Supermodel Tyra Banks drew plenty of attention last June when she
posted a barefaced selfie to Instagram. “You deserve to see the real me,” her post read. “The really real me.”
Banks’s public display of her face sans makeup got more than 18,000
comments and 200,000 likes. It demonstrates a growing trend toward
appreciating our faces and bodies just the way they are. This includes
caring for them without bewitching chemical potions that promise to
disguise or erase whatever is supposedly flawed.
Conventional beauty standards have long relied on the premise of
alteration and removal. Think of the vocabulary: “slimming,” “anti-aging,” “straightening.” Something is always being hidden, camouflaged, minimized.
But this aggressive pursuit of correction and illusion is starting to
be disrupted by a growing appreciation of natural beauty and a
celebration of self-care over self-perfection.
These days, authenticity is hot.
The benefits of a broader, more inclusive definition of beauty —
whether that means using fewer and cleaner cosmetics, loving your body
as is, or letting your hair express its natural curl or color — extend
far beyond one’s own life. They affect families, communities,
even the culture at large. Self-acceptance often leads to accepting
others more easily, too, and the world can always use more of that.
Cosmetic surgery, injections and fillers, and similar invasive
procedures are still popular, of course, but it’s clear that clean,
healthy, self-affirming beauty trends are gaining ground. What follows
are a few of the ways people have begun to redefine beauty — and
appreciate the natural beauty in each of us.