I remember when I started yoga several years ago, the girls who didn’t shave their legs used to laugh at me when I walked into class. I’m not sure what it was. Maybe my platinum blonde hair or maybe my hot pink workout gear or maybe the fact that I wore mascara (waterproof, of course) to class. Hey, if the eyes are the windows to the soul, you better believe I’m accentuating mine with mascara.
Now when I look around the room at yoga, I see many girls like myself, who love makeup and fashion. It’s a common misconception that we have to choose between being spiritual or being glam. Yoga and spirituality aren’t just for granola girls anymore.
There’s a new breed of what I like to call New Age Glamour Girls.
Long before I was a wild thing, back in my Catholic schoolgirl days, I wanted to be a nun.
I lined my mirror with prayer cards, read books about the saints, volunteered at soup kitchens, and went to church as often as my parents would take me.
All this came to a screeching halt when my mom told me nuns could not wear makeup.
What?!
I didn’t understand what being a good person and helping others had to do with wearing makeup, which I was dying to become old enough wear.
Devastated, I thought to myself that I couldn’t live a life never knowing to what it was like to wear blue eye shadow or pink lipgloss, and at that moment I decided that I no longer wanted to be a nun.
Yes, being glam totally over-ruled my calling.
It’s too bad–those Catholic nuns totally missed out on a live one.
As I grew up, I became more spiritual and much less religious.
Spirituality simply means choosing to live your life making decisions from a place of love.
Being spiritual is being a loving and kind person, realizing that we are all in this life together, and being in a constant state of gratitude regardless of whether or not you are wearing lipstick.
Obviously, spirituality is about what is on the inside, and has nothing to do with how you look or what you wear.
I think the concern comes in that being glam is associated with being vain.
Maybe the powers that be are afraid to let nuns wear makeup because they think the nuns will just stare at themselves in the mirror all day instead of feeding the hungry and clothing the poor, which I highly doubt would happen.
New Age Glamour girls most certainly aren’t vain.
They also want to live meaningful lives and make a difference in the world, but doing so with a little pop of color makes life more fun.
New Age Glamour Girls realize they are just having fun with makeup, and that the true beauty comes from within.
There’s a difference between wearing makeup to be creative and wearing makeup out of insecurity.
Natural is beautiful too, and it is important that we girls all feel beautiful in our own skin.
For instance, I teach pilates for a living, and most of the time, you will see me running around town hair in a ponytail with no makeup on, but if you catch me out at night, I’m going for glam!
A very sweet old boyfriend of mine used to tell me how beautiful I was naturally and that I didn’t need to wear makeup.
My response to him was that I don’t wear makeup because I NEED it, I wear makeup because it’s fun for me.
I think of myself as an artist, and my face and body the canvas, with endless possibilities to make myself more colorful and glamorous.
Makeup and fashion bring out the creativity in us glam girls, and creativity happens to be one of the Divine’s most splendid gifts.
Just as Michelangelo says he saw an angel in the marble and set him free, New Age Glamour Girls could argue that makeup and fashion are the tools they use to set their own inner beauty and spirits free.
Amy Elizabeth
