Beauty from the outside in

This evening I'm thinking about beauty.

We are taught that it's what's on the inside that counts. If you're a good person with golden insides, it doesn't matter what's on the outside. When people get to know you, they learn what sort of person you are, and how you look is merely superficial.

It's a nice philosophy. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the first judgement we made about someone was based on the person inside, rather than the clothes they wore and outside appearance they assumed?

But what this line of thinking fails to take into account is what superficial creatures human beings fundamentally are.

You see somone before you have a chance to get to know them. By that I mean you clap eyes on a person's appearance and there it is - a judgement is made.

It's not necessarily always a bad judgement. But it's there nonetheless, and is not based on what a philanthropist you are, or your high moral standards, or whatever else gives you your golden insides. It's based on how you look.

I think that instead of railing against this, we should just accept that this is how human beings function. And look our best.

When you look good, you feel good. You work better and feel better about yourself. I have learnt this through experience.

While I was travelling in Australia, I slummed it appearance wise, to put it mildly. I gained about two stone in weight and I shaved my head because I was so sick of sweating.

It was so liberating to do this. I'd recommend doing it at least once before you die.

Anyway, it looked OK when I had my slap on and went to town with the eyeliner. However, during the day when I was spotty, sweaty and bloated I basically looked like a convict.

When the hair started to grow back, things rapidly went downhill. The black hair dye grew out and I was reminded that my natural colour is an unremarkable dirty brown. It grew back at different angles, and I quickly started to resemble a scrubbing brush.

My weight soon ballooned and I became more and more fed up with my appearance. I was having a great time travelling. But looking back, feeling rubbish about my appearance changed the way I felt and acted.

I lost a lot of confidence because I just didn't feel pretty or sexy (and let's face it, I didn't look it, either). My boyfriend at the time, Mark, was really supportive and reassured me that I was still attractive to him. But I just felt like someone else. Every time I looked in the mirror, I thought "Ugh. Who is that minger?"

This makes me sound very shallow. But human beings are. The way I looked was making me feel low because I wasn't happy with it.

I was sick of never glamming up, not being able to wear make-up because of the sweltering heat and covering my belly by tying my hoodie round it.

As soon as I got back from my travels, I started eating healthily and working out every day. I dyed my hair black the day we arrived back on UK soil and rejoiced as I smudged kohl pencil round my eyes and smeared my chops in gloss.

God, did I feel better almost straightaway. The impact of my appearance on how I felt about myself was brought home to me when I started work (I temped over the summer in various offices).

There's something about getting up in the morning, having a shower and putting on make-up that sets me up for the day. I feel refreshed and ready to face the world.

It's nothing to do with putting on a 'front'. Well, maybe it is - but it's not a lie about who I am. It's just making myself look the best I can and feeling a whole lot better for it.

Going into the office every day made up, losing weight and in smart clothes, I quickly started to feel more like my old self - confident, bubbly and happy with who I am.

There are some who regard looking good without make-up as the benchmark for whether you are 'genuinely' attractive or not. I think this is tosh. It's nothing to do with how genuine it is - it's how good the final product looks. I wear make-up not because I think I look hideous without it (actually, it depends on the night before) but because I look better with it.

Baudelaire said in one of his essays that rather than making do with what nature gives you, make-up is brilliant for women because it allows you to improve and enhance what you were born with. I couldn't agree more.

I'm not saying you have to wear make-up to look your best. I know lots of women who genuinely prefer the bare-faced look, and wear it very well. But I'm talking about the whole package: what you wear, how your shoes make you walk with a stride in your step and the confidence the whole thing brought together produces.

These days, if I'm working from home, say revising, I always work better if I get up and put a reasonably decent outfit on and, of course, my war paint. If I roll out of bed and work in my pyjamas, I feel grotty and don't work as well. Maybe it's just me. But I think we should all come off it when we say beauty's only skin-deep.

Of course, if you're a horrible person, it becomes clear to others, no matter what you look like. Similarly, if you are simply lovely this also shines through. But my point is this: looking better helps you feel better. And whatever sort of person you are becomes a little better because you have confidence and self-esteem.

I'm off to powder my nose.