Stylist Magazine - Beauty Reimagined: Life lessons on loving yourself inside and out

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First published 2019

Text copyright Shortlist Media Limited, 2019

Illustrations copyright Charlotte Trounce, 2019

The moral right of the copyright holders has been asserted

Penguin is grateful for permission to print the lyrics of Thursday on , words and music by Steve Mac, Ed Sheeran and Jess Glynne, copyright 2017, Rokstone Music/Sony/ATV Music Publishing/BMG Rights Management (UK) Limited, a BMG Company. Universal Music Publishing Limited/Sony/ATV Music Publishing/BMG Rights Management (UK) Limited, a BMG Company. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Used by permission of Hal Leonard Europe Limited.

Cover by Anna Morrison

ISBN: 978-0-241-38496-1

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Can you be a feminist and love beauty? Of course you can on that, Stylist has been unequivocal since the brands launch back in 2009. But that doesnt mean the approach has to be traditional. Weve always strived to make our beauty content refreshing, emotional, provocative and inclusive. Our award-winning beauty team continually challenge traditional beauty ideals, scrutinize the science behind every product and consider how history, popular culture and technology shape the way we feel about how we look.

Its this thoughtful approach that has won us plaudits from the industry and made readers feel seen on a topic that can feel as important as politics or pay gaps. Our relationship with our appearance is a conversation we want to keep on having as we move into an era of beauty positivity and inclusiveness. Which is why were following the hugely successful Life Lessons from Remarkable Women, our 2018 anthology of essays from inspirational women, by tackling the fascinating arena of beauty.

Beauty Reimagined invites eleven women, including journalist and author Caitlin Moran, actress and advocate Rose McGowan, poet Yrsa Daley-Ward, academic Mary Beard and MP Stella Creasy, to discuss what beauty means to them. Together their unique and honest essays provide a sometimes heart-warming, often challenging but always insightful look at how beauty is about so much more than a lick of mascara. Rather, its a powerful tool of self-expression and acceptance.

For all the women who forget to be as kind to themselves as they are to their friends

One of the most original and best-known classicists working today, Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and the classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement . She is a fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her books include the Wolfson Prize-winning Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town (2008) and the bestselling SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (2015), and her popular TLS blog has been collected in the books Its a Dons Life and All in a Dons Day . Her latest book is Women & Power: A Manifesto (2017).

When a woman doesnt buy into the world of make-up, hair dye and all of the other tools that we are supposed to use to maintain a certain illusion, you sometimes hear people remark: So-and-so isnt at all concerned with her appearance. But that is always wrong. There isnt a person in the world, apart from some people at the most extraordinarily challenged end of the spectrum, who is not bothered about how they look.

It all comes down to your sense of identity. The way that you look is very tied up with how you feel about being yourself. Its about feeling that your image matches up with the person that you feel you are, and everybody thinks about that. I would really like to undermine this sense that there are people who dont care about how they look. Of course they care. They just care in a different way.

Over the years, I know many people have assumed that I dont care about my appearance because I dont wear make-up. I actually used to wear make-up and, to be honest, I cant even remember why I stopped. For years now, it just hasnt seemed to matter to me enough to bother with it. The way that I look without make-up is the way that I am; it feels real to me.

Its the same with my long, grey hair, which I do feel has become my trademark. Contrary to what some of the nastier journalists might say, I do have it trimmed, and I do brush it. It may not look like it, but I do. My hair is a bit fly-away, but thats just how it is, and it feels like me now. Thats how I am. I believe that this sense of identity is particularly important as you get older. For your presentation to be successful, it must represent a good accommodation between how you feel and how you look.

I have always held this point of view, and so I have never coloured my hair, even when I first started going grey. I was probably about twenty-two when I got my first grey hair. Of course, my initial reaction was panic: Oh my god, a grey hair, Im getting old! But it was never that I feared the grey hairs themselves it was the intimations of mortality that they represent, particularly when youre in your twenties. At first, I pulled them out. I think everyone does that but, before too long, unless you want to be bald, you have to give up that struggle. You get single grey strands for ages, they take a long time to really come through, so it is years before your hair seems grey to the outside world. I look back at pictures of me in my thirties, when my children were young, and I did go through a funny stage with bits of grey. I didnt go properly grey until I was in my fifties.

Beauty and fashion are not the enemy. You just have to work with them so that you can enjoy them without being controlled by them. I dont want to feel controlled, by anything. Thats not to say that I dont enjoy experimenting. Last year, before hosting Front Row Late on BBC2, I put a pink streak in my hair, which I loved! One thing thats great about having grey hair is that you can colour bits of it so easily, which means you can have fun with it. And fun is exactly what it is and should be.

BEAUTY AND FASHION ARE NOT THE ENEMY. YOU JUST HAVE TO WORK WITH THEM SO THAT YOU CAN ENJOY THEM WITHOUT BEING CONTROLLED BY THEM. I DONT WANT TO FEEL CONTROLLED, BY ANYTHING.