Many women are obsessed with the concept of beauty. As a society we build up the many aspects of physical, outer beauty. Though women have typically been the ones focused on how to look their best men are starting to be more open about their need to look their best.

If you walk up to anyone on the street and ask them whether we emphasize outer appearance more than we should you will probably get a high percentage of “yes” answers but those same people will do everything they can to look their best. This is why the beauty industry is so strong.

So what are the key areas that we should focus on when we want to become beautiful or maintain our beauty? Here is a 6 broad areas that will cover your beauty needs:

1. Hair
2. Skin
3. Fitness
4. Cosmetics
5. Nail Care
6. Fashion

Hair:

A good haircut and styling can make your whole look. Our society is becoming much more multicultural in the US so what defines beautiful hair is changing. Companies are now producing hair care products that are tailored to every type of hair. Whether you have curly, frizzy, straight, oily or dry hair there is a hair care product line at the drug store for you. There are hair coloring treatments, hair straightening treatments and perm products that are now available to take home. Even the men have coloring treatments to hide their gray hairs.

Men tend to have it easy when it comes to hair since most of them have shorter haircuts that don’t require too much maintenance but there is a huge demand for products related to hair loss. Even though hair loss effects women, genetically men deal with this challenge the most.

Skin:

Is beauty synonymous with youth? If you look at the area of skin care you would definitely think so. As we age we lose moisture in our skin. We no longer have that shiny new penny look that the typical 5 year old has. The area of skin care is benefiting from many advances in science. The beauty of the skin is being restored by products that slough off the old skin cells and apply nanotechnology to penetrate the skin.

Fitness:

True beauty does not mean you have to be razor thin but being fit and active is the cornerstone to a healthy body. Though dieting and weight loss get a lot of attention getting into a regular exercise routine will help you define the look of your body. Depending on your age and health you can be as aggressive as you want in defining your exercise and fitness goals.

Cosmetics:

Natural beauty is not as appreciated as it used to be. Makeup can be used to enhance a person’s appearance. As we age we definitely find more needs for that concealer that we hardly used in our youth. Cosmetics can be a great tool to highlight what we all see the most, our face. Cosmetics can be very expensive and in the wrong hands can actually detract from your appearance so use them wisely.

Nail Care:

Within the last 10 years we have definitely seen a jump in the amount of nail salons. They can’t be missed at your local mall. Manicures and pedicures definitely can make you feel beautiful and pampered. The hands in particular stand out in your everyday interaction with others. Are you more apt to remember someone with a great manicure or not?

Fashion:

Lastly is our obsession with the latest clothing fashions. Is it too late to wear white? Bootcut or straightcut jeans? Every morning we have to decide how and whether what we wear will affect how others think we look. We get our cues from the latest magazines and what people are wearing on our favorite shows. For the creative among us we can define our own styles.

So if you want to look and feel beautiful be sure to focus on understanding these 6 keys to beauty and how they relate to you. Some of us may need more help in one area than another depending on what nature gave us but we should always make the most out of the beauty assets we have been given.

What was worse for rugged individualism, the women’s movement or the public educational system? Both the feminist movement and public education set out a goal of equality not excellence. We were only as good as our weakest link they thought and rewards should be spread around to everyone not those that truly excel. It is more important to feel good, than to strive.

Feminists still point to a woman’s salary of 77% compared to a man’s, and shout in that annoying Rosie voice that this is unfair. Well there is one simple remedy to your personal salary and that is to become more valuable. It is a competitive world boys and girls and you get paid what you are worth, if you can get paid more down the road, then in the words of Simon Cowell ‘off you go.’ The feminist movement like most social movements started off in the right direction, thinking everyone should have equal opportunity, but that has been remedied for at least a generation. What they refuse to comprehend is equal opportunity does not mean equal results.

The fact is some people are going to be more successful than others, or earlier than others. That is not an example of unfairness, but human ingenuity. And trying to squelch human ingenuity does not work. The Soviets proved that, the dying UAW is proving it. If General Motors survives their arcane policies, it will be because of operations outside the suffocating tendrils of this out dated institution.

The simple fact is if you are unhappy with your earning power, you have no one to blame but yourself. And there is only one person that can fix it, you. Make yourself a more valuable worker, start your own business, take a second job, try sales, go back to school, learn a new trade, or just get a different job. The world does not owe you a paycheck of a certain amount, and if you think it does, well then apply for a government job. You will get exactly what the pay scale says, and your work and your life will be predictable, safe, and mind numbingly boring.

Like feminism, public education tries to make everyone a homogenous mass. Standardized tests, standardized grading, standardized classes, it is amazing we don’t all come out of that most unsuccessful beaureaucracy a confederacy of dunces. No child left behind equals no child moving ahead. We can’t have any dumb children if we don’t have any smart ones, so lets just dumb them all down We can now quantify exactly what every child should know at every age. Therefore we know how far certain children need to go, and place all our efforts there.

It doesn’t seem to occur to our educational gurus, that quantifying knowledge means placing boundaries on it. Measuring learning means no new ground can be explored by creative young minds, because you can’t pre-quantify the unknown. Einstein said ‘imagination is more important than knowledge.’ In today’s system ‘imagination is more threatening than knowledge.’ Imagination implies something the teacher does not know, and how on Earth can we measure that with a Scantron? We can’t, nor can we measure anything but regurgitated facts with a multiple choice test. These testing practices do not lead to new ideas, new ways of thinking, or any actual learning. They record our ability to memorize, which is why every college student should get a refund for every exorbitant tuition dollar spent of classes that were graded with a multiple choice test. Professor laziness equals pupil laziness, equals standardized thinking. See the notes above about lessons learned from Soviet policy.

Its simple folks, we do the best we can, we strive the most we can, and then we be satisfied with those results, or try again. You owe yourself your best effort, and you take the results as they come, and adjust from there. Would you really want the world any other way?