Are you fighting your greatest style asset?

Last week, while out on an early morning walk, the sound of ‘Helplessly Hoping', the Crosby, Stills and Nash classic, made its way into my ear buds.

It's hard to think of a more beautiful example of harmonising voices. Their vocals seem to weave around each other, part ways, dance, then come back together, melting into one.

In music, harmony refers to the sound of two or more distinct notes heard simultaneously. When the notes sound pleasing and beautiful together, it is called consonance. When they sound tense and clashing, it’s called dissonance.

Harmony creates the emotional mood of the music.

Style does the same thing for us.

The Approval System has taught women to believe that the way they look is faulty. That their colouring, their features, their body is wrong and needs to be corrected. That we aren’t thin enough, toned enough or smooth enough. That our hair isn’t shiny enough, our teeth aren’t white enough and our skin isn’t flawless enough.

So we dye, spray, pull, push and squeeze ourselves into the form that’s accepted. Not the form that is us.

We create dissonance.

I remember in the late 80s everyone wanted a perm. Not just any perm, a spiral perm. If you didn’t have naturally curly hair, you ensured that the hairdresser created it. Regardless of how it actually looked on you.

I have always lamented my fine, fluffy hair that is curly underneath and straight on top. My friend is constantly doing battle with her naturally tight ringlets, while another one complains that her sleek straight hair has no volume.

Curly, coily, frizzy, straight, textured, wavy, kinky, fine, thick.

Whatever you have, make it different.

The same pattern is evident for every part of our bodies. Since the early 2000s, celebrities have been normalising perfectly even, perfectly straight, brilliant white teeth. No one has that naturally, so it has to be created. Regardless of how it actually looks on you.

At its most extreme, surgery that makes parts of your body bigger or smaller, depending on the trend of the day, no longer seems outrageous. It’s everywhere. Regardless of how it actually looks on you.

Women are not taught to be in harmony with themselves.

We are taught to be at war with ourselves. To battle all the things that make us unique, that make us stand out, that make us truly beautiful.

During an interview in 1988, Audrey Hepburn was asked if she ever wanted to look different. ‘Oh yes’, she replied. ‘Of course I wanted to have more shape’.

Audrey Hepburn wanted to look different.

Audrey Hepburn.

I simply can’t imagine women with luscious curves like Beyonce and Christina Hendricks looking sharp and straight. Or women with dramatic angularity like Tilda Swinton and Grace Jones looking soft and curved.

Their natural physicality is what makes them distinctive.

It’s what makes them beautiful.

It’s what makes them, them.

What would happen if you were to lean into your own beauty instead of fighting against it? If you were to compose your own harmonies? If you were to create a style that is the perfect accompaniment to your colouring, your features and your body?

If you were to create consonance.

The embodied style practice

This week, I want you to identify one thing about your appearance that you have been fighting. Your hair, your complexion, your body's natural shape. Something you have been trying to correct, conceal or change.

Now ask yourself, what would it feel like to harmonise with this instead?

Not to love it immediately, not to perform acceptance you don't yet feel, just to stop fighting it and allow it to be.

Instead of trying to curl your straight hair or straighten your curly hair, instead of softening your angles or sharpening your roundness. What would it feel like to allow yourself to be, just as you are?

When your style harmonises with you, something beautiful happens. You emerge, fully and completely. Your style supports the essence of you. It weaves around you, parts ways, dances, then comes back and you melt into one.

You are not separate from your style.

You are the melody and your clothes are the harmony. Two notes heard simultaneously that sound distinctively like you.

Julie x