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Can you tell us more about The Beauty Bean—what is it all about?
The Beauty Bean (www.TheBeautyBean.com) is an online women’s magazine that provides women with a place to get their beauty, fashion, and fitness fix in a way designed to subtly make them feel better about themselves. We’re all about sharing the latest runway trends, fitness tips, and healthy recipes, but do so in a way designed to promote self-confidence and make women appreciate their Real Beauty.
What inspired you to create The Beauty Bean?
I was working in editorial while getting my masters in women’s studies at Columbia and was at the bizarre crossroads of trying to decide whether to go into the fashion world or join the Peace Corps. I ended up writing my graduate school thesis on women’s magazines and their influence on body image and eating disorders and realized then that women deserve a place to get their beauty and fashion information in a way that makes them feel better about themselves. Having suffered with an eating disorder myself, it took me a long time to realize that self-confidence is a women’s rights issue that is as essential as any other. If women don’t treat their own bodies with love and respect we can’t ask others to treat our bodies with love and respect either – and I wanted to do something to about it. So, I decided to launch The Beauty Bean as an online destination for women who want in on all the latest tips, tricks, and trends in fashion, beauty, fitness and wellness – but don’t want to feel shitty about themselves in the process.
What does “healthy” mean to you?
Being healthy means listening to your body and treating it with love and respect.
With women and girls constantly being bombarded with unrealistic images of beauty, what is your top advice in maintaining a healthy body image?
The #1 tip I always tell women is to throw away your scale! Not only does your weight not provide any information of value (it doesn’t tell you how healthy, fit, pretty, or strong you are!) but also there is absolutely no reason to pin your happiness to an arbitrary number every morning. I also think it’s really important to remind yourself that the vast majority of images you see in the media are pieces of art – they’re not real representations of women. As Cindy Crawford once famously said, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford!” With professional lighting, top photographers, expert makeup artists and computer manipulation, the images you see in magazines and on billboards are nothing more than computer generated designs – they are not indicative of Real Beauty as it exists in the real world, so you can’t compare yourself to that. It’s sometimes hard to remember, but if you can remind yourself that comparing yourself to a model on the cover of a magazine is just as silly as comparing yourself to a cartoon character it’s a bit easier to maintain sanity.
Can you tell us more about Makeup Free Mondays? Where did you come up with the idea and what is the goal?
Makeup Free Mondays is a viral movement I started to promote Real Beauty. By encouraging women to forgo makeup on Mondays, I hope more women will come to appreciate the things that really make them beautiful – and it’s not a swipe of the latest lipstick or a dab of concealer. Ultimately though, Makeup Free Mondays is about promoting self-confidence and encouraging women to see the Real Beauty within. The goal is to bring women back to the point where they appreciate makeup for what it is (fun, glamorous), but don’t define their beauty by it – I am always brought back to the idea that all women, at some point in their lives, tried on bright lipstick for the first time and thought “this is fun, but it doesn’t look like me,” yet for many women today, they look in the mirror first thing in the morning without makeup on and think that their fresh-faced reflection doesn’t “look like them” because they haven’t yet “put on their faces.” Makeup should be appreciated for what it is, but it doesn’t define you or your beauty – that’s what Makeup Free Mondays is all about.
What are some small things that you do daily or weekly to make yourself feel beautiful? Any tips for other women?
I never weigh myself, exercise almost daily and eat really healthfully. For me, breaking a sweat and feeding my body well makes me feel beautiful. One more thing I often encourage women to do, is to start the day with a compliment. So often we wake up and immediately start criticizing ourselves (our hair is too flat/frizzy, our jeans are too tight, our skin is too dull/red/pimply/saggy, etc.) but if you just start the day with a single compliment to yourself, you set a positive tone for the whole day ahead.
Concerned with the focus many beauty magazines and websites place on unrealistic body ideals and weight, Alexis launched The Beauty Bean to provide women with a glamorous beauty site with an unparalleled focus on inner-beauty and health. With the hope of showing women that beauty isn’t a number on a scale but is instead about beautifying, nourishing, pampering, sweating, and lusting, The Beauty Bean brings together Alexis’s love for beauty and fitness, as well as her desire for all women to feel beautiful and confident.Find more inspiration and follow Alexis's blog over at The Beauty Bean!
