I am a fan of fashion and beauty magazines, I always have been. So, when the ice storm hit this week-end, I curled up with a few of my favorites to see which new tricks or tips or ideas I could pick up.
For you editors out there, I read the editor letters. So, as I perusing one of my favorite magazines, New Beauty and reading the editor’s (Yolanda Yoh Bucher) letter on “The Power of Perception”, part of the letter really struck me. I kept going back to the phrase she used “Attractiveness Halo”, a phrase used to describe the concept that people who “look good” get preferential treatment.
I couldn’t help but think what this phrase, this concept means for cancer patients. She referenced studies that support this concept, though I suspect women going through cancer know this concept intuitively. Without ever hearing the coined phrase before “attractiveness halo”, isn’t that part of what is so horrible with cancer? It is not just the disease but what the treatments do to our physical appearance; loss of hair, eyebrows and eyelashes, dry flakey skin, puffiness from steroids. Whatever “attractiveness halo” we had seems to disappear along with our hair when we go through treatments.
The editor went on to speak of how much of our physical appearance fuels our personality and how we feel about ourselves. She referenced the studies that demonstrate that “how you look has the ability to boost your confidence and up your energy levels.” Again, something that cancer patients know intuitively, I believe. I think of the importance of having a positive attitude as you fight your cancer and how very difficult that is to do when you combine how you feel with the dramatic physical changes you experience.
I wrote the book Living Like A Lady When You Have Cancer in part to offer some tips and tricks to help a woman facing cancer look and feel her best. My perspective was that if you looked as well as you could, you would feel better about yourself and that positive attitude would help as you fought the disease.
In the book, I also speak of being radiant and the idea that radiance begins on the inside. Being radiant meant sharing your inner beauty, those things that cancer cannot take from you, your smile, a loving look, a gentle touch. Perhaps it can be said that your individual radiance is your own, unique attractiveness halo. Just my two cents….
Be Radiant, my friends.
