in chunks, in pieces and not as whole and not as a reflection of what they are on the inside. I don't want to be like that because it feels like I'm attacking my body and dishonoring my body. And I'm not judging the beauty industry by any standards. I understand how we got here with the beauty industry, but I can also accept that it's a bit nuts at the moment. I'm not saying that I'm not concerned about the way I look, but at the same time, I still do not appreciate or even want to deal with this pressure to look a certain way I have not fallen victim yet to the beauty industry. And sometimes that can happen. So that's why I tell you my story so you can see how I've come to be who I am from the past. And I also want to talk to you about, honestly, about what it's like to be in a mid-30s body, all the changes I'm noticing, what my thoughts have been, where I'm currently at, and also what I'm noticing in other women as I get older and how that has made me feel sad and kind of dejected inside. And that is all not to judge other people, not to hate on other people, but to give you another approach if that is what you are wanting. Again, if that's not what you're wanting, this episode is not for you. And let me explain why I think I feel grief because that might seem foreign to some of you. Like, why is she sad about the beauty industry? Why does that grieve her? It feels like that people don't belong to themselves anymore. Or if they did... It's not being encouraged to find a home, a safe home within your body. And I'll talk more about that in a second, but that's the best way I can say it is that people don't feel like they belong to themselves anymore. So before I start with talking about how I got here and what all changes I noticed in my beauty regimen and in my body, I wanted to read this poem out to you. And I am really not sure why this poem popped into my head as something I needed to include in this episode, but I feel like it just fits on an energetic level with what I'm trying to convey and the energy of who we're trying to be as we do our beauty rituals, but do it with intention. Sit back, and it's a short poem, so just sit back and relax and just sort of take it all in and see how you feel. This poem is called Closest to Prayer. by Daniel Dalsky. I hope I pronounced her name correctly. It's an eye-opening poem. So yeah, just sit back and here we go. The Closest to Prayer by Daniel Dalsky. I dreamt of a crone with sharp teeth and tough skin. She bit down to my bone but found no sin. I wasn't afraid. Please tell me your name. Where have you prayed? Have you no shame? This witch hissed, and she painted my face with cold mud. Then she kissed where she'd bitten, and lapped up the blood. When do you pray? I asked of her then. By night and by day, as only we can. What do you mean, you vicious old beast? Who is your god? Tell me at least. The bark and the stone, the wind and the fire, the flesh and the bone, the grief and the ire. The brook and the bird, their land hums my prayer. So long I have heard the holy wild sung there. Why did you bite me? Answer me that. Was it only to spite me, to taste of my fat? I bid you to wake you, my priestess, my dear, lest a sweeter dream take you, but tame you by fear. I opened my eyes and I was alone, back in disguise and missing the crone, to hear her dare speak of the breeze, the brook, and the flame. It's the closest to prayer that I ever came. Yeah, so just sink into that. I feel like I wanted to tell you that whole poem just for the sake of that one line, which is, lest a sweeter dream take you, but tame you by fear. And I feel like that energetically matches what we're talking about with the beauty industry today. So let's start with the story. And I will try at different points in the story to to give you reflection questions for yourself too. So you can sort of come along with me for the ride because this isn't just about me, right? I mean, none of it is about me. So here we go. I think we have to start the story with analyzing who our parents were because I think our parents influence our perception of beauty so much. Starting with our mother. I'm not going to go into the father for this episode, but specifically your mother. You see, my mom She used to straighten her hair, I believe chemically, but I'm probably wrong. But she used to straighten it with these thing called tongs. And she would straighten her hair almost every day or whenever she had to go to work. She hardly ever left her hair natural when I was younger. But she never really wore a lot of makeup. It was mostly the hair thing that she would do. And she has naturally these almost afro looking curls. So she would always poke or straighten her hair. And in general, my mom was and still is a very conservative dresser. She didn't want to show this part of her body, didn't want to show that part of the body, can't show this, can't show that. And that's something to this day I'm working on sort of removing inside of me because I inherited a lot of that. Oh, I can't show this part of my body. I can't show that part of my body. And some of it is cultural and being in a society that just did not show a lot of skin. And so I inherited those values from her. Because to this day, I don't really wear a lot of makeup. I pretty much only wear maybe a black eye pencil. I just do a quick one-two. Just like one line on top of my eye, then another line on the bottom of my eye. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm done. If my makeup can't be done in five seconds, it's not worth doing. That's my mentality. But anyway, so back to my past. So I used to be a swimmer. And then when I was in Dubai, and then when we moved to India... I stopped swimming. And that's really important because it was my primary source of exercise and physical movement. And it just completely stopped when I moved to India. And a few years after I stopped, I had a seizure. And around the same time I had the seizure, I went into puberty. When I had the seizure, I was given meds to prevent another seizure from happening. It seems like it was only a one-time event, but I was given meds to prevent it from happening. And along with the meds, I think it was that year or maybe around that timeframe when I hit puberty. So here are these meds that felt like they were making me gain weight. Then I hit puberty and I started getting cellulite out of nowhere. When I was 13 and 14, I had stretch marks everywhere at a very early age as a teenager. I just felt like they came out of nowhere. And I was definitely not the prettiest girl in school. And I got body shamed quite a bit because I was bigger than your standard pretty thin Indian girl. That's my teenage years. But I never really had any body image issues despite all of this. Not to the extent where I would do something about it, like get plastic surgery or go to the gym or stop eating as much. I never really did anything about it. Sure, there were some parts of my body I didn't like, but I was like, whatever, I'm just going to accept my fate. And I think, again, maybe this came from my mother or maybe this just came from this part of me that from a young age, I just didn't buy into a lot of the beauty standards. I would copy it for some amount of time, like a fashion trend, but then I would just let it go because I just found it too cumbersome. From a very young age, I didn't like to make too much of an effort for something that I felt was frivolous. Whether that was makeup, whether it was studying, whether it was really anything, you know, anything that felt like it wasn't important, I could not put my mind to it. So I think that also went into makeup and beauty. I've also never been on a diet of any kind. For me, I would rather die than be on a diet. Food is a spiritual experience to me, so I never really had any kind of, shall we say, traditional eating disorders. But I did used to straighten my hair. The second I moved to the United States and I had some agency over my hair, I started straightening my hair. I even chemically straightened my hair. However, it's been well over 10 years since I last straightened my hair, but I would straighten it all the time. And I feel like I lost a lot of my hair density because of that. And I think most of my glow up happened after my 30s. And I honestly feel like by the time I'm 40, I'll be even more pretty on the outside, traditionally-wise. And it's not because I want to be that. It just feels like every year that I live, I feel like I'm getting so fired up and lit up from the inside that I genuinely feel like it comes across in my body and in my way that I'm living, even though traditionally speaking, if you looked at my body over time, traditionally speaking, I've gained a lot more weight and all of these other things. But I still, for some reason inside, I feel like I am becoming more and more beautiful. I don't know how to explain that, but that's kind of the contradiction that I'm just sitting with because there's nothing to fix here. I'm just noticing it. And like I said, throughout my life, I just have never been interested in makeup. The most absolute extreme I've gone with makeup is mascara and maybe lipstick. That's my most extreme. And the most aesthetic treatment I've ever done is a facial. And I don't feel like I'm ever going to do that again. It was just too boring and it was not a relaxing experience for me. I've done Brazilian waxes and that's maybe a traditional beauty thing that I do. I've tried manicures and pedicures. I just cannot do it. The way they pick at your skin, it just bothers me and I can't stand to have my nails being filed. It really bothers my nerves. I feel like my nerves are getting filed down. So this is all to just tell you this is where I'm coming from and this is how I've always lived my life. And now, being in a mid-30s body, I think I'm going to turn 36. Yeah, actually, yes, I'm going to turn 36 in November. And there are some changes that I noticed in these last three years or maybe five years that, again, they don't have to be the same changes you've noticed. Maybe you've noticed different changes. Maybe you've not noticed any changes at all if you're in your mid-30s or close to 40s. But this is what I have noticed. And I want to tell you that so you don't feel so alone if this is something that that you've noticed as well. I think the first thing for me, the changes I've noticed in my body overall are general all over weight gain. I miss my younger body. I almost miss the body I had when I was an active swimmer and I just looked completely different. But of course, that was a long time ago. But I miss even the body I had when I was in my 20s because I'm vegetarian and the most unhealthy food I'll eat is French fries once every six months. So the weight gain is very surprising. That being said, I also have realized that I have been unintentionally starving myself and not knowing it. Because as I'm growing older, I've gotten more hungry. And also I've been going to the gym as I'm getting older. And I'm doing a lot more things as I'm getting older than I ever did when I was younger. But I haven't been eating enough to justify that level of activity. I was almost trying to eat at the same level that I was when I wasn't really doing much. So it turns out that I've had to change my diet in the sense that, not my diet, but I've had to change how much I eat. I've had to almost rewire my brain to try to help myself to eat more because it just doesn't come naturally to me. Different things that I have done to help myself eat more and that's just been a revelation in of itself. So that's something I've noticed and that's not traditional beauty stuff, but I feel like it did cause me to gain more weight because my body was holding on to weight. I'm assuming because I thought that food was scarce or we were in a famine or something. I've also really been appreciating curvy influencers. I didn't realize how much of my consciousness was set in a particular paradigm until I started following influencers who had the same sort of body type as I did and And I'd never really followed beauty influencers before, but now I still don't follow them, but I do appreciate when they pop up on my explore feed. Sometimes I go on my explore feed on Instagram and I see how they dress for their body type. And it's very different than how I've been taught to dress because it was mostly about hiding my curves and hiding this part of my body and hiding my stomach and hiding this and hiding that. And that's how I was taught growing up. Like you hid your butt, you hid your stomach, you hid your breasts, you hid your all these different aspects of you, right? Because we're looking at your body like a butcher block. But instead, these influencers are celebrating their big stomach, celebrating their breasts, celebrating their hips and their butt and their thighs. And I really value seeing that more than I ever have in my entire life. And so I really value these people showing that side of what it means to have a female body and that even bloats at different times of the day or bloats during different hormonal cycles. So I also appreciate those influencers too. I've only very recently started going to the gym and even more recently Pilates. And one of the things that prompted me to go to the gym was that I feel like I have more energy than I've ever had before. And I just didn't have much to do with that energy. I have a lot of energy and I need to spend it in some way. So that caused me to go to the gym, but it also, my favorite clothes that I've worn for years, I couldn't fit into them anymore. And that made me really sad because it just felt like that was unnatural weight gain. I have no problem with natural weight gain, but unnatural weight gain is just not my thing. And it was mostly because of my stomach, that my stomach was getting unusually huge for absolutely no reason. So it just felt like I was bloating so much more than I was when I was younger. And I've always been prone to cellulite, but lately I'm noticing it's so much more now and it's all on my legs, especially the backs of my thighs. Although I haven't had new stretch marks since I was 15, but the cellulite is happening a lot more now. Even though I'm moving more and I'm even drinking more water, for some reason, the cellulite just is a lot more. And I don't like it, but at the same time, it doesn't feel like it's something that I need to... put a lot of time and energy into fixing. Although I do appreciate a lymphatic brushing, which I will talk about in the next episode on what beauty treatments I do actually do. But for now, I'm just telling you where I stand today. The other thing I've noticed is a lot more gray hair. I would say I'm about maybe one fifth or two fifths gray now, and I am just not willing or wanting to dye my hair. So I'm just letting it naturally gray out. I feel like I need more movement in general as I'm getting older. I feel more stuckness in my body and in my face and just in my overall being if I don't move more. So it feels like I need more workouts as I'm getting older because the lymph nodes or whatever, the energy, whatever you want to call it, is just not flowing the way it used to. And I feel like I need not just any kind of movement like dancing or something, but I need more strenuous movements like lifting heavy weights. Or like I said, Pilates is pretty strenuous, but something more strenuous. I can't just do things that make me sweat, but don't build muscle. It feels like my body is craving muscle and it just wants to have more strength to it. I also feel like protein has been a revelation to me. I have needed more protein now in my mid-30s than I ever have before because my big revelation with protein is that it alters my mood in a positive way. It turns out when I don't have enough protein, I get a little bit sad and a little bit dejected and I don't like the word depressed, but it does feel like I am about to slip into a pretty deep depression if I don't get enough protein. Again, I am not an influencer. I am not a chemist. I am not a biologist. I am speaking to you from my experience. So I don't know if there is a scientific link between protein and mood, but this is what I have found. And that was a revelation because until the time that I was looking at all this messaging around protein, it was just about building muscle. It was just about guys going to the gym. And this is like five years ago that I'm talking. I don't know what it's like today. I don't follow any of it, but I have noticed that protein, far from it just building my muscle, it's actually helped my brain. It's helped me think better. I don't have brain fog. I'm never confused. I'm pretty happy and joyous all the time. And I think my natural personality is to be happy, but I mean, my name means happy heart. But I also think that at the same time, protein is really necessary for me, at least, to be in a good mood. to be in a just a decent mood and not unnecessarily slip into a depression for absolutely no reason. So take from that what you will. I have noticed that it's hard to really say this in a way that's valid, but there has been a part of me that feels like, yes, I do get less attention now from men or males and than I did when I was younger. So I'm noticing as I'm getting older, there's like less and less attention being paid to me, which at first bothered me, but now I'm actually quite happy that I don't get that kind of attention. I almost like the fact that I'm left alone, but I have noticed a change and I'm not sure why that is. It could be because I've gained weight. It could be because I look older and I have gray in my hair, or it could be that men are just not showing that kind of attention anymore, which is also good, but I don't know what it is, but I have noticed a change. Overall, despite all of this, I still feel like I am aging backwards. So if that's you too, you know, you feel all this like, you know, these little irritations here and there. That's all that they are to you. They're irritations. But in general, you still feel like you're aging backwards. You still feel younger now than you did when you were in your 20s. I mean, you're not alone. I don't know what it is, but there's something about that that feels like I am aging backwards. Anyway. Now I want to get into, so that was my past. And then I talked about my present and I want to tell you what my big WTF moment was with the beauty industry and what got me progressively saddened and grieving with the beauty industry and just how people were approaching beauty, specifically women. Just in case you're also questioning things, I want to tell you my moment where I started really questioning things and how I started and what triggered me. Just so that you know you're not alone. Sometimes we need to know that we're not nuts. You know, it's kind of like, are you seeing this? Am I seeing this? Are we all seeing this? Sometimes, despite how much we can have amazing self-esteem and we still need validation. So here it is. I think around university time, when I was in university or college, I started getting irritated. with some of my girlfriends who took hours to get dressed. It just felt like we were always late to everything. I was never on time for anything. And I'm somebody, if I say five o'clock, I'm there at 4.50 or 4.55. So I started to find little irritations there just because they would put on different dresses. They would take a really long time to put on their makeup. They would be really indecisive about what they wanted to wear, which, you know, once or twice, that's fine. But it just felt like it happened every single time. And then around that time also, I was being around a lot of girls who, because now I was in university, I was having a lot more meals with girlfriends. And I would just see that they wouldn't eat because they were on a diet or they would restrict their food because they were on a diet. Even though they wanted to eat it, they would stop themselves from eating it. And that would blow my mind. I could not imagine living a life like that. It would bother me in the sense that it would hurt me because I really wanted them to eat with me, but I could also see how much it hurt them to eat the food that they thought they shouldn't eat. And for the most part, during university and college, I sort of ignored it, brushed it away. I didn't think too much of the beauty industry or anything like that. I didn't think it was too dangerous. I didn't think anything was that bad about it. But even though I was progressively getting more and more irritated with some of my girlfriends, it wasn't bothering me as a whole, as an industry or as a system until this particular event. As you know, I was training as a life coach and I was trying to find different life coaching schools. This is after I got trained as a life coach and I was fully trained and everything was done. And I was still looking for more advanced training just because, like I said, back in episode four, I thought I needed more and more and more and more and more education. And I was looking around for more advanced coaching training. I just came across this so-called life coach. And I say that with a lot of sarcasm because... Yeah, this is where I am actually truly being like, no, this person, I do not subscribe to this person's values or ideals. This is the only time you'll hear me say this, but the so-called life coach said that people, aka women, need to take care of their feet and that they should wear nail polish. Otherwise, they weren't taking care of themselves. They weren't showing self-esteem. And she went on and on about toenails and getting your toenails painted on this podcast for a solid, 10 minutes. That's all she ranted about, about how, and this is a woman who's an advanced trained life coach. She's very well known in the industry, at least at the time she was. And she just went on and on for 10 minutes about how if you were a real woman, or if you had self-esteem, or if you took care of yourself, you would paint your toenails. She had some issue with feet, or I don't know what her issue was, but that really made me so angry. And I started to notice the dangerous side of the beauty industry a little bit more because it was a little bit close to home because as a life coach, I take it personally. I mean, I no longer call myself that, but as someone who's trained as a life coach or was trained in the therapeutic arts, I take it very personally when someone else in the same industry says things like this. And that was when I had my WTF moment. I just felt like somewhere we collectively lost the plot. I just took it very personally. I think you can still hear it in my voice now. It made me angry, but it also made me sad because like I said, it just felt like people don't belong to themselves. It just felt like there was so much waste of time and waste of energy and waste of money on every level just to support this beauty ideal that didn't make any sense to me. Here are the things I started to notice and it made me sad. It made me feel a little bit kind of crazy as to why I wasn't participating in the same behaviors, but I'm so glad now in retrospect that I didn't. The first thing I noticed, I think I've already told you, is that I just noticed a lot of poking, prodding, overanalyzing every single so-called imperfection that women thought they had, whether it was a little mole here or a piece of jiggliness here. It was just this constantly poking and judging their body and just being cruel and to their body and their perception of their body. That's something I just could not understand. I mean, it's fine to not like something about your body. I'm okay with that, but they would just sort of attack it. It just would make me feel sad. And then as plastic surgery has now started getting, and Botox and fillers have started to get more popular, I'm finding like I'm a little bit sad at the pillow faces I'm seeing, you know, with these overly stuffed cheeks and foreheads that don't move. Sometimes I can't understand if somebody, because I'm reading somebody's body language or I'm trying to notice their facial expressions. Sometimes I'm confused because their foreheads don't move. I can't understand what's going on with their face because their foreheads are not moving because they all have Botox in it. Or just disproportionate body modifications like butt lifts or whatever. It just doesn't look right. And it's like long live facial expressions. Where are the facial expressions? It just felt off. I understand. And a lot of these people, they claim that they did it for their self-esteem or to feel good. And I want to believe that. But it just felt really, I mean, of course, when it's an accident or someone is a burn victim, that's different. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about voluntary body modifications that don't seem to make them look any prettier than they were before. In fact, to me, they looked actually kind of jarring to look at. It felt like I wasn't looking at a face. It felt like I was looking at almost like an AI image of a face on an actual face. That's what it felt like I was looking at. And it also felt like all of a sudden people started getting overly manicured and curated self-presentations. Their nails, their hair has to be perfectly done. Their nails have to be perfectly done. This has to be perfect. That has to be perfect. You can't have like a loose hair here or like an untucked t-shirt here. It just felt overly manicured. And at this point, I want to say that, again, I'm not judging, but I have the same sort of grief around this kind of beauty industry standards as I do around nature. There's a mountain here in Sedona. It's called Doe Mountain. And Doe Mountain is this pretty wild place, I would think. And All of a sudden, it just feels so manicured because everybody, they've put steps in because hikers are losing their way. They're not being responsible. So they cut into the mountain, cut into rock to make all these steps just so people can have a more accessible, manicured way of hiking on this beautiful, sacred mountain. And I want to do an episode on accessibility and how we're taming nature. It's the same kind of grief I feel, for what we're doing to our bodies and our faces. If that's how you're feeling, again, you're not alone. I'm here, I'm here with you. The other thing I noticed was teeth started to look foolish to me. Just this bright white teeth. All of a sudden, I just started noticing this everywhere I went. And I was like, oh my God, your teeth are blinding. Like, why are your teeth that white? Nobody needs to have teeth that are the color of the moon. You don't need to have teeth like that. That's when I started feeling like, okay, now something's getting foolish. This is getting foolish. And it just feels like, also I would notice all these complicated skincare routines that just seem to cancel each other out. The moisturizer would cancel out, the serum would cancel out, whatever else I was seeing. It just seemed like it was so much waste for what? I don't think anybody needs nine products. I mean, I don't care what an expert you are at skincare. I don't think anybody needs nine different products on their face. It just doesn't make any logical sense for beauty standards. I mean, of course, if you're injured or something, that's different. I'm not talking about that. But this is where the foolishness started to kick in for me, at least. And then the amount of money that was spent on aesthetics. Just aesthetics alone, I had a client that I had to tell her because I was getting this so much in our session together and I had to tell her, how much money are you spending on aesthetics versus how much money are you spending on your health? Because you're spending all this money on Botox and all these other things, but you're not spending money on good produce or a good gym or a good massage even. You would rather spend money on... inserting things into your skin or your bones or your flesh in order to look a certain way. And that to me seemed very imbalanced. And it was just like the amount of waste, waste of time, waste of energy, waste of money that came with all of these beauty standards. It just, it started to make me feel irritated at first, but then over time, it just felt, it felt like I was living in kind of a zombie land, you know what I mean? And in all of this, all the things that I just spoke about, and I was still not seeing the beauty. Where is the beauty? It almost seems like they look older than they actually are. And a lot of people who've done these aesthetic treatments seem to look older to me. And the argument is often, oh, it's because they didn't get the right beauty treatment. And I don't think so. Because I've seen people who have objectively gotten very good beauty treatments and good quality, and they still look to me older than they are. not just older, but because it's fine to look your age. I actually love looking my age, but it's almost as if they look much older than they would have been if they had just kept their normal face. I'm thinking of a friend who got, I think she got fillers or Botox or something and her eyebrows were super raised. And I don't know how to describe her face, but her face used to look like so sweet and perfect and lovely. And then all of a sudden now it's snatched tight and And I just feel like this whole concept of being snatched is weird because I love loosey-goosey, you know? So this concept of tight, everything has to be tight, it just never sat right with me. So anyway, these are just a couple of things that I wanted to tell you just in case you were seeing the same thing and you were wondering if this is really real life, you know? You're not alone. And for now, for this podcast, particular episode, what I would love for you to do, if you really want to take this and do something with this, I would love for you to see the amount of money you've already spent. Like in the last month or in the last three months, put together a list of how much you have spent on beauty, on the beauty industry. And that includes all your skincare, that includes your clothes, it includes your makeup, it includes... aesthetic treatments, even waxing. It includes everything. It includes your hair products, everything that you've spent on beauty. Tally all of that up and now compare it to all of the money you've spent on your health. So this includes the gym, good produce. It includes maybe even massages. It includes supplements. It includes what else would classify as health? Oh, doctor's appointments, like blood tests, hormone tests, things like that. And just see the comparison. That's all I'm saying is just notice it. You don't have to punish yourself. You don't have to criticize yourself. We don't have to do any of that here. Okay, we're not doing any of that here. This whole idea of there's something wrong with me, we're just going to put that on the side table and make it go into a coma. We're not participating in that mindset. All I'm saying is, is that if you really want to look at what you're doing, then look at it. Just look at it. We don't have to fix it. Just look at it. Just compare the two amounts that you're spending on, the two categories that you're spending on, sorry. So anyway, this is the story part. This is the how we got here part. In the next episode, I want to talk to you about my beauty rituals, what I have taken from the beauty industry, what I do do that has been good for me, what I don't do anymore, and where I'm going from here. So that's the next episode. I hope you enjoyed this. Let me know. And until next time, my friends, may every year, every minute, and every second of your life serve to ground you in your dignity. And as a bonus blessing, may your dignity age like the finest, finest of wines. Okay, my lovelies, much love to you.