kindness Archives - Humanist Beauty

Let’s Talk About Inner Beauty

Posted on March 2, 2023May 21, 2024 by Jennifer Norman

Inner beauty is a concept that refers to a person’s personality, values, beliefs, and character traits that make him or her a good, kind, and compassionate human being. It is often contrasted with physical beauty, which refers to a person’s external appearance. The idea of inner beauty is rooted in the belief that true beauty comes from within and that a person’s character and personality are more important than their physical appearance. Cultivating inner beauty through qualities such as kindness, empathy, and compassion can lead to a more fulfilling and meaningful life. While physical beauty is often emphasized in our society, the concept of inner beauty has become top of mind, especially as avenues to enhance mental and emotional well-being.

Traditional Beauty Standards

Traditional beauty standards are societal or cultural norms that define what is considered beautiful or attractive in terms of physical appearance. These standards are often based on a narrow, idealized concept of beauty that is perpetuated through media, advertising, and other forms of popular culture. In many cultures, traditional beauty standards prioritize certain physical characteristics over others. For example, in Western societies, traditional beauty standards often prioritize a slim, toned body with clear skin, symmetrical features, and long hair. In some Eastern cultures, pale skin and a small, delicate frame may be considered more desirable.

Traditional beauty standards can be harmful because they create unrealistic expectations and pressures on individuals to conform to a narrow definition of beauty. This can lead to body shaming, low self-esteem, and negative body image, particularly among those who do not fit the idealized standard. In recent years, there has been a movement towards promoting inclusivity and diversity in beauty, challenging traditional beauty standards and embracing a broader range of body types, skin tones, and physical features. The body positivity and self-love movements, encourage us to embrace our unique qualities and reject societal pressures to conform to traditional beauty standards.

Selling “Beauty”

Beauty companies often point out people’s flaws in their marketing because they are trying to create a need for their products. By emphasizing flaws or insecurities, beauty companies create a sense of inadequacy in their audience, making them more likely to purchase products that promise to address those flaws. In other words, beauty companies use the tactic of “problem-solution” marketing, where they present a problem (a flaw or insecurity) and then offer a solution (their product) to fix that problem. By making consumers feel self-conscious about their appearance, beauty companies can convince them that their products are necessary to achieve the beauty standards that they promote.

However, this approach can have negative effects on individuals’ self-esteem and body image, as it reinforces the idea that one’s worth is tied to their appearance and that flaws should be hidden or fixed. This can contribute to a harmful cycle of insecurities and dissatisfaction with one’s appearance, which can be damaging to mental health and well-being.

It’s important to note that not all beauty companies engage in this kind of marketing, and some have adopted more positive and inclusive approaches that focus on promoting self-love and acceptance. By challenging the traditional beauty standards and promoting a more diverse and inclusive representation of beauty, these companies are helping to shift the conversation around beauty towards a more positive and empowering direction.

Body Positivity

The body positivity movement emerged in the 1960s as part of the feminist movement, which sought to challenge traditional beauty standards and promote a more inclusive definition of beauty. In the 1990s, the movement gained further momentum with the emergence of “fat acceptance” and the recognition that people of all shapes and sizes should be accepted and celebrated. The term “body positivity” was first coined in 1996 by Connie Sobczak and Elizabeth Scott, the founders of The Body Positive organization. The movement emphasizes the importance of self-love and acceptance, encouraging individuals to embrace their bodies as they are rather than striving for an idealized beauty standard.

Over the years, the body positivity movement has expanded to include a broader range of identities and experiences, such as those of people with disabilities, those with scars or other visible differences, and those who identify as LGBTQ+. Today, body positivity is a widely recognized movement that promotes acceptance and celebration of all bodies.

The body positivity movement has been shown to have a positive impact on individuals’ self-esteem and body image:

According to a 2014 survey conducted by the National Eating Disorders Association, 80% of women reported that seeing images of real women in media and advertising made them feel better about their own bodies.
A study published in the Journal of Health Psychology in 2016 found that exposure to body positivity messages can lead to increased self-esteem and body satisfaction, as well as a decrease in negative body image.
A study published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders in 2019 found that participants who received a body positivity intervention reported significant improvements in body image, self-esteem, and eating behaviors.

Overall, these statistics demonstrate that the body positivity movement can have a positive impact on individuals’ self-esteem, body image, and overall well-being. By promoting self-love, acceptance, and inclusivity, the movement is challenging traditional beauty standards and helping individuals to embrace their unique qualities.

Embracing Inner Beauty

Many brands have recognized the importance of inner beauty and have incorporated this concept into their marketing and branding strategies. Some brands that have promoted the idea of inner beauty include:

Dove: Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign has been a long-standing supporter of inner beauty. The campaign features women of all shapes, sizes, and ages, emphasizing the importance of self-love and acceptance.
Sephora: Sephora has been a strong advocate for inclusivity and diversity in the beauty industry. The company’s “We Belong to Something Beautiful” campaign celebrates diversity in beauty and emphasizes the importance of inner beauty.
Aerie: Aerie’s “Real Me” campaign promotes self-love and acceptance. The campaign features unretouched photos of women of all shapes and sizes, emphasizing the importance of inner beauty and confidence.
L’Oreal Paris: L’Oreal Paris has been a long-time supporter of the body positivity movement. The company’s “Because I’m Worth It” campaign encourages women to embrace their unique qualities and feel confident in their own skin.
Glossier: Glossier’s brand is built around the concept of “skin first, makeup second.” The company emphasizes the importance of taking care of one’s skin and inner beauty, rather than masking imperfections with makeup.

There have also been many recent marketing campaigns that reject traditional beauty standards and promote inclusivity and diversity, such as:

Fenty Beauty: Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty line is known for its inclusive shade range, with foundation shades for a wide range of skin tones. The brand’s “Beauty for All” campaign promotes inclusivity and diversity in beauty, challenging traditional beauty standards.
Nike: Nike’s “Dream Crazier” campaign features female athletes breaking down barriers and challenging societal expectations. The campaign encourages women to reject traditional beauty standards and embrace their strength and athleticism.
Knix: Knix, a lingerie brand, launched its Evolution campaign in 2020, which featured models of different ages, sizes, and skin tones. The campaign aimed to promote body positivity and encourage women to embrace their bodies at every stage of life.
Savage X Fenty by Rihanna: Savage X Fenty, Rihanna’s lingerie brand, has been praised for its inclusive messaging and diverse representation of models. The brand’s marketing campaigns feature models of all sizes, ages, and ethnicities, and aim to celebrate the beauty of all bodies.
Billie: Billie, a women’s razor brand, launched its Project Body Hair campaign in 2018, which featured women with body hair. The campaign aimed to challenge the societal expectation that women should remove their body hair, and to promote body positivity and self-love.
Skims: Kim Kardashian’s Skims shapewear brand has also launched a number of campaigns aimed at promoting body positivity and inclusivity. For example, the brand’s Solutionwear campaign featured models of different sizes, ages, and ethnicities, and aimed to challenge traditional beauty standards.

These campaigns have been successful in promoting a more inclusive and diverse definition of beauty, challenging traditional beauty standards and encouraging individuals to embrace their unique qualities.

Focus Inward

Positive practices can be key to helping keep focus on all the goodness inside, which is far more valuable and important than external appearance. Some tips to focus inward include:

Practicing mindfulness: Engaging in mindfulness practices such as meditation, yoga, or deep breathing exercises can help individuals focus on the present moment and become less preoccupied with their appearance.
Developing a sense of purpose: Pursuing meaningful activities that align with one’s values and goals can help individuals focus less on their appearance and more on achieving their desired outcomes.
Surrounding yourself with positive influences: Spending time with people who value inner qualities and are less focused on appearance can help individuals shift their own focus away from appearance.
Engaging in self-care: Taking care of one’s physical, emotional, and mental health can help individuals feel more confident and less preoccupied with their appearance.
Challenging negative self-talk: Encouraging individuals to challenge their negative self-talk and focus on their positive qualities can help shift their focus away from their appearance.
Engaging in activities that promote self-expression: Engaging in creative activities such as writing, painting, or dancing can help individuals express themselves in ways that are not focused on their appearance.

Overall, the key is to focus on inner qualities, values, and goals rather than solely what is seen on the outside. By cultivating a sense of purpose, positive self-talk, and self-care, you can become more confident and less preoccupied with your appearance.

Cultivating Inner Beauty

Additionally, there are several ways you can cultivate a sense of inner beauty:

Focus on your strengths: Instead of dwelling on your flaws, focus on your strengths and positive qualities. Celebrate your accomplishments and remind yourself of your unique talents and abilities.
Engage in meaningful activities: Pursue activities that bring you joy and fulfillment, whether it’s a hobby, volunteering, or spending time with loved ones. This can help you feel more connected to your passions and values.
Practice gratitude: Take time each day to reflect on the things in your life that you’re grateful for. This can help you cultivate a sense of positivity and appreciation for the good things in your life.
Surround yourself with positive influences: Spend time with people who uplift and support you. Surrounding yourself with positive influences can help you feel more confident, secure, and loved.

By practicing these habits, you can cultivate a sense of beauty that comes from within. Remember that inner beauty is not about how you look, but rather about how you feel and how you treat others. With time and practice, you can develop a strong sense of self-love, acceptance, and inner beauty.

The Importance of Random Acts of Kindness

Posted on February 8, 2022September 5, 2024 by Jennifer Norman

Buying a cup of coffee for the next individual in line, helping an elderly person cross the street, or simply smiling at a stranger are all random acts of kindness that spread positivity and light into the world. The term “random acts of kindness” is generally attributed to Anne Herbert who wrote, “Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty” on a restaurant placemat in 1982. It refers to selfless acts, both large and small, that are committed unexpectedly, without prompting and with no apparent ulterior motive. In honor of Random Acts of Kindness Day on February 17, we’ll explore the science-backed benefits of being kind and how you can start offering random acts of kindness to strangers and those around you.

What Is Random Acts of Kindness Day?

One can never go wrong with kindness, and there can never be too much of it. The idea behind Random Act of Kindness Day is to cultivate feelings of kindness to brighten up someone’s day. Every small act of kindness is significant. It may seem like it doesn’t accomplish much, but just like the domino effect, one act of kindness can lead to more positive outcomes.

Random Acts of Kindness Day was initiated in 1995 in Denver, Colorado by a nonprofit organization called The Random Acts Of Kindness Foundation. Today, the observance has become more and more widespread, with the event even finding its way to New Zealand.

Random Acts of Kindness Day may be a relatively new commemoration, but being kind is a vital part of human nature. There are great examples of prominent figures in history who have made an impact through their selfless acts of kindness, such as Princess Diana, the Dalai Lama, and Mother Teresa. Various studies have also proven that kindness is instinctive, with feelings of care developing in humans at infancy.

Random Acts of Kindness Day is a way to nurture and encourage this precious trait we all share.

The Benefits of Kindness

Kindness and empathy help us relate to other people and have more positive relationships with our friends, family, and even the perfect strangers we encounter in our daily lives. Besides just improving personal relationships, kindness can also improve your health and quality of life.

Here are three science-backed benefits of being kind:

Kindness Releases Feel-Good Chemicals

According to research from Emory University, when you are kind to another person, your brain’s pleasure and reward centers light up, as if you were the recipient of the good deed—not the giver. This phenomenon is called the “helper’s high.”¹

Doing nice things for others boosts your serotonin, which is the neurotransmitter responsible for feelings of satisfaction and well-being. This feel-good chemical heals your wounds, calms you down, and makes you feel happy.

In addition, witnessing acts of kindness produces oxytocin, occasionally referred to as the “love hormone,” which aids in lowering blood pressure, improving heart health, and reducing inflammation. According to a study of adults aged 57-85, volunteering manifested the strongest association with lower levels of inflammation.²

Kindness Eases Anxiety and Stress

While there are several ways to reduce anxiety and stress, such as meditation, exercise, prescription medications, and natural remedies, studies have proven that providing kindness is one of the easiest, least expensive ways to keep anxiety and stress at bay.

A study on the effects of prosocial behavior on stress found that affiliative behavior, which is any behavior that builds your relationship with others, may be an important component of coping with stress, indicating that prosocial behavior (action intended to help others) may effectively reduce the impact of stress on emotional functioning.”⁴

As pointed out in a study on happiness from the University of British Columbia (UBC), “social anxiety is associated with low positive affect, a factor that can significantly influence psychological well-being and adaptive functioning.”³ Positive affect refers to an individual’s experience of positive moods such as joy, interest, and alertness. UBC researchers found that participants who engaged in kind acts displayed significant increases in positive affect that were sustained over the four weeks of the study.

Kindness Can Help You Live Longer

Science has proven that random acts of kindness, such as volunteering, can have a large impact on your lifespan. People who volunteer tend to experience fewer aches and pains, and helping others protects overall health twice as effectively as aspirin protects against heart disease.⁵

One study found that individuals 55 and older who volunteer for two or more organizations have an impressive 44% lower likelihood of dying early, and that’s after sifting out every other contributing factor, including physical health, exercise, gender, habits like smoking, marital status, and many more. This is a stronger effect than exercising four times a week or going to church.⁶

Kindness is Contagious

Seeing someone perform an act of kindness can warm your heart. That feeling has a name; moral elevation, and it’s that warm-and-fuzzy-on-the-inside sensation you get when you experience true human goodness. Moral elevation leads to a chain reaction of kindness, which is why scientists believe that kindness is, in fact, contagious. ⁷

James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis, researchers from the University of California San Diego and Harvard University, for example, conducted a study proving that cooperative behavior can spread from one person to many, in a sort of ripple effect of happiness. Essentially, people can “catch” emotional states they observe in others over time frames ranging from seconds to weeks.” Kindness, the duo observed, spread to at least three degrees of separation.

In addition, recent research published in the journal Biological Psychiatry aimed to find out what moral elevation actually looks like in the brain and body.⁸ Researchers measured the brain activity and heart rates of 104 college students while they watched videos depicting either heroic acts of kindness or humorous situations.

When the students were viewing the heroic acts, activity in both the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system peaked, which is an unusual combination that suggests both a fight-or-flight response and a calming, self-soothing response. When they were watching the amusing videos, there was no activation in either system.⁹

Compassionate acts require us to witness suffering, which enacts a stress response and activates the sympathetic nervous system. Then, once we see the suffering alleviated through an act of kindness, our heart feels calmed and the parasympathetic nervous system is activated.

Viral Acts of Kindness

Social media has made it easier to document random acts of kindness, which in turn has led to many going viral and being shared globally. In a world where negative headlines are becoming the norm, it’s refreshing to see positivity spread throughout our world with kindness.

A few notable examples of kindness going viral include:

Ollie Jones’ Birthday

When Ollie Jones, a boy on the autism spectrum from Exmouth, England, turned 15 in 2016, he expressed to his mother how excited he was to open the birthday cards that he would receive from friends and family. However, his mother, Karen Jones, feared that he wouldn’t receive many cards, as the teenager didn’t have many friends.

Karen issued a plea on a Facebook community page for people to send Ollie birthday cards in celebration of his special day. The response that her post received was monumental, with Ollie receiving around 20,000 cards, messages, and presents from people all over the world.

Pictured: Ollie and his mother, Karen, surrounded by birthday cards sent from kind strangers Source: The Sun

The Children’s Hospital Superheroes

For many children, the prospect of meeting a superhero is something that would excite them to no end. Who wouldn’t love to meet their idols in person? In 2016, this became a reality for children being treated at Children’s Hospital Colorado when costumed crusaders including Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Captain America were spotted rappelling down the side of the 10-story building.

Members of the Aurora Police Department Strategic Response and Tactics Team decided to give the children in the medical institution a morale boost by dressing up as superheroes and coming to visit them. The hospital thanked the team on YouTube for “being superheroes, this day in costume, and every day in our community.”

Pictured: A member of the Aurora Police Department interacting with a child in the Children’s Hospital Source: Reddit “Happy News”

Sportsmanship Kindness

It wasn’t the battle between New Zealand’s Nikki Hamblin and America’s Abbey D’Agostino for an Olympic medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics that made headlines and went viral on social media platforms. Instead, it was the way in which the women rallied together to help each other across the finish line.

Their goodwill during their heat drew global attention. The two received the International Olympic Committee’s Fair Play Award. Plus, President Barack Obama called D’Agostino’s actions “exactly what the Olympic spirit and the American spirit should be all about.”

Pictured: Left, Nikki Hamblin; Right, Abbey D’Agostino Souce: The Independent

Martin Agee’s Classical Music

Martin Agee, a violinist who has played for over 40 Broadway cast albums including “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” “The Color Purple,” “Legally Blonde,” and the upcoming revival of “West Side Story,” went viral for his good deeds. When he’s not busy rehearsing or performing, Martin visits animal shelters to play soothing classical music for dogs recovering from abuse.

The music provides a bridge to relaxation with energetic dogs settling down to listen and shy dogs venturing closer to the front of their enclosures for a better view. Martin often mentions that he hopes by coming to visit them and playing music that the dogs will learn that strangers can bring good things.¹⁰

Pictured: Martin Agee playing classical music for a dog that’s recovering from abuse Source: Medium

A Letter From Jase

Jase, a seven-year-old boy from the United Kingdom, sent a birthday letter to his late father, addressed to heaven. Not knowing the exact location, Jase wrote on the envelope: “Mr. Postman, can you take this to Heaven for my dad’s birthday?”

Soon after, Jase received a reply. The Royal Mail’s Assistant Delivery Office Manager, Sean Milligan, assured Jase that his letter had been delivered successfully, writing: “Please be assured that his particular important item of mail has been delivered. I will continue to do all I can to ensure delivery to Heaven safely.” Jase’s mom posted the story on her Facebook, which is where it was shared by people all around the world.

Pictured: Jase’s letter and the Royal Mail’s Assistant Delivery Office Manager’s reply Source: Good News Network

Ways You Can Spread Kindness

Too many times we forget the impact that simple gestures can make – a kind word, a lending ear, a comforting hug, or a warm and simple smile can go a long way. These actions actually have the power to turn lives around and make someone’s day brighter.

You can start showing kindness today with these simple gestures: