Friday 56 & #Book Beginnings: The Beauty Experiment

For Book Beginnings: This is who I am: a woman. I'm a daughter, a sister, a friend, a wife, a mother. At age seven, I was a girl with braids and rainbow hair clips, and at thirteen, I became a teenager with acne, orthodontics, and teased bangs. At nineteen, I was a college student battling her freshman twenty-five, then a new graduate with a discount poly-blend office wardrobe. For nearly a decade after that, I was independent young woman in confusing relationships who paired thrift-store finds designer shoes.  - p. ix

For Friday 56:

Pregnancy was the only truly acceptable reason for a woman to look unkempt and overwhelmed in Hong Kong, and any failing could happily be attributed to it—fatness, thinness, fatigue, eczema, bad hair, weird clothes.  - p. 56

About The Beauty Experiment by Phoebe Baker Hyde: I looked at my reflection and despaired. As an exhausted young mother I felt ugly and saw that a new dress or face cream would never help. I was at risk of passing on a habit of feeling miserable about my looks to my baby girl—if nothing changed. 

Soon afterward Phoebe Baker Hyde made a vow: to give up new clothes, makeup, haircuts, and jewelry in hopes of revealing something she had always paid lip service to but never quite believed in—her inner beauty. The Beauty Experiment chronicles Hyde’s quest for self-acceptance in nothing but her own skin. In thoughtful, exquisite prose, Hyde holds up a mirror to all women and shows how perfectionism can keep us from achieving what we really want: happiness, confidence, and serenity.

We've all had bad hair days. What if we just rolled with it and simply just not use any make-up, not worry about how we look, or what we wear, and ... just get on with it? The author did just that in The Beauty Experiment. Would you be able to "survive" without all the trappings of womanhood today?