Is beauty a cult?

Jane Campion’s film ‘Holy Smoke’ starring Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel was released in 1999. The film depicts an American exit counsellor (Keitel) who attempts to deprogram a young Australian woman (Winslet) who has been indoctrinated into a new age cult in India.  

When I saw the film, as a strong-willed and inexperienced 23-year-old, I recall being challenged by the idea that someone could be drawn into a cult without consciously realising it. I also remember being intrigued by the concept of an ‘exit counsellor’ - a specialist who helps individuals leave high-control groups like cults. 

Reflecting on the idea from the vantage point of experience, I see parallels between midlife and the experience of being deprogrammed from a cult.

As women, we spend an exceptional amount of our time, energy and money, wishing, wanting, hoping, striving, trying to be beautiful. It’s something that starts when we are young. 

Beauty is something we are taught to want. It is something we are rewarded for. Beauty is used as evidence of our value.

Given that financial independence was not available to the vast majority of women until the late 20th century, beauty was one of the highest forms of currency.

Marriage was how women survived. Beauty helped them secure their safety.

It has been 42 years since the Federal Sex Discrimination Act was passed in Australia, making it illegal to discriminate based on gender or marital status for any financial product, including credit cards, mortgages and loans. So, why are we still trading in beauty? Who is profiting from this currency?

Beauty is not a universal truth, it’s a cultural construction. 

In modern Western culture, the concept of beauty is constructed, maintained and profited from by the fashion, beauty and wellness industries. They decide what is considered beautiful, package it up and sell it to you, and most of the time you aren’t even aware that it’s happening. 

We are indoctrinated into beauty standards so deeply that they feel like facts. And the ‘facts’ tell you, ‘if you aren’t beautiful, you aren’t valuable’.

But perimenopause doesn’t play by the rules, it chews them up and spits them out. 

The hormonal fluctuations, weight gain, bloating, dry skin, thinning hair, hot flashes and countless other physical changes that come with perimenopause, do not comply with Western culture’s strict beauty standards.

So aging feels like a threat. A threat to your value.

You hear yourself saying things like:

‘The rules I lived by just stopped working overnight’

‘It's like a part of me disappeared’

‘I don't know who I am anymore and that terrifies me’

You try desperately to implement the rules you’ve spent your lifetime following, but Western culture’s beauty playbook no longer applies, even if you want it to. 

You can’t go back, you’ve been expelled from the cult.

The beauty system, like many high-control groups, works by making you believe that your worth is contingent on your compliance. Comply with beauty standards and you will be rewarded with belonging, desirability and a sense of your own value.

When you are expelled from the system, it feels like you have been stripped of your identity, and in many ways you have. Cults don’t set you up to thrive autonomously, they set you up to feel lost without them.

You feel like you have lost your value. You feel like you have lost yourself.

You hear yourself saying things like:

‘I just want to look like ME again’

‘I barely recognize myself in photos now’

‘I’m becoming invisible’

It is disorienting and painful. You feel unprepared for the grief.

The grief isn't just about your changing body, it's the loss of certainty. The loss of a self you recognised. Where did she go and can I get her back?

Alongside the grief, you have a gnawing feeling: ‘I spent years believing I wasn't beautiful enough, and now I can see that I was’ ‘Why did I spend so much time worrying about my weight, I was beautiful’.

The system doesn’t allow you to enjoy your beauty when you are young. It strips you of your confidence. You never feel good enough. 

Midlife shakes you awake.

You start to see the cult for what it is. The moment when the curtain is lifted and you see that the great, powerful Wizard of Oz is just an ordinary man. 

You see through the illusion, and as a result, the illusion disappears.

The embodied style practice

This week I want you to sit with an important question. If I waved a magic wand today, and all the insecurities you have about your body disappeared, how would you feel? 

Sit with it. Imagine it. Feel it. Say it out loud.

How would you move through the world? 

What would you wear? 

This is the reality you deserve. This is the reality you have always deserved. This is the reality you can work towards. 

Midlife brings freedom. 

A chance to meet yourself anew, to forge a different path, to make your own rules, to create your own style. It may not be as simple as clicking your heels, but it’s definitely worth the ride.

Julie x