This week I had the pleasure of re-watching the movie The Women , the remake not the original which was circa 1939. The fascinating thing about the movie is that there are NO MEN in the movie, not even extras in restaurants or on the streets of the Big Apple. It is a rarity to have all of the major roles to be female, but how incredible that the ENTIRE cast (and many of the crew and producers) were women. It stars Annette Bening, Meg Ryan, Jada Pinkett Smith, Eva Mendez, Debra Messing, and Candice Bergen.

The plot, taking place in New York City, although it is filmed in Boston, is about four amazing women who are very different but the best of friends. Mary Haines (Meg Ryan) discovers that her husband is having an affair with a girl who works at the perfume counter at Saks (Eva Mendez) . This information rocks the friends and reveals all of the secrets they have kept from each other. They are each struggling with deceit of varying types, and balancing love, work and family.
The movie was great. But I have seen a lot of great movies. What was interesting was a section after the movie called “The Women Behind The Women.” A 16 year old “junior reporter”, Cammy Nelson, interviews all of the women stars about what they feel makes a woman beautiful.

Julie Hewit, make-up department head for The Women, made a really powerful statement, “It isn’t easy being a natural beauty – it takes all day!” This really spoke to me since so many young people believe that our movie stars and models roll out of bed looking the way they do on film and in print. Hewit explained she wasn’t talking only about physical perfection, she explained that make-up was there to bring out a person’s own individual beauty.

Each of The Women had a different idea of what defines beauty.

Annette Bening quickly defined beauty as one’s sense of humor. Debra Messing felt that people become beautiful when they are genuinely confident. Jada Pinkett Smith mirrored what Debra Messing said by saying that Beauty comes from what people feel about themselves. “If we don’t feel good about ourselves how is anyone else going to look at us and feel good”.
Meg Ryan’s answer was short, sweet and to the point. To her, real beauty was being authentic.
The journalist began to realize that it takes hours of preparation to make these beautiful women look beautiful on the big screen.

The final question this young journalist asked each of the star performers was if they could give their teenage self some advice what would it be:

Annette Bening: Be kind to yourself.

Jada Pinkett Smith: Being a woman is a gift.

Debra Messing: I promise it will come, it will evolve, you will see how spectacular your differences will be.

Meg Ryan: To be just totally as YOU as you can be

In 2004, Dove began their Campaign for Real Beauty to emphasize that beauty comes in all sizes, colors, and reflections in the mirror. They did a study that revealed that only 2% of women considered themselves beautiful and over 80% revealed that the media set an unrealistic standard of beauty.

After working with so many adolescents and women with eating disorders, as well as women with low self esteem emphasized by the mixed messages we are bombarded with by print media, movies, and on TV I was thrilled when they showed real women in their advertisements. They also came out with a number of pamphlets to help mothers speak to their teen daughters about what beauty really was.

After watching the Women and seeing how in this one movie women were truly glorified – whether it was on the film itself, in production, or on the crew – I found myself reconnecting with the Dove campaign which encouraged me to write about beauty. To remind you, as well as myself, that as lame as it may have sounded when our mother’s said it, but beauty really does come from with in.

Many of us have met someone who is physically gorgeous, but then perhaps after meeting them we find they aren’t nice or funny and it is almost as is they physically change before our eyes. I have also met women that, by society’s standards, were not “knock outs” but after getting to know them, laughing at their jokes, or feeling the love in their heart they appear “beautiful” to me. Have they physically changed? Of course not. I have merely focused on what was inside instead of the packaging, and they practically changed before my eyes.

But in reality, they didn’t change. I changed.

I was able to put aside what society bombarded me with day in and day out and focus on who they really were. And that beauty emerged from the inside out.

When I meet someone funny, kind, and loving they are beautiful to me, even if they aren’t on the cover of Cosmo, or in a sit com. Now, if we could only give ourselves the same break when we look in the mirror and focus on every minor flaw, zit, scar, or imperfection. As women we need to pull together, love what we see in the mirror, even if it isn’t Meg Ryan or Jada Pinkett Smith, and accept ourselves, flaws and all.

Remember, at Christmas or on your Birthday the best present isn’t always the one in the prettiest paper – you have to rip off the wrapping to get to the good stuff. It is always inside!

Give yourself a hug this week, you deserve it.

Dr Karen