Alright, so the first one that we’re going to talk about in this series is beauty. this is what we often think of when we first think of attracting men, often the first thing we think of is, oh, I have to look beautiful, I have to look nice. And so you know, beauty is a good way to start this. Now, we’re going to revisit the definition of beauty. beauty is that which pleases upon being seen, my grandma had a saying, she said, Men like to look and women like to be looked at. And I think there’s a lot of truth in that. And it is because as women, we want people to admire us, we want to be seen and noticed and admired. And that is something that, I think is women, we really have a deep instinct for, we want to look pretty to however much we can, we’re not all going to be perfectly symmetrical faces, we’re not all going to be supermodels. But there is an innate desire of a woman to make the most of her looks, try to look as nice as possible,

How many of you have gone outside and you weren’t wearing makeup, and then maybe you put it on And, you know, maybe your boyfriend, your husband saw you putting on makeup And he was like, Oh, honey, you don’t have to do that for me Well, how many of you have said, but I wasn’t doing it for you and meant it, there is a certain aspect of the way we want to present ourselves, we just we want to look beautiful, in itself, and it’s okay to be pretty, I feel in our society, there is a very strong attack on feminine beauty. it’s like, we don’t want women to look pretty if you wear makeup, or you do your hair and you put effort in your appearance, there can often be a very negative backlash to that, can often feel uncomfortable maybe sometimes people will say mean things to you, or little snide comments, we women are often not very supportive of each other, sometimes there can be a lot of like, feminine jealousy, women can be jealous of each other. let’s say, someone in your friend group suddenly, like really like ups the appearance game, and like she starts coming to school or work, like really dressed up, and, maybe she puts more effort into her clothes and stuff. And she starts looking really good. other women can be very kind of jealous of that, and give her a hard time maybe say mean things about her behind her back. And so I think that’s really something that’s a shame. Because as women, back in, like the 50s, when you look at pictures of these women, I mean, they have their hair curl, they had like their red lipstick done, they had a nice outfit, and when you look at like street photos, I mean, everybody looked like that, that was just the way you looked when you left the house. And nowadays, we have such a push toward comfort that we’re doing away from it. And it’s almost like, we leave beauty for like the models and the celebrities. And I think the regular round the way girls are like, Oh, well, that’s, you know, that’s for those kinds of women. And I’m like, no beauty is for everybody.

So if you’re a woman, I really think it’s important to make yourself look as beautiful as possible, in the way that that means to you. I’m not saying you have to wear tons of makeup, if makeup is not your thing, fine, but maybe you want to take care of your skin, you want to take care of your hair and again, makeup is not necessarily bad if it gives you kind of a more look of vitality, makeup, believe it or not is a question that does come up in the Summa. Saint Thomas made the point that he thought makeup was acceptable if it was to hide like a defect, if you were like disfigured, or maybe you were sick, and they were hiding some like sickness and paleness in your face. I would say that nowadays, the rules on makeup are not quite so strict. But again, I think it’s important to make yourself look as pretty as possible and put effort into that and be proud of it.

Obviously, you don’t want to be vain. But I feel like especially in religious circles. I feel like our problem is not vanity. I think our problem is sometimes we can almost feel ashamed of being feminine and ashamed of being beautiful. And so we don’t want to play it up. We think it’s not spiritual to look pretty and that’s false. beauty can be an amazing aid to virtue. A lot of women in Hollywood and everything beauty has a very powerful effect on men and society. And I think that a lot of women have drawn men into sin and into bad choices and bad lives, because of how beautiful they were, how many women in maybe like the music or the acting industries, these women don’t get up on a podium, and they’ll talk, and people will listen, because they’re beautiful, so being beautiful, it has a certain responsibility to it, because it does like it or not, you know, it’s, it’s not really reasonable. But a beautiful woman can often have a lot of influence. I think there are two things, it has an effect on society, Dostoevsky, he was a Russian author, he said, beauty will save the world. And I think there’s a lot of truth to that when people look upon something beautiful, whether that’s the face of a woman, or it’s a beautiful painting or beautiful architecture, it lifts your spirits, it cheers you up, and in a way it strengthens us, I think that’s what he meant when he said beauty will save the world. When you get into these totalitarian and authoritarian cultures, one of the first things they do is they get rid of all the beauty, they get rid of the beautiful art, the museums, they start promoting, like really ugly, weird art, they kind of control what you can wear, and the women are made to work, and they’re not able to, like do their makeup and do their hair, and you’d like hard labor working, and so a lot of the beauty, the women goes away and of society, and it contributes to the joyless, kind of sad, heavy atmosphere. So, that’s an interesting thing.

And then also, you know, beauty has an effect on men, obviously, like it or not, men are very visual, they are affected by the beauty of a woman in a way that we women don’t experience. I mean, sometimes you’ll see a really good looking guy, but you kind of just move on with life, you’re like, wow, he’s really good looking. Now, if he has a nice personality, whoa, then that’s a double threat, But in general, we are not moved by looks the way men are. I remember one time when I was in catechism class, I was like, 15, I remember, I was a very cynical 15-year-old because my parents did not have a very happy marriage. And my mom and her aunts, they did a lot of man-bashing. And at that age, I didn’t realize that I was kind of like, believing it. So when Sister started talking about men and women and how men are affected by beauty, I kind of raised my hand and I was like, Yeah, but men only like us for how we look. And I and you know, I was saying it, like it was a bad thing. And sister, I’ll never forget it. She said something I totally didn’t expect. And she said yes. And it’s great. Because that’s how God designed it. And she was like, so excited about it. And I was like, wait, I thought that was a bad thing. Like it was a total paradigm shift. And now that I’m older, and I kind of see some of the wisdom of what she was saying, it is that, yes, men do in a certain sense, obviously, once they grow to love you, it goes beyond just how you look.

But there is something to be said over the influence you can have on a man, just by being beautiful, we don’t have to do anything. So it’s kind of nice, a lot of us women, I think if we would kind of kick back and not really stress ourselves out, so much about relationships, sometimes just working on your appearance, you can get better bang for your buck, so to speak, if you put your effort into looking nice and taking care of yourself and taking care of your looks. Not only will it make you happier, obviously, as long as it’s balanced with other things alive. But in general, that’s self-care, like the skincare and things like that, that also often help you with men, and I’m not even talking just romantically, you’ll get noticed, at restaurants, when you go to church, the ushers will notice you and find you a seat faster. I mean, there’s talk of like, pretty privileged, and every woman can be pretty, not every woman can be gorgeous, I mean, I’m not going to lie to you and be like, oh, every woman’s going to be gorgeous. No, some of us are given more or less natural beauty. But every woman can make the most of what she has and so I don’t think you should get discouraged if you’re watching this, you’re like, Oh, I’m not very beautiful. That’s okay. I’m not saying you have to be a model. Women are naturally beautiful, the way when we smile, the sparkle in our eyes, men put a lot of emphasis on that, you know, they want women who smile, they’re happy. There are certain women like the supermodel look where they kind of look like mad, and guys are not always into that. So beauty can often be showing a certain joy

But anyway, I That’s getting into a different thing we’re going to talk about basically, to sum this up, beauty is important, I really highly suggest you try to make the most of your looks in whatever way, if you want to get into makeup, go for it. If you really want to work on your hair, go for it, whatever way being beautiful, like whatever that means to you. There are lots of ways to be beautiful, we’re not comfortable with makeup, you don’t have to. I like makeup, I think it tends to help puts a certain vitality and just I don’t know, it just enhances things. So I encourage you to learn about makeup, learn how to do your makeup, learn to contour, learn how to do your eyeshadow, I think a lot of the eye shadow videos on YouTube can be a bit much and you’ve got like five or six products, but learn how to accentuate what you have. true beauty when it comes to makeup and stuff. true beauty is just a slight enhancement of what’s already there. If you already have natural cheekbones, putting a little bit of contouring on them, boom, we’ll make them pop, if you already have full hair, doing a little bit of teasing, boom, we’ll kind of make it pop and give it that extra edge. So when it comes to makeup, makeup, and just beauty, you know, hair makeup anyways, oftentimes you really have to really get like a good look, you often just have to slightly enhance what’s already there. if you study makeup, there’s a certain way to look at your bone structure, and there are certain ways to highlight things to bring out what’s naturally there. So that instead of it looking like Wow, she’s wearing a lot of makeup. It’s Oh, wow, you must have slept well today, or Oh, wow, you just look really nice today.

Don’t let anybody beauty-shame you, you know, I alluded to this earlier, there is a lot of you know, there is an effort to complain about unrealistic beauty standards and things like that. And, again, I don’t want if you have a problem with comparing yourself to beautiful women, and you tend to get down on yourself a lot about it, you know, they take what I’m saying with a grain of salt, this is mostly directed toward the girls who maybe feel ashamed to work on their looks, you know, they’re told that it’s vain. It’s not really virtuous, the virtuous woman doesn’t worry about her looks, sometimes men can say that as a way of trying to avoid the influence a beautiful woman will have on them, maybe they see that you’re really pretty, and if you like cleaned up more, maybe they’d really have trouble like not being influenced by you. And maybe that’s what they’re really after. so sometimes the advice of men, especially young men, you know, or a man you’re dating, he’s like, why you wear so much makeup or like sometimes men can kind of give you a little crap when you look really pretty and they can kind of beauty shame and our society does it. our society really wants to push for like an androgynous world, where men and women are the same. And that is an area that women have a distinct advantage over men, we are very beautiful, there is a certain delicacy to our bone structure. Our eyes are bigger and brighter, our lips are usually Fuller, there’s a difference in the way we look. And that is something that stands in the way of that ideology that says men and women have to be the same. And so that can lead people to put down women for being beautiful for wanting to take care of their looks. So don’t let anybody beauty shame you.