Following on from last month’s Scary Tale About How Marketing Messes With Your Head, here’s our action plan for banning the beauty brain wash that makes us feel bad about ourselves.

Here’s the thing girls….we can let companies that push a certain female ideal down our throats make us feel bad ourselves or we can do something about it.

So, you might say, yeah, yeah, what can little old me do to change the likes of mega companies with gazillions of dollars, or high end designers, or fashion mags.

Well, take a leaf out of Rosa Parks book! One little old lady who took a stand that changed American society. Rosa’s action in the US in 1955 changed the lives of black Americans. At a time when black and whites were not allowed to mix and African Americans did not enjoy the same basic civil rights as white people, including the right to sit anywhere on a bus, she did something extraordinary that resulted in a monumental shift.

You see, Rosa simply refused to move from her seat to make way for a white person as the law demanded at that time. The stoic little old lady had had enough of being treated as second class citizen and made a stand. Her arrest and fine prompted a major protest among other African Americans and in turn led to a change in law that allowed blacks to sit wherever they wanted.

This one little act sparked the beginnings of the African American Civil rights movement. So, what we’re saying boos, is that if one little old lady can change the world then so can each of us. From little things big things grow. If, as individuals, we each do our bit to ban the brain wash, then we will see change!

Here’s Our Action Plan:

1. Start really seeing yourself! Look at yourself and seek out the fabulous things that make you, you! Could be your amazing eyes, your great cheekbones…whatever it is, if you look at yourself in a different way you will find things about you to love. Why do this? Cos if you feel more confident and comfortable and accepting of you, then all that stuff out there has less chance of getting through and affecting you.
2. Stop buying into it. If there are magazines, TV shows, whatevz, that make you feel bad about yourself, switch off. It really is that simple. Sure, escaping those images of so called “perfect girls/women” that assail us from everywhere, is not easy, unless we all move to another planet where girls of all shapes and sizes are represented in media, you can’t switch if off completely. But you can certainly shut out some of the noise if you stop buying into it.
3. Spread the word. It’s easy – twitter, facebook, blogs…start having a say. When you think about the banal stuff we facebook,/twitter etc about, surely a little bit of time saying something meaningful that could make a difference would be far more worth talking about than the hot new boots you must have or what you got up to on the weekend!
4. If you see an ad that you think is sending a wrong message about beauty…say so. All brands have websites and they're easy to find. If you see an ad that irks you, google the brand, get onto their site, and comment on their site or contact the company.
5. Blog away beauty brain washing. Every single industry has bloggers that cover the beat. So, if for example, a beauty brand is marketing in a way that is having a negative impact on your self esteem or sending out the wrong message get onto a blog, and have your say. Simply google beauty bloggers or fashion or whatever the subject and a list will come up. Most bloggers encourage others to comment. So comment!
6. Likewise if you see something that you think reinforces positive self esteem and messages around beauty then blog, facebook, twitter about that too. We need to let marketers know what we want to see and messages we want to hear.
7. Create compliments. How good does it feel to be told something good about you? It feels amazing if someone tells you they love your hair or your outfit, right? As girls, we need to boost each others egos. We need to make a point of complimenting each other, supporting each other and doing what we can with girls we know to make us all feel good about ourselves.
8. Create a circle of confidence – confidence in yourself, boosting confidence in your friends and women you know – it will make us stronger and our self esteem stronger.