Beautiful enough to be happy

I met Julie around four years ago. Later you’ll understand why our paths crossed.

Now we have set ourselves a strangely ambitious task. To define beauty. Two women in their early thirties. Me, someone who has never made peace with it. Julie, someone who turned it into her work, her craft, her language.

She sent me her article a few days ago. I did not open it. I want to write this without being influenced, and then see where we agree, where we diverge, and what two different lives make of the same word. You can start either from hers or mine, or viceversa.

Who am I?

My name is Julie Berghmans, image consultant, professional makeup artist and hairstylist, founder of the concept Déjà Belle. Since 2019, I have been guiding women toward a beauty that truly reflects who they are, combining technical expertise, kindness and humor. My approach aims to reveal what is already there, without transforming, without imposing, but with sincere attention to each personality and each story.

Through my tailored services, my self makeup workshops and my personalized guidance, I help each woman become aware of her unique beauty and make conscious beauty choices, for herself, not because of social pressure.

Below, I share with you a few reflections on conscious beauty, our priorities in life and the freedom to do whatever we want with our image.

Choosing what we do with our time

Let us talk about makeup, hair, clothing and beauty in general, and especially about the time we choose to spend taking care of our appearance, whether daily or depending on the day.

I believe the greatest freedom we have as women is realizing that we can decide what we want to do with that time.

To consciously choose: “Is this important to me or not?”

The freedom to be beautiful or not

I have clients who have told me they could never step out to buy bread without wearing makeup, never go to work or to the gym without getting ready.

Some feel the urge to buy the latest trendy sports outfit for their yoga class or run, while others are content with a simple tracksuit they reuse every time.

The question is not who is right or who does it better.

In my opinion, what truly matters in order to make peace with beauty and with one’s image is to stop doing it out of resignation.

To stop telling yourself:

“I absolutely have to put on makeup because I look awful.”

Or conversely, some of my clients have told me:

“I would really love to dress up and wear a beautiful dress to an afterwork event, but I am afraid of shocking my colleagues. They will say, who does she think she is?”

Blending into the background or daring to be yourself

I have had several clients who are young mothers, and they tell me that when they drop their child off at school, they run into the other mothers, sometimes arriving half in pajamas, hair tied in a simple bun.

And on some days, they would actually love to do a nice blow dry or show up in a lovely outfit with a beautiful lipstick, but they do not want to stand out or seem different.

And above all, they want to make friends.

Bonding through self deprecation

Let us talk about that too.

At least in Belgium, it seems easier to make friends by putting yourself down than by giving yourself compliments.

It often happens in the locker room of a gym. A woman looks at her reflection in the mirror and sighs: “Have you seen my stomach? It is horrible.” Another woman next to her tilts her head and replies with a slightly nervous laugh: “Oh, I have rolls too!”

Then, like an unintentional competition, they continue: “And my wrinkles, look how they are settling in…” “No, but my acne is way worse, look at this pimple here!”

In those few minutes, they laugh, compare themselves, half reassure each other, and through that small exchange of insecurities, they begin to create a bond, strange but real.

Try this. Sign up for a new activity, for example a gym, and you will see that even in terms of performance, it is the same.

During the class, women look for other women who struggle with the exercises. They search for pain in their eyes. They look for the ones who will stop the repetitions first, the ones who can only do eight squats instead of ten because their legs hurt too much.

So they can exchange a complicit glance and laugh together:

“It is hard, is it not?”

And then they will look at the girl doing all ten squats with extra weights and roll their eyes. She is exaggerating.

After observing these dynamics in sports, it is the same when it comes to self image. True self confidence and self improvement also mean being able to look at women who are more beautiful or more accomplished than we are as examples who lift us up. And to tell ourselves: “Come on, I can do two more squats too. If she can do it, why not me? I will train and I will get there.”

Beauty as a priority or not

When it comes to beauty, it is the same. Maybe that woman has more beautiful hair than I do because she takes care of it. She does very expensive treatments several times a week. She woke up 30 minutes earlier this morning to do a blow dry. Maybe, for her, having beautiful hair is an ultimate priority in her life.

But ask yourself:

Is my beauty, my makeup or my hair an absolute priority for me today?

In my value system, at the top of the pyramid of what is important in my life, is that what comes first?

No?

Is it your career, for example?

Or your children’s well being?

Your family?

Having a beautiful, well decorated and clean home?

Let go of the pressure or fully commit to it

Then give yourself a break. That is not where your attention needs to go. Continue focusing on what matters most to you and leave the mirrors aside for a while.

And if, on the contrary, you feel the need to improve your physical appearance, then truly dedicate time to it and place your attention there. Get moving.

Take care of your hair, your face, your body.

Learning the codes without being trapped by them

And if you need help with the colors of clothes and accessories to wear, the new hair color you could try, or the makeup techniques that will make your eyes look bigger, your lips fuller or visually reduce your wrinkles, come take a self makeup course at Déjà Belle and learn how to enhance your face while letting go of insecurities and discovering your strengths, because believe me, we all have them.

My goal is to teach women all the professional tricks so they can highlight themselves according to their color palette and body shape, but also to remind them that it is necessary to take a step back from all of this depending on the phase of life they are in.

Sometimes our priorities lie elsewhere, and if you wear makeup twice a year, on New Year’s Day and on your birthday, that is perfectly fine. Do what feels right to you.

Showing your true face

Accept your natural face the rest of the year, and feel free to do whatever you want with your uncovered face.

Believe me, nothing serious will happen in your life if you “show your true face to the world.”

On the contrary, you will probably attract, on certain occasions, less superficial people who also feel free to remain natural and live their lives as they wish, without being enslaved by the time their beauty routine demands.

Enjoy life, your life.

You are already beautiful just as you are.

While searching for a picture to go with the article I thought of Gauguin’s painting “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?”. If I could, I’d add to this list of questions, “Are we beautiful enough to be happy?” Because how beautiful we see ourselves, how beautiful others see us, can add to our level of happiness. Or safety. Can we be happy if we do not feel safe?

Nothing is neutral in a woman’s life. Not even beauty.

Beauty is power. We can discuss whether it is just or not, but it is an ancestral reality. And now that I am older and wiser I try to digest what was taught to me about my own beauty. To cut the story long short, in my household I was not allowed to exercise the power of beauty. Chatting with some of the most magnificent creatures I know who happen to be some Albanian mermaid looking girls, they all confirm to me that they too had short hair and looked like boys until at least elementary school.

And when puberty hit I did not have to fight much with pimples, weight obssession or acne. I was truly beautiful, and if the fact I am saying it so openly makes you think “ewww she is so arrogant”, I invite you to explore those feelings, examine them. But then is when my battle to exercise my beauty started. My father would not allow me to pluck my eyebrows, to wear make up, to dress how I wanted. I was a vain creature since birth, that felt like suppression of my truest nature.

I never rebelled as much as to cause a scandal or be able to truly do what I wanted with my beauty. I was the first born child of an immigrant Albanian family. I wore make up from time to time in secret, but then I told myself “I don’t like make up much anyway on me”. I flirted with guys but remained a virgin until 21, I told myself “guys don’t find me attractive anyway”. I went into modeling but always made sure to add “it is to make some extra money for my studies, I study you know? I am smart.”. As if being smart and beautiful were mutually exclusive. I was just trying to come to peace with the fact I was not using all the tools God gave me.

Beauty is not neutral if you are a woman. And I guess my parents knew the power beauty has. One needs to know how to exercise it though, and I am just a tiny bit angry they did not trust me to learn how to master this power. In my family, beauty was seen as vain, as a distraction, as not serious. But beauty is damn serious, it inspires action, it is a vital force, it is transformational. It was frankly a capital I was not taught to use, and I did not invest in it.

Recently, I was talking to Veronica, one of the most beautiful friends I have and she mentioned how she always keeps aloof, with most people. She does it on purpose. And now that I am wiser and older, I know I have in front of me a woman who has learnt how to master her own beauty. To be an ugly woman in this society is very hard, to be a beautiful woman unaware of her beauty is life threatening. When you are ugly less is expected of you, mastery can cover up that. But if you are beautiful without the ability to put boundaries, to discern the intentions of those who approach you is putting yourself in danger.

How would I know? I am beautiful and I wasn’t aware until very late.

That beauty is power is an unspoken truth. Some men hate the power you have on them. Some women hate you for the power you have on men too. It is difficult to be beautiful, if you have no mental strength, if you want so badly to be liked, to be accepted, to belong. Along the way, I met some older women, what I recognize as alternative mother figures I picked up along the way, that prompted me to take more care of my beauty, to tend to it, to dress better, to use this power in essence. I never did. Was it fear? Was it a form of arrogance? I frankly would sometimes go around dressed like a junkie with a passion for heroin. I did not care.

Last year, I started therapy again. My last therapist was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Sometimes I’d cry and I’d joke with her “what would you know Barbara? You are an enchanting creature not a human like the rest of us”. With her I solved my father in my mind and heart. With my new therapist who looks like Kim Rossi Stuart and a mystic at the same time, I have to figure out my mother, a more complicated figure. With him I cannot much escape or be a jester. Yesterday he told me “Lei pensa che essendo bella rischi molto di più vero?”

“Do you think that, given your beauty, you’re at greater risk?”

I realise in retrospect I went to Julie 4 years ago, because I was depressed for a long time, because I felt powerless, because no amount of external validation was enough for me, because I was truly not taking care of myself. Julie I let you know that it took me 4 years to develop a new habit but now I never leave the house without mascara on.

I always have my eyes wide open on the world, I want and feel safe enough for people to notice that I notice a lot too. Thank you Julie! Next step might be lipstick.