Little girls below the age of 10 spend very little time on their looks. In fact, they don’t care how they look. They just want to know that their clothes are beautiful enough to make them happy and not feel intimidated by those of other kids. But as they grow older, they begin to see new horizons of what beauty entails. Trying out new methods of making up their faces and body to look the best, however, you can easily figure out their naivety at such an early age.
The importance women place on beauty can be emphasized by the survey statistics conducted on Indonesian women in 2019. This survey showed the ages at which young women try their first treatment at a beauty clinic and when they started using skincare products. The results revealed that 40.6 per cent of respondents claimed to try out their first treatment at a beauty clinic between the ages of 19 and 23 years, and also, the average Indonesian woman started using skincare products within the same age range.
But what appears to be a sudden surge in interest to look good suddenly begins to drop down again after marriage. Actually, no one says you must stay beauty conscious forever but the manner with which it happens in some women; who suddenly lose interest in looking good immediately after meeting their dream man and settling with him, is really alarming. And one would be wondering, why the sudden loss of interest in looking good?
There are so many factors that may make a woman lose interest in her beauty after successfully securing marriage and I will try to list a few in this post. The aim of this is to secure the understanding as to why a woman would suddenly give up on her looks after marriage and to find ways to make her see the importance of looking good thereafter.
Alright, let’s see some reasons why some women stop paying attention to their looks after getting married.
Why Some Women Stop Paying Attention to Looks After Marriage
- Marriage was her one and only goal
- Low self-esteem
- Assuming new identity
- The feeling of discouragement about new body changes
- Lack of knowledge of attraction psychology
Marriage was her one and only goal
It has to estimate that 44 per cent of American women do not like to leave their homes without makeup on. So, why do women wear makeup?
Research by the International Journal of Cosmetic Science revealed that there are two basic reasons why women wear makeup depending on their psychological profiles.
- Camouflage: Anxious and insecure women tend to use makeup more to conceal their identity.
- Seduction: Women who want to be noticeably more attractive tend to use makeup more to be more confident, sociable, and assertive.
To achieve these two aims, the makeup would need to be patterned differently ranging from dull-concealing to bright, bold, and very colourful ones. But as far as this psychology is concerned, we now see that the primary reason why women of marriageable age attain a peak in their business of looking and staying beautiful is for seduction, that is to gain attraction to potential suitors/male partners.
But the bottom line is, one of the key reasons why an average woman does makeup is to look attractive to beholders but there comes a problem with this after marriage if that was all she needed her beauty for. As you will see later, you will understand that there is more to beauty for a woman than just finding a marriage partner, which of course, is equally important.
Low Self-esteem or Loss of Self-esteem
As we saw earlier, insecure women would tend to use makeup to conceal their identity in the early years. However, women with low self-esteem generally tend to give up on their beauty, especially after marriage. There is a strong association between female social esteem and makeup.
Women rate other women who wear makeup as more powerful and dominant. This goes on to mean that women who simply don’t want to be seen as powerful or dominant would resort to abandoning their desire to look good, especially after using it as a mere means to their end to secure their mate for marriage.
Many a time, a loss of self-esteem after marriage is experienced when there are obvious variations in the expectations of the woman for marriage. Her expectations for herself and her family may be so grandiose and great that she is unable to manage the outcomes when the marriage turns out to be far from what she expected or wished for.
But just like you may have already known, self-esteem is not something anyone gives to you, it is not something anything gives to you although people and things around can enhance how much of it you have, rather, it is the esteem you give yourself.
If loss of self-esteem is probably the reason why you have given up on your desire to look good, you will see more reasons shortly why self-esteem is not something you should let go of so easily.
Assuming New Identity
Usually, as people age, there is a change of phase from youthfulness to adulthood. Marriage is one such thing that causes a drastic change in identity in individuals. Society automatically places married people into a separate class different from the class of bachelors and spinsters.
However, this new social identity also confers on the individuals some behavioural changes and physical requirements. Married women are no more allowed to live certain lifestyles and the dressing-up requirements change accordingly.
This new identity also makes ‘some recklessness’ permissible as long as the husband has not seen anything bad with it. For example, lactating women are allowed to breastfeed in the general public, whereas, we all know that any visibility of the breasts at earlier ages and before marriage is considered a sexually-stimulating sign when those women were yet unmarried.
This freedom of a new identity where society cares less about her beauty because she is already married can make her stop paying attention to how she looks after marriage. But what you would soon realize is that it may be less but society still does care about your looks as a woman.
The Feeling of Discouragement About Body Changes
If you have ever been through pregnancy or you know someone who has, you will know that the body changes that occur after this period can be very dramatic. People and society generally find skinny and curvy more attractive. A well-known explanation as to why that happens is based on the hypothesis that men favour skinnier and curvy figure-8 women because those features are more consonant with childbearing whereas hourglass or figure-8 ladies are seen to be better suited to have an uncomplicated childbearing process(es).
However, we soon realize that none of those explanations explains how that makes men love those features more but importantly, it is an evolutionary process that has hard-wired the attraction for those features in the men and possibly expresses them in some women at random. Not as though, the others are unlucky but it is worth knowing that some other attributes are considered beautiful as well and no one is going to be left out on all of them.
But no matter how beautifully built a woman is, a few years after marriage after giving birth to one or a few more children, the body changes so much that it would require more work to stay at best close to how it used to be before marriage and childbirth.
Some women can get discouraged and become careless about their looks when they realize that no matter how much they try, they just won’t get back into shape. Hence, the loss of their desire to look good after marriage.
Lack of Knowledge of Attraction Psychology
Attraction psychology has its anchor in the terminology of “Interpersonal attraction which is traditionally defined in social psychology as a positive attitude or evaluation regarding a particular person, including the three components conventionally ascribed to attitudes: behavioural (tendency to approach a person), cognitive (positive beliefs about the person), and affective (positive feelings for the person)” – International Encyclopaedia of the Social & Behavioural Sciences, 2001.
Physical attraction is influenced by beauty, scents, behaviour, etc. And when a woman lacks this knowledge of the psychology of attraction, she easily gives up trying to look good for her husband. No matter how much you may have changed as a post-partum woman (the woman that has given birth to at least one child), you can still make your husband find you attractive by a conscious effort to keep clean, smell well, and act mature and rational.
The latter point of acting rational is quite important to state because many women are easily overwhelmed by the burden of child-bearing that they forget about everything else around them. They can afford to leave their hair unkempt and simply flow with the buzzing life that motherhood brings.
However, she must find time to regain herself and takes the best care she can afford. We will look at the importance of this later.
In essence, we see a situation where marriage and childbearing tend to take away women’s sense of personal beauty and self-identity. But that is not what it was supposed to be. Maybe many factors make it to be this way but marriage should enhance a woman’s pride and self-dignity rather than taking away her desire to look her best at all times.
One major factor that makes a woman stop paying attention to her look after marriage is the inability to manage expectations. Before marriage, women have some expectations as to how they want their marriage and future family. Some of these expectations relate to finances, body images, social class, etc. And when things go differently, if she is not able to manage these variations from their expectations, she may just lose it altogether. But the basic principle of managing expectations is to focus more on what you have than what you do not.
At this point, let us look at some reasons why you must pay attention to your looks and beauty.
Why Should You Pay Attention To Your Beauty?
- Keep your man attracted
- Advance one’s career
- Great family coordination
- Good social and physical development of the children
- To promote one’s health
Keep Your Man Attracted
Making efforts to stay beautiful and attractive pays off a lot. It gets your husband’s interest in you continually heightened. Apart from the fact that being beautiful appeals to the eyes of your husband, the very knowledge that you are conscious about looking your best would stimulate your man’s interests and keep them loving you.
On the other hand, when you give up on yourself and self-beauty, your man could perceive this as total hopelessness in life in general. This may make him lose his attraction to you.
Your man deserves to be happier each new day he spends with you. Just like he wants to be your best, he does not want to see that your life is falling apart when he looks at you. That could be a discouragement to him about being with you or his ambitions.
You may not have gotten all your expectations met but there is always hope for the future. Displaying an attitude of self-care and not giving up on your self-beauty will drive your husband to be more industrious so that all your collective needs are met.
A happy and joyful disposition of a woman is a supernatural strength to his man. If she keeps paying attention to her looks and maintains them happy and joyful disposition, she gets more support and assistance than if she outrightly shows the whole world how fed up she is.
Advance One’s Career
The desire to look beautiful goes hand-in-hand with self-confidence and self-esteem. Women with high self-esteem are capable of managing their lives to their maximum potential. They are more passionate about pursuing their dreams and fulfilling their professional targets in their life.
The relationship between self-esteem and personal achievements may not look so direct, but the results of research work carried out in Kwara State, Nigeria among college women, and published in the Nigerian Journal of Guidance and Counselling Vol. 8 showed that college women who imbibe the spirit of hard work (which can influence competence on tasks) and disregard worry, fear, and anxiety (which influence low self-esteem) have a higher level of achievement motivation to succeed than those who allow worries to take away their self-esteem. Self-esteem is very important as far as success and achievements are concerned, and you know what? Self-esteem in a woman reflects in how she treats herself and her beauty.
Great Family Coordination
The first point of call for the growing children is the home. The first people they will encounter at a very close distance are their parents. The way a mother takes care of herself and how she looks goes a long way to influence how her children, especially her female children, would take care of themselves.
Also, in the same way a negative signal is sent to the brain of the husband when his wife refuses to look her best, such negative signals are sent to the developing brains of the children. This can produce effects of varying severity on the children’s development ranging from abnormal behavioural patterns to irresponsibility to their environment, personal beauty, and hygiene. On the severe extremes, the children can develop anti-moral behaviour that society frowns upon.
Thus, as simple as ignoring your looks as a woman may seem, it can result in grossly devastating effects if not dealt with, and on time.
Good Social and Physical Development of the Children
I’ve already talked about this a great deal in the previous sub-heading. Displaying an attitude that shows that you are confident about life and what lies ahead not only boosts your self-esteem but also enhances the good social and physical development of your children. Why stay gloomy, depressed, and hopeless about life when you can live your best happy life that will, in turn, reflect positively on how your children perceive life too?
A positive and happy mindset creates a conducive environment for your children’s nurture and also it enhances how well you make judgments about inter-personal conflicts and competing choices/decisions in the home. A simple example is when a hopeless woman who has given up on everything including her God-given beauty, slams inappropriately at her children for wrongs that do not warrant such treatments.
To Promote One’s Health
The World Health Organisation(WHO) in its definition of health included social and mental well-being as some of the major components of health. Apart from the aspect of biological well-being or physical well-being, which describes a state when body functions are not affected by diseases and illnesses, mental and social well-being form a great part of the overall concept of well-being.
Amongst the other components, being mentally and socially strong is one such quality that you can markedly control. And this can be possible when you maintain a positive attitude about life. Some of life’s unfavourable conditions, alongside some unmet expectations, can threaten to steal away your vibes, energy, and your desire to stay beautiful always but you must consciously stay determined to never let them get in the way of your commitment to your own body.
Maintaining a sense of personal pride helps you lead healthy lifestyles. You can show this in how you care about every part of your being, your looks, your food and drinks, your body, soul, and mind. When you stop paying attention to your looks, that is usually the first sign that you are becoming emotionally and/or mentally unstable but this you can prevent when you keep your pride in your inner and external beauty before and after marriage.
Caring for oneself is an act of survival. A woman must learn to lighten up herself and maintain her emotions. Some women believe there is no need to care for their beauty after marriage. They are busier and more occupied after marriage and the birth of a few kids but they prefer to wear their exhaustion as a badge of honour as if to announce to the whole world how tired they are.
Your body is important, yes it is. The truth may not always sound great but it saves you a lot. Our bodies are the gardens to which our wills are gardeners. If your compassion does not include yourself, then it is incomplete. People will care for you only when you make them know that caring for you is important. This you do by caring for yourself.
A woman’s advice to every married woman out there is that they should try as much as possible to retain the sense of personal worth and spirit of self-interest in looking as beautiful as she has always been even before she got married. These efforts will always be worth it in the end.
Contributor
Maureen Ona-Igbru, Nigeria
Take home: Women need to continue caring for their body. Thanks for this.