Friday, October 4, 2019

Don't stop me being beautiful?

Today, October 4, is my mother's yearly remembrance day of her passing away. I know her always trying to be and stay beautiful. Not always fun I guess seeing her as a young boy every evening with curlers in her hair going to sleep. Preparation to be beautiful again the next day. How can you sleep on it?
My two sisters also took over the ‘gene’, and oh well, let's be honest, which of the ladies and more and more also men are also participating in this ‘beauty contest’. Living here in Thailand I think Thai men are ranking high on the world wanting to be beautiful list.

Nowadays you can hardly take a magazine in your hands anymore or it is not at least for 50% filled with how you can become even more beautiful. You only have to invest. There is no end to it.
My Chinese teacher of Buddhist philosophy once said in a lesson that it is indeed endless. There is always more beautiful, there is always better, there is always more and even in relation to the beauty of men and women.. there is always more and ‘better’ to be found.

Isn't it great what not all is invented? More beautiful! Here again such a picture that I came across last Sunday afternoon August 25th in Chiang Mai city. Screaming on a billboard the size of a house.

Of course, you should not be stopped for the company (the name I photo-shopped out of the picture) that places these kinds of billboards or puts all those advertisements and marketing campaigns in magazines. And if you buy their products be aware you even pay for these campaigns as well. After all, that magazine would otherwise be much more expensive without that sponsor.

We can't even describe what beautiful is. Ever thought about that? And everyone has his or her own taste in it. For example, I find my partner beautiful and attractive. I like her tinted skin. Someone else might not like it at all. Nothing wrong with that. The world is full of other skin colors.
The nice thing is that the beauty industry here in Asia tells people that they should mainly be white. Having a white skin shows a kind of higher ranking. I don’t know how easy to express. Shelves full of "whitener" and you need to stay as much as possible out of the sun. Thick sweaters with long sleeves in the heat on the scooter and cover your head like a "gangster". Police in Europe or America immediately should stop you to take this balaclava off.
And about skin color? In Europe you are invited or sometimes even pushed to use the sun and gat that tinted tan. That is nice (I think so too). The same companies also sell products for this. It’s just about telling stories, help people to believe them and… sell.

What I personally like is to accentuate a tiny little bit the natural beauty you have and that makes you the unique person you are. Your distinctiveness. That is something totally different than for instance the race against aging, etc., things that cannot be stopped. Not creating unnatural walking paintings, I so many times see, where the "stucco work" breaks and almost jumps off the skin getting a natural smile.

Mirrors have been around for a long time. Many nowadays have been taken over by using the I-phone as a mirror. Walking in the city, in a shopping mall, waiting at the Yamaha maintenance shop, or wherever, I see people more and more using this function. Hanging in the ‘mirror’. Looking to everything that, according to the beauty industry, should be better, more beautiful. The campaigns and companies succeeded because people believe in it. Every hair, bump, wrinkle, eyelid, lip, and so on. The ladies and gentlemen ‘working’ in the make-up and beauty departments in the shopping malls for me are heroes in it. Not sure if they really see themselves in those mirrors or cell phones anymore.

Not to tear my mother down, but in my eyes, she often exaggerated in it. And for her profession as an actress, that was of course part of the job. But in real life she did not need it. Yet I actually saw my mother at her best when I came out of the cafe or disco at night and she was still waiting for me with a beer. With those curlers in her hair she wanted to know all her children were safe home again. Great!
Pure nature as she was. And yes, just like nature, that changes in time getting older. Not at all that it wasn't "beautiful" anymore.

What is beautiful? What the industry tells you because they want to sell?
You have been beautiful since birth! Never for everyone of course because there is always "better" as that Chinese abbot once told me in that lesson. And tastes differ. And if you realize that… then you don't have to be stopped at all to be beautiful as the billboard screams because you are satisfied with the beauty that you (every person) already have. Your specific and personal beauty in which you can be and express your true self.

And, I am still a bit Dutch, it also saves a lot of money.

Enjoy your beauty freely and free of charge.


Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)
email: captijninsight@gmail.com 


Captijn InsightCatalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.


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