Did you see the blemishes in your beauty routine?  Did your makeup need freshening up?  Was your hair out of sorts?

Were you smiling?

All of us have a habitual expression.  It's the expression our face falls into when we are absorbed in a task.  When you are washing dishes, watching television, or even reading your computer screen, your face is composed in a particular expression that is unique to you.

It is very hard for us to actually see that expression.  When we look at ourselves in the mirror, we tend to focus on particular parts of our face, usually the lips, eyes, general skin condition, and hair.  I don't know many women who won't glance in a mirror on a trip to the bathroom to check that their lipstick, eyemakeup, powder, and hair is in order.

What we don't realize is that the most important aspect of our face isn't our makeup.  It's our expression.

When you are tired, no amount of makeup can make your eyes look bright and lively.
When you are sad, no amount of lipgloss can make your lips turn up in a happy picture-perfect bow.
When you are stressed, no amount of foundation can keep the worried wrinkles from showing through.

The powers of makeup are extraordinary, but they can't make us look happy, well-rested, and relaxed if we're tired, stressed, and unhappy.

So take a look in the mirror again.  This time, ask yourself…

Do you look happy? 

Looking happy will make you more beautiful than all the beauty routines in the world.

The times when a woman is most radiant, such as on her wedding day, or when she is about to become a mother, are those times when she is most blissfully happy.

When I think back on the times that men have told me that I am beautiful, it is often when I least expect it, in those moments that we have shared some intimacy and I am completely content and happy to be with him.

When you're happy, you glow.  It's a glow that can't be replicated by makeup, facials, or a summer tan.

To look for evidence of how our inner state affects our facial expressions, look no further than your fellow commuters as you travel to work in the morning.  As I walk through the inner city, I often am amused at how easily I can tell who is looking forward to a good day and who is not.  Those who are in a hurry, with heads down and faces grim, don't invite a second glance.  It is those women sashaying to work, as though on a fantasy catwalk, who draw the eye.  When I see a woman with her head up and a smile on her face, I smile back at her involuntarily and take a second look, trying to guess the reason for her good spirits.

So before you invest in that next beauty treatment, try something new: a beauty treatment for the soul.  Spend some time doing something that makes you feel more peaceful, happier, and more fulfilled.  A walk in a park, a few moments spent sitting quietly in a church, a good deed done for someone, a message read in an inspiring book … there are so many ways that we can beautify the spirit.

Because ultimately your face will change into a wrinkled version of itself, and age will wipe clear those beautiful features that you so carefully drew attention to.  But the beauty that comes from a soul-level peace and joy with life will continue to radiate.

And the next time you look in the mirror, don't feel too fussed about the state of your hair or makeup.  Instead, ask yourself if you look happy, rested, peaceful and content.

I hope your answer will usually be yes.

As a teenager I believed that if I weighed less I'd be loved more.  I knew that the only reason I wasn't as popular as I wished was because I wasn't slender.  I was built like a farm girl: strong and square. 

My belief that my body was responsible for all my social inadequacies didn't inspire me to change anything about how I ate, however.  I still baked batches of warm chocolate chip cookies, drank chocolate milk, and ate appreciatively of my mother's homemade bread drizzled with butter. 

Sally Tisdale's book The Best Thing I Ever Tasted: The Secret of Food discusses how deeply food is engrained in our personal histories.  The foods we were nourished with as a child become an indelible part of our psyche, evoking tastes, scents, and cravings long into adulthoood.

Yet sadly, for so many women, eating is no longer about nourishment.  It has become a secret, dirty pleasure.

When I was a teenager, I put up with my shameful body because I believed that I had no control over my desire to eat.  I tried diets from women's magazines but abandoned them when cold cabbage soup couldn't assuage my emotional hunger.  I despised myself as weak when I reached for cookies for breakfast.  I truly felt that my weight was a red flag to the world, signalling a weak will.

These attitudes were not unique to my teenage self.  They are common in the cult of beauty.  The feelings of shame and guilt about having a body that doesn't reflect our innermost dream about who we are can be torturous and lead us to feel like we are two people: the one who squeezes into ugly clothing, and the one we are in our dreams.

That is why is angers me so much when people (mainly men) tell me, "Overweight people are that way because they choose it.  It's a simple equation: what you gain is what you eat minus what you burn."

Weight is emotional.  The heft of our body can weigh our hearts down.  Images of stick-thin models encourage us to believe that burning away all fat will lighten our spirits until we blissfully drift away.  Our desire for food is heavily influenced by whether we are happy or sad, content or stressed.  Food is our friend and enemy, filling us with the loving remembrance of childhood pleasures and the corresponding guilt of indulgence.

It is tragic how deeply our body image affects our sense of ourselves as sexual creatures.  We've been led to believe that we cannot be attractive or sexy unless we have a certain body type.

Some of us, like myself, were even taught to believe that whether or not people like us is based on our appearance.  Every time a guy we like rejects us, every time we don't get noticed, every time a relationship breaks up, it is tempting to blame it on our bodies.

"If I were more beautiful, he'd still be in love with me.  If I were more beautiful, I'd have men falling over their feet to be with me.  If I were more beautiful, I'd be happier."

Wrong.  This might only be true if we replaced the "If I were more beautiful…" with "If only I loved myself more…"

I have learned to live comfortably and happily in my body no matter what my shape and size, but I know that I will never escape the cultural mandate that punishes women for volputuous, sensuous, natural bodies.

Today, years removed from the chunky figure of my teenage years, I am embarrassed to admit that I am still proud of myself when I lose a few pounds.  The lower number on the scale is like a pat on the back.  In the back of my mind I imagine my mother telling me, "You've done well."

As women, we owe it to one another to stop perpetuating the cult of weight.  What would happen if we all stopped criticizing others for their weight?  Stopped complimenting friends for having lost a few pounds?  Stopped obsessing over dress sizes and diets?  Started enjoying good food, good living, and the wonderful bodies that make it all possible?

I think that the world would be a better place.  

Sometimes it is great to simply act silly and make fun of oneself!  Especially when there's a digital camera around.

I just got my first digital camera five months ago.  Before then, I'd always envied my friends who could whip out their cameras and take a photo at any opportunity.  I was using my film camera less and less as the hassle of dealing with finishing off rolls and taking them in to be developed became too much.  Because I travel often, digital cameras are ideal: digital photos take up no space and can be shared with as many friends as I like.

One lovely woman I know periodically sends inspiring and informative emails to her group of friends, keeping in touch with words and a picture.  At the bottom of her emails, she attaches a picture of herself, usually taken at one of the many events she attends.  Even though she lives across the world, seeing her picture along with her email makes me feel more connected to her.

I've noticed the same phenomenon in internet dating.  Profiles with a picture get many more responses than profiles without a picture.  As the initial emails go back and forth, the profile picture ends up standing in for the real person. When we eventually meet up, if the guy doesn't look exactly like his profile photo (and few do), there's some hesitation and feeling at a loss … even if he's better looking!

Pictures create connections.  I've heard of men who take a digital camera along to all of their dates.  They'll whip out a camera and ask their date to pose with them for a picture.  The act of having one's picture taken with someone else creates a bond.  After the date, these men will email the photos to their date, thanking them for a good time.  If they're lucky, their dates will associate the pictures with a positive experience, one that they'd like to repeat.

Yet pictures aren't all fun and lightness.  The degree of comfort you feel with your picture being taken is a good indication of your degree of body love.  Something about mugging for the camera brings out all of our feelings about our bodies.  Those of us who are embarrassed or uncomfortable about our appearance in some way often shy from the camera, never realizing that the point isn't to take a good photo: it's to simply be in the photo with our friends.  Someday that photo will become an irreplaceable memory.

So take all the pictures you can, while you can, and forget about whether you look silly or are smiling too wide.  Be as unselfconscious as you can, remembering all the time that every click of the camera preserves a memory to be cherished.

What I didn't know then is that most boys grow up.  The hormone-driven stage of youth, made anxious by popularity and social validation, creates entirely different creatures than the mature workplace of later years.

Luckily for women, most men seek entirely different characteristics than boys.  They learn to appreciate emotional warmth, depth, and generous loving.  Although they still turn their heads to watch beautiful women pass, they're mature enough to appreciate a beautiful form without having to possess it.

Not all men grow up, of course.   We all know playboys at the age of 40 who haven't yet learned the pleasure of settling down with one woman.   Those men still tend to be attracted to looks, seeking out what is new, different, and unobtainable.

Yet instead of realizing that immature men are the exception, not the rule, many of us women remain stuck in the high school mentality, believing that ALL men—not just the immature ones—seek nothing more than a pretty face.  We believe that we must dress sexy, look sexy, and act sexy for men to feel attracted to us.  And when our bodies rebel (as not all of us were made to look like models) we bury our heads in despair.  We think that we'll never be able to attract men.

Guess what?  The good news is that although you may be unable to attract immature men (who are focused on superficial appearances above all things) you may be just what a mature man is looking for.

Mature men seek women who are fun to be with, around whom they feel they can be themselves.  The mature man realizes that if he is going to spend the rest of his life with a woman, he needs to have more discerning criteria than good looks.  A woman who is in touch with her body, even though it isn't perfect, is preferable to a woman who goes into hysterics if her hair or clothes aren't perfect.  A woman who is uninhibited, passionate, and loves life is preferable to an aloof, cool woman who lives life on display.

For the man who looks beneath the surface, a woman is an entire package: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.  He must fall in love with all of those parts before he'll invite her to spend a lifetime with him.  What this means for us is that developing ourselves mentally, spiritually, and emotionally is just as important as perfecting our appearance.  What we look like is just a quarter of the entire package.

Best of all, if you start focusing on developing yourself spiritually, mentally, and emotionally, you'll find that you reap enormous personal benefits.  Your life will be happier.  You'll feel more content.  You may even find that male attention seems less important to you.

So the next time that you feel overlooked because of your appearance, or you're having an "ugly" day, just put on your most beautiful smile and realize that the only men who'll be ignoring you are the ones you don't want anyway. 

From a young age, we're taught to dress in a way that makes ourselves look more attractive.  In fact, that's the purpose of clothes, isn't it?  Not just to keep us covered, not just to keep us warm, but to enhance our best features and make us look more appealing to men.

For years, I believed that only three choices were available to me: dress comfortably, dress professionally, or dress sexy.  I dressed comfortably at home.  I dressed professionally at work.  And when I went out, I dressed sexy.

It wasn't until I began to research the male pickup artist scene for a seminar talk that I realized I was missing out entirely on another category.

Dress to be noticed.

This isn't the same as dressing sexy.  Men will notice and feel attracted to a woman who enhances her curves and femininity with the right clothes.  But they will also notice women who play into different fantasies.

Women who dress goth.
Women who dress like prim and proper librarians.
Women who dress like schoolgirls.
Women who dress in Victorian gowns.

Not normal daywear, right?  But that's precisely the reason it stands out.

In the male pickup community, a pickup artist named Mystery pioneered a concept called peacocking. Just as a male peacock attracts attention by its garish fan of luminescent feathers, so a pickup artist will dress in garish, even tacky fashions to draw attention.  Think of platform boots, wigs, fake noserings, leather pants, gaudy shirts.  Think rock star fashion.

It's amazing how many people assume that a man wearing such outrageous fashions must be famous.  At the very least, people are intrigued.  They want to know more about him.  And that's one way the pickup artist attracts so many women.  Women are fascinated by the individual who's not dressed like everyone else in the club.

When I first heard the concept, I was stunned.  So it's not about being attractive?  The most important thing isn't looking good? 

Peacocking works for men.  It's been proven by pickup artists around the world.  The real question for me was: would it work for women? 

So I put it to the test.

I bought a pair of handcuffs and some knee-high black boots.  The first day, I pulled my hair back in a tight ponytail and wore the black boots, a pin-striped miniskirt, a black turtleneck, and the handcuffs clipped on the belt loops so that they'd dangle on my hip.

I got stared at.

I don't think I've ever been checked out that much in one day.

The next day, I wore skinny jeans tucked into the boots with a tight black t-shirt and the handcuffs again clipped on the belt loops.

Fewer stares, but more than a few comments in the hallways of my office building.

Does peacocking work for women?  From my brief experiment, it seems that it might.

Would you help me test this theory?  Try going out one weekend in something that you'd ordinarily never think of wearing.  Think of it like wearing a costume.  Try tight tank tops with camouflage trousers, or horn-rimmed glasses with a figure-revealing turtleneck and hair in a bun.  Pick a male fantasy and play into it.  Be fun and playful, and see what happens.

It might just start a trend.