Lifestyle
To all of you.
This article was to be called "The day I learned to love myself". For this post, I went fishing for testimonials from my colleagues. Only one was able to respond. Some tried, then told me, sorry and embarrassed, that they didn't know what to write because that day still hadn't arrived. Because they still had trouble loving themselves. At least you'll know that at Oh My Cream, we don't like false testimonials 😉
I was annoyed. Then, all of a sudden, I was reminded of... you. Before I took over the editorial side of the site, I answered all your e-mails for about 5 years. I loved that job. I loved reading you. You may not realize it, but many of your stories touched me. You talked to me about your skin, of course, but you also talked to me about yourself, about why you suddenly had acne. And you were often so hard on your image! You were also very apologetic. Every time I received a photo of you, I'd get a warning message, just like before a violent film. You apologized for the mess behind you. You'd apologize for being surrounded, for being wrinkled, for having pimples... You all apologized for sending me a photo of yourself au naturel. You were even afraid I'd get scared, because your hair was gone.
But if you only knew how beautiful I thought you all were! Apologize for the mess behind you because you have kids, apologize for having pimples because your exams are coming up and you're dead from stress, apologize for being wrinkled just because - unbelievably - you're getting older. Apologize for being sick and fighting.
But where does this insecurity about our appearance come from? What are we afraid of sending back, even to people we'll probably never (re)see?
What strikes me about all this is that, in the age of social networking, nobody posts a selfie with an apology. Certainly because we feel in control: we take a series of photos at the right moment, find the right filter... then post. And then the control leaves our hands and goes into those of others, quietly scrolling through their news feeds. We wait feverishly for the likes to roll in. In short, it's back to the others and their validation.
As you can imagine, I've dedicated this article to a female audience because, let's be honest, I must have received just over 15 e-mails from men (although of course I'm aware that men too are entitled to their share of insecurities). But let me try to make a general statement, which in the end won't surprise many people: if we're so often uncomfortable with our image, it's probably because, insidiously, we're asked to be EVERYTHING at once, EVERYTHING while remaining beautiful and smiling (and without taking up too much space at the same time).
But if we too (we're a 100% all-female team at headquarters) have grown up reading magazines that are sometimes full of guilt-inducing rhetoric, we're determined to shake things up. To make beauty a theme where expertise is king... but where kindness, transparency and naturalness always come first. It has to be said that, from the outset at Oh My Cream, we've had a horror of false promises: we'll never tell you that this anti-wrinkle cream will give you back your 20s (and anyway, who wants to go back to their 20s and their past insecurities?). Nor will this anti-blemish treatment eradicate yours forever. Finally, we never hide from you via our posts that we're just like you: girls who live at 1,000 an hour and don't exactly have 1 hour to devote to the mirror every morning. So, breaking news, it's not every day that the Oh My Cream team has flawless hair and a perfect complexion. Yes, sometimes appearance takes second place!
BUT... If a pretty red mouth is able to boost your self-confidence for that interview, if applying a mask allows you to take 5 minutes for yourself, if an anti-blemish treatment helps you have a good day at work then beauty becomes a very serious business. And in that case, we're more than happy to teach you lots of (in)useful things.🙂
