One morning, while I was in my car in my job parking lot, I look over at a women in the car next to me who is applying her mascara before she starts her work day. This got me thinking. Thinking about how fashion obsessed, how beauty obsessed we are as a culture. Some of us spend excessive amounts of time making ourselves look pretty before we leave the house. Often we justify it by telling ourselves (and others) “I do it for me, because I like the way I look when I do this,” but the truth is, we only feel that way because we long ago acquiesced to this idea of what beauty is “supposed to be” to the point where we actually believe that the standard we use is OUR OWN standard.

So we buy it; we buy this standard. We have followed this standard for so long that it is commonplace, it’s even expected. So expected that a “made up” face is the bare minimum requirement for many to be considered attractive. This means that many of us consider ourselves …… ugly otherwise.

In the end we do all these rituals for one reason and one reason only. To attract. I find this so fascinating. Fascinating because it seems so completely unnecessary. But we are compelled just the same. The primal urge to attract for the purpose of mating is so ingrained into us. No different than the Peacock spreading his feathers in a beautiful design to stimulate the female. It’s only enhanced over the years in taking up more time, money, and space toward the effort of attracting.

Of course, the power elite takes full advantage (exploits really) in supporting this (hell, they upped the anti this far), and between the middle class who believe they’re “ugly” and the power elite who claim to have the cure for “ugliness”, the cosmetic industry turned a profit of 62 billion in 2016.

To add insult to injury, the overwhelming majority of these beauty products are harmful to our health; particularly cosmetics. Many are just plain painful. Makeup pre-maturely ages our skin, High heels hurt our posture and cause back problems, and I don’t think I need to mention the risks of cosmetic surgery. The only things we should be applying to our face are gentle soap and water. That’s all.

The sooner we accept our natural beauty as the only real beauty, and reject the influence of the powers that be, the sooner we can get back to a life of function (not fashion) by not wasting any more time/money/space on this ridiculousness, and get to a life of real purpose, a minimalist life. We must pull the wool from our eyes.