What Makes Beauty Rituals Beautiful?

Reclaiming Beauty Rituals as Self Care and Connection

By Dr. Suzanne Lange, L.Ac.

Whenever I spent the night at my friend Amber’s house, her mom would braid our hair in the morning. On those mornings, as we all stood in front of her mom’s bathroom mirror, I felt an overwhelming sense of care and lovingness. Mrs Logan would talk to us about her week and ask her daughter about hers. Mrs Logan’s fingers would delicately separate and weave our strands of hair into perfectly smooth french braids. Even at age eight it felt deeply special, and while I couldn’t fully articulate it at the time, it was as if Amber’s mom was weaving together her care and sweetness into those braids. 

Beauty rituals offered, practiced, or received with intention feel special. Genuine attention given to a person's wellbeing and health is about bringing a sense of feeling seen to another person and honoring their innate value, not attempting to “fix’ anything.  Ritual has been viewed as an action that through repetition, becomes sacred. It is rooted in honoring someone or something as inherently sacred. This, to me, is the true essence of any ritual, including beauty rituals. I am well aware of just how problematic the whole notion of a beauty ritual is; the Eurocentric beauty standards, the ageism, the sexism, the gender violence, and on and on, that can be embedded in and surround many of what is ostensibly called beauty practices, but I hold that this can change. Through care and ritual we not only give a person permission to take up space, but an invitation for that person share their most authentic and beautiful self.

It is easy to forget all the privileges of growing old and becoming an elder. This is not to say growing older does not have its challenges, it can and most certainly has for me. Between being inundated with hormone disruptors, pollution, pandemics, struggles, losses, and more, aging can feel particularly harsh sometimes. 

I, myself, started feeling as if I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. I felt what I had weathered was showing on my face in a way I had never experienced before.

Then I found myself in an Integrative microneedling  course. It felt different for me,  and although a little intense in moments, I also felt extremely nurtured and cared for throughout the treatment.  I began to understand its origins in the classical techniques of Plum Blossom needling and the principles of East Asian Medicine. And just as certain acupuncture points, treatment, and herbs are designed to help us expel through the exterior what is causing us imbalance at a deeper level, microneedling the face is designed to treat the interior health.  It also has been said in classical Chinese texts that treating the face directly impacts the Shen or the spirit - the emotional self. The Shen can be seen in the face and eyes which explains the calm and centering I felt a few days after the treatment.

Of course, microneedling is not for everyone and there should be no pressure to feel a need to look younger or different than we do, but we all need to be cared for and we all need to be shown that others both recognize our innate worth and support us in sharing that beauty in the world.

Moving into this new year, and likely some challenging times collectively, how will you embrace and embody your worth and allow yourself to be nurtured? Because each of us are deserving of nurturing, care and intention.