Leslie Blodgett - Pretty Good Advice: For People Who Dream Big and Work Harder

To all bareMinerals employees
and customers,
past, present, and future.

Pretty
Good
Advice

Advice is tricky. Giving it can come off a little high-handed, especially when youre offering it up to people you dont know. And taking it can be equally risky. Just because it worked for the person shelling it out, that doesnt mean it will work for you.

I get all that, cause, honestly, I never give advice.

Welcome to my book, Pretty Good Advice.

My possibly flawed logic:

1. Ive gained some pretty juicy insights based on decades of being alive.

2. Since I never give advice to strangers, I am going to pretend that were good friends.

3. And since were good friends, I know you are only going to take what you need and skip the boring parts.

As they were taking the bandages off Janet Tylers face, the nurses looked on with dread. This was the eleventh surgery attempt to make her look normal. As the final bandage was lifted, the nurses shrieked, No! No! It didnt work! The poor woman was the same twisted lump of flesh that had arrived at the hospital the first time.

Janet was traumatized. She was still Janet, blond with petite features, smooth skin, and sculpted eyebrows. Her doctor and nurses? They had the faces of monsters. Thats because they were in The Twilight Zone. Eye of the Beholder was my favorite episode.

There was no shortage of women on TV looking like Janet and not like me growing up, and I idolized every one of them. But, lucky for me, all it took was a little science fiction to make me question everything. Early on I started to wonder who gets to decide who is beautiful.

The media has a lot to say about it. They put pictures in our heads to influence our thoughts and convince us they are right. They push their standards of beauty because that worksit sells stuff, and we eat it up. But the version of beauty we see all the time is just one part of the story.

I have seen trends come and go, and I have witnessed the low self-esteem that results from constantly seeing these hard-to-avoid images of so-called beauty. Ive been there too. There was a time when I used to hope my legs would grow longer and my nose would shrink. Prizing certain body shapes and facial features is a fabricated construct that society is feeding us. No way am I going to look like them. And why should I?

Here is something I know. Being in the beauty industry for four decades, I have had the privilege to travel widely and meet thousands of women one-on-one. Not from a stage looking at a mass of people, but in person. So close I could count their eyelashes. I have seen so many interpretations of beautiful that it would take your breath away, because it has for me. I have had no choice but to expand my own vision of what beauty is just by looking around me and studying faces. (Im not stalking you; its admiration.) Faces hold truths, they tell of life experiences, they reveal character and express emotion.

The most compelling story of beauty is its generosity. Its not restrictive, not exclusive. The more you see it, the more you understand it. And understanding leads to caring about other people and their journey. It also leads to caring more about yourself.

Dont believe everything they tell you about what is or isnt beautiful. Its horsefeathers. The more beauty you see in the world, the more beautiful you become.

I was thirteen. Full metal braces with springy rubber bands, zits on my forehead, and hair that didnt follow instructions. It was game day. I was on the junior high school kickline, and I had just finished putting on my blue eyeshadow and pink frosty lip balm. I looked in the mirror and gave myself a thumbs-up. I walked into the kitchen, where Mom was cooking French toast for her most recent gentleman friend. He looked up from the paper and said, Dont worry, kid, youll be pretty someday.

What a freakin jerk.

After Id pulled the knife out of my heart, I decided it didnt matter what that jerk thought. I loved how makeup made me feel, how it covered my zits and made my eyes sparkle, and mostly how it was a way to express myself. I was no Farrah Fawcett, but I was my own version of pretty.

Me, circa the French toast incident

Daydreaming
Is Working
on Stuff

I was so skilled at daydreaming as a kid that at times I feared I would fall headfirst into a fantasy and miss dinner. My most prolific sessions were sitting in the backseat of the car, leaning into the window with the sun rays beating me into a trance. I would be living it up in my head: winning at track meets, speaking fluent Spanish, performing onstage without a hitch.

In the 1980s, I heard that such imagining had a name: creative visualization. This technique looks a lot like spacing out. So, naturally, people you live with may accuse you of being a sloth, but that couldnt be further from the truth. You are working on stuff. Daydreaming is a mystery trip with no goal and no destination. Who knows where you will wind up? Your imagination is boss. Nowadays, for me, its like taking a nap with Deepak Chopra or Bradley Cooper (well, as long as Im taking a nap with people).

If someone in your home tells you to snap out of it, refuse.

Tell them youre in a meeting of the mind.

First Jobs
Build
Character

The minute I turned sixteen, I got my first (real) job, one where I paid taxes and got $.25 raises. I adored my blue polyester pantsuit with fabric that breathed like a dragon. I was employed part-time at McDonalds, where I worked my way up from sweeping the parking lot to cooking burgers. I learned a ton, like how to upsell the apple pie. Sure, I was covered in grease after my shift. But the experience stuck with me. I could absolutely make a Big Mac today (and I can still sing the Big Mac song). One of my favorite things about the jobbesides the outstanding teamwork and crushing the high-action lunch rushwas that I learned from a co-worker how to do the multi-eyeshadow application technique using muted shades of purple. And I pierced someones ear during my lunch break.

Take pride in your first job.

I worked at two different McDonalds, which meant two different uniformsone hamburger brown, and the other powder blue. And we had hats.

Ramble,
Sometimes

In the 1960s, my dad drove a black Rambler with a red interior. We didnt wear seat belts back then, and there was a nice-sized hole in the floor. It was so cool: When we looked down, we could see the street speeding beneath us on our way to Buddy Burgers. Rambler was an odd name for a car. Definition of ramble from the internet: Move aimlessly or without any specific destination, often in search of food or employment. This did not describe my dad; he was a beloved high school biology teacher and the most fun dad on the block. He would sing and dance in the grocery store, teach us how to sketch comic book characters, and bring home candy on Friday nights.

Best dad ever. Everyone loved Dad.

Except Mom. They were divorced in 1972, one month before my tenth birthday. While my mother was freed from the confines of an unpredictable husband who did things like buy a used car with a hole in the floor, we kids were stunned by the sudden turn of events. It was a confusing next couple of years (decades), because he loved his kids more than life. But he chose to leave for good. The divorce was never discussed, and we were expected to carry on. Some people would call that crueland I would say, yep, it was cruelbut we all learned to develop coping mechanisms.