Here is an easy way for you to celebrate what makes you beautiful -you will even be entered in a drawing for great prizes! To enter the uncontest all you need to do is create your own Inner Beauty Mirror.

When we look in a regular mirror we just see our outward appearance –it isn’t anywhere near all of who we are as people.

In this uncontest we challenge you to create a different mirror, the Inner Beauty Mirror. This mirror reminds you who you are and shows all the things you care about, all the things you are proud of, and all the things you do.

This is an Uncontest because no one is going to be judged. There won’t be votes to choose a winner. We are all uniquely beautiful and we all win when we can see our own true beauty and enjoy it without comparing ourselves to someone else. All entries will be checked for completeness. Then the completed entries will be entered into a prize drawing.  Names will be randomly chosen and prizes given.

List of Prizes: iTouch with the Beauty Mirror For Girls Application, 1 year subscription to New Moon Girls, and more prizes to come!

Who can participate? Girls of all ages.

Entry Rules:

Here’s what you do:

Write 7 short statements that describe your inner beauty, all of the things that make you uniquely beautiful. You can write about your characteristics, your accomplishments, things that make you happy, helpful things you do, how you believe in yourself and take care of yourself, your heritage, all the things that make you great. You want to write statements that light you up inside when you read them and they make you feel good about yourself.

The 7 statements are your personal inner beauty mirror. Now you can create a short video of yourself reading the statements and watch it every day. Or you can make yourself a nice card or poster of your statements that you can read every day.

The next step is to watch or read your Inner Beauty Mirror everyday for ten days; you may want to keep a personal journal to write in each day. At the end of the ten days you will write a short story about you the experience. Below are more details on the uncontest.

And remember, you are beautiful.

Video Participants:

1. Create your 7 statements/ sentences.

2. Turn the statements into a 2-4 minute video, be creative and artistic! You can be in the video or not, you can use art, music, objects, etc. Just make sure to say or write out all of your 7 statements in the video. Safety reminder: the videos will be posted on NewMoonGirls.com so you can’t say your last name or any information about your school or where you live. If you do, the video isn’t able to be in the Uncontest.

3. Watch your video Every Day for ten days!

4. Then write a 250 to 500 word story about the Inner Beauty Mirror: what you did, what you learned, how it made you feel, what you liked, didn’t like, what was difficult, if you plan to watch the video in the future, if the Inner Beauty Mirror may help you not say judging things about yourself or others.

5. The Inner Beauty Mirror UnContest is from April 1-30 2011, please submit your entry here www.newmoon.com

Card/Poster Participants:

1. Create your 7 statements / sentences

2. Make a card or poster with the 7 statements written out, you can decorate your card or poster however you like. You can use the Beauty Mirror iPhone App to create 7 beauty slides, and review them daily on your iPhone, iPad, or iTouch.

3. Read the card/ poster Every Day for ten days!

4. Then write a 250 to 500 word story about the Inner Beauty Mirror: what you did, what you learned, how it made you feel, what you liked, didn’t like, what was difficult, if you plan to watch the video in the future, if the Inner Beauty Mirror may help you not say judging things about yourself or others.

5. The Inner Beauty Mirror UnContest is from April 1-30 2011, please submit your entry here www.newmoon.com

The Inner Beauty Mirror Uncontest is the result of a collaboration by New Moon Girls and Beauty Mirror iPhone App.  It is our goal to work together in supporting girls to see how beautiful and powerful they are.

I am now working on a Inner Beauty Uncontest for girls that will launch in April 2011.  When that ends I hope to post pieces written by the girls who participate.  Until then this blog will be inactive.  Thank you for reading and I hope to have more to share in a few months.

This piece is from Elizabeth Patch’s More to Love website.  Along with regular posts such as the one we are sharing today she has beautiful drawings that she calls: Positive art for the plus size majority.  In this piece she makes a great point about monitoring how we talk about ourselves.  I like the thigh and eye connection and am going to see if I can correct myself by saying ” I have beautiful eyes and thighs.”

No Apologies
I don’t apologize
for the color of my eyes.
I open them wide and see rainbows.

I don’t apologize
for the curve of my thighs.
I kick up my heels and go dancing!

from More to Love,
© Elizabeth Patch, all rights reserved

Think about your eyes.

Have you ever whined about your eyes
while shopping for a new outfit?
Been depressed because your eyes are bigger
than eyes in fashion magazines?
Avoided an intimate relationship because you didn’t want
someone looking at your naked eyes?

Probably not…

But what about those thighs of yours?
Let’s substitute “thighs” for “eyes” in the questions above:
Have you ever whined about your thighs while shopping for a new outfit?
Been depressed because your thighs are bigger than thighs in fashion magazines?
Avoided an intimate relationship because you didn’t want someone looking at your naked thighs?

Oh yeah…

Think about this:
Isn’t it a just a tiny bit ridiculous to apologize for any part of your body?

Let’s stop apologizing, and put those amazing thighs to use:
Go Dancing! (or whatever else our one-of-a-kind bodies can do!)

Is there something about yourself that you automatically apologize for?
Your body, your hair, your weight, your clothes?
Start to notice if it pops up in conversation.
See if you can change the way you talk about yourself.
And gently remind a girlfriend that she doesn’t have to apologize for herself either!

BTW: The phrase “You don’t have to apologize for your size” is the subtitle for a great book on size acceptance
by Marilyn Wann, “Fat!So?”

speaking of eyes: human eye colors We really do come in all shapes, sizes & colors!

Remember when your daughter was a toddler and went straight for the sweets at any sort of holiday gathering? At the time, it was probably sort of cute and funny.

As she gets older, keeping a balance with all of the amazing holiday foods can be a challenge for everyone. It’s really a no-brainer that neither over-indulging nor depriving yourself during the holidays is celebratory.

But just because it’s a no-brainer doesn’t mean that our brains will follow the logical path. Bombarded with unrealistic, “perfect” images in movies, TV and advertising, almost every girl and woman has serious trouble feeling good, or even okay, about her body. And during the holidays with so many different and attractive foods around, we feel a lot of conflicting feelings. We want to enjoy the food but we also feel guilty, afraid of fat; even ashamed if we don’t have

“willpower” to deny ourselves some treat.

As parents we’re vulnerable to our own food and eating “demons.” And we have the added fear that we might not be guiding our daughter in the best way as she develops her food and eating habits and beliefs.

With all that in mind, here are some tips to help ourselves and show her how to fully enjoy special foods during the holidays without feeling guilty, ashamed, or out of control.

1. Don’t talk about “all the weight I’m gaining” this season. When someone else starts that of conversation, firmly change the topic. Resist the stampede of body hatred conversations. Get rid of the scale in your house.
2. In normal conversations include positive, respectful comments about YOUR body (not just her body) and what it does. “My kickboxing class is so much fun!” “I think I need a walk to clear my thoughts.”
3. Be Mindful. At holiday gatherings really pay attention to what you most want. What I really want is to feel close to loved ones and feel warm and secure. Food is part of those feelings but it’s not all of them.!
4. Look forward to the meal or event and talk about it in positive terms. “I wonder if grandpa is bringing homemade bread again? I hope so!” If you have a bite of something you don’t like, you don’t have to finish it. Focus on enjoying the sensation of each bite and flavor. Show your joy and compliment the cook.
5. Remember that our daughters will “do what we do, not what we say.” Eat normally before the big meals or events. Don’t deprive yourself earlier in the illusion that it will then “be okay” if you overeat later.

Sexy is a way of thinking. The following tips will help to increase your self-awareness and self-confidence and make feeling sexy a way of life!

When it comes to feeling sexy it’s not just about what you wear, it’s all about self-awareness. There are subtle, everyday things you can use to increase your self-awareness and discover your inner hedonist.

Use the following tips everyday to focus on your body and learn how sexy feels!

So, last night, amidst dealing with my poopy schmoopy lack-o-Christmas spirit attitude, this Fruit of the Loom commercial comes on and my mind is thrown in an entirely new direction. I found myself focused more on society and our poor opinion of what it takes to be beautiful.

Before I talk about that, though, there are a few other things I need to say: let me start by mentioning that I’ve been noticing a plethora of comments on the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show on Facebook and Twitter as of late. Comments which mostly touch on how beautiful all of the girls looked, which is perfectly fine–they are beautiful women, hence the reason people hired them to become V.S. Angels. What’s bothersome to me is the fact that every single one of them looked the same…and no one pays attention to that creepy detail. Okay, maybe they weren’t wearing the same outfits and their hair/skin-tones/ethnicities differed, but in regards to their shape? All. The. Same. Newsflash: In the real world, most people do not look the same. There are countless shapes and sizes…all of which are beautiful in their own way.

(The woman at the end of the video even admits that “ordinary women can’t fit into these clothes -surely she counters her statement by saying that the show is stunning and blah blah blah, out when a superstar admits the same thing you’re thinking, you know something’s up!)

That being said, when the new Fruit of the Loom commercial came on last night, displaying women of EVERY body type, I was incredibly pleased. I wish I could find the commercial so I could share it on here, but it hasn’t been posted yet. Let me just say that it was fabulous. It started out with a girl who looked like your typical model, then moved onto a woman with a more realistic body-type (a few more curves), continued on with another curvier body type, and ended with a wonderfully plump and confident gal. It showed every body type and it made each of those women look that much more beautiful! Good job Fruit of the Loom, good job.

So my question is: what’s the big deal with society thinking that everyone has to be a size 00 to be beautiful? Do you have any idea what those Victoria’s Secret girls do to keep in shape? Have you any idea how many times a day they probably go through with hearing that they need to stay on top of their weight in order to remain in the business? I am in no way shape or form a V.S. model, but as someone who has had some experience with modeling, I can tell you firsthand that I have been told the very same thing. “Your hips are getting a little big, so you might want to join a gym”–those are the exact words I heard and I’ll never forget them. This isn’t exactly something I’ve ever really said to anyone outside of my family but in order for this post to really take it’s toll, I find it’s necessary to share. It literally makes me cringe when I think back to that day. I had an amazing shoot and I was feeling more confident than I ever remember feeling throughout much of my life, and then BAM. Hearing those 15 words was all it took for me to lose all self-confidence and lapse into feeling absolutely horrible about myself for quite some time. I didn’t show it…but inside I was heartbroken. I started putting serious thought behind my 6′ size 9 body and I felt like a cow. I knew it was stupid because I’m tall and I probably wouldn’t look right if I was 120lbs and wearing a size 3, but that didn’t matter. All I knew was I was closer to being a plus-size model than anything else. Or, at least, that’s how I felt. So, for something as minuscule as a 15-word comment directed toward an innocent girl who had little-to-no modeling experience…I can’t even imagine what the professionals are forced to hear. It’s sad.

So, ladies, STOP believing that you need to be a size 00 in order to be beautiful because you are absolutely wrong. I will admit that there was a time when I did believe that (hence my believing that wearing a size 9 made me a plus-size model). I had somehow convinced myself that if I was able to get skinny enough I would become beautiful. However, with a little self-assurance and confidence, I was able to accept that I am beautiful just the way I am. Curves and all! When I took a step-back and looked at my body I came to find that, thanks to a little weight gain, I was actually comfortable with my appearance. I’m no longer a flat and twig-like figure (seriously, I was referred to as “Tree” in high school) filled with low self-esteem and negative thoughts toward how I look. Now I’m a slightly curvacious and boobified gal who is learning that it’s okay to proud of that! YOU should feel the same way about yourself: regardless of whether you’re a size 20 or a size 2, it’s important to remember that the only time you’re ever going to feel truly beautiful is when you stop feeling like you need to look like someone else and you start to feel comfortable in your own skin.

Below, Barb talks more about body image and offers fantastic insight on how parents can help empower their daughters. Her wise words on finding happiness in everyday moments particularly struck me.

She also raises thought-provoking questions that parents can ask themselves about their own unrealistic expectations and definitions of beauty.

And if you’re a teen, I think you can glean lots of great information from Barb’s answers.

Q: What are parents’ top concerns about parenting teens when it comes to self-esteem and body image issues?

A: Studies have shown, girls’ self-esteem begins to drop at the edge of adolescence and continues to drop through college. It can be tough for parents. They want the best for their daughters. They want them to be successful and happy.

In our society, thinness and beauty are one in the same and they are equated with success and happiness. So many parents find themselves wanting their girls to feel good about themselves but also wanting them to fit into the norm of the American thin body type.

Even though we know there are many sizes and shapes within what is considered healthy, parents may find themselves falling into the trap of having unrealistic expectations for their daughters with regard to their bodies.

Q: What kind of advice can you offer for parents about helping their teens through the above issues?

A: As parents, we have to check ourselves first. Ask self-reflective questions, such as: why is this such a hot topic to me? Why am I responding emotionally to this? Is my response more about me than about my daughter? Is there anything in my past around this topic that I need to look at?

We need to address how we define beauty in our family. Do I only point out the thin, traditionally beautiful women and compliment them? How do I speak about my own body in front of my kids? As a role model for my kids, how do I demonstrate health and self-love in my own life?

We want our girls to feel comfortable in their own skin. This can be a process. It may take time. We need to ask our girls how they feel about their bodies. They may feel better than we think they do.

Our goal is to help our girls  find ways to increase their comfort and positive body experiences – to help them to take the focus off of the external and bring it back to who they really are and what they have to offer the world. We need to remind them (and show them) that life doesn’t have to be hard. We are here to have fun!

Q: You lead a workshop on empowering girls. What are some ways that moms can empower their daughters?

A: Empowerment is about believing in ourselves, feeling that we have something unique to contribute, knowing that we can make our own decisions, understanding that no one has the right to make us doubt ourselves and trusting our instincts.

What Empowers Our Girls?

1. Being active in group activities (physical and otherwise) – offers experiences of success/mastery, sense of community, exposure to other peer groups and different ideas
2. Being charitable/helping others – a sense of purpose/contribution
3. Having creative outlets – What is her passion? What does she love? What lights her up, makes her feel alive?
4. Allowing for failure – through failing we develop powerful strengths, be willing to “mess up” in front of her – demonstrate resilience
5. Resisting gender-role stereotyping
6. Exploring the question, “Who Am I?”
7. Identifying and having her own needs met
8. Being in supportive relationships
9. Having her achievements and her character acknowledged

I love the quote from Naomi Wolfe for mothers – “A mother who radiates self-love and self-acceptance vaccinates her daughter from low self-esteem.”

Q: You also teach girls and women about bringing more happiness into their everyday lives. How can we do that?

A: This is one of my favorite topics! Who doesn’t want more happiness in their lives?! There are so many ways to create more happiness. I’ll name a few. We think it is the big things that bring happiness – a wedding, a birth, a vacation to Spain, a new car, a new house or if you are a teen girl – getting an “A” on your math test, making captain of the soccer team, being asked to the prom, etc.

And those big things do make us happy, but how often do those happen? There is happiness in the little things. Become a “seeker of moments” – those times when you stop in your tracks and notice that you feel good – petting your soft, furry cat; the taste of your bubble gum lip gloss; a great song on the radio; sharing a smile with the Starbucks barista; noticing the beautiful sunset…it’s the little things accumulated that make for a happy day and a happy life. We just have to slow down and take notice. We have to look for the things that we like, the things that bring us happiness. They are already there.

When we take notice in the moment or reflect at the end of our day with a gratitude journal by making a list of all the good things that we experienced, we need to say “thank you.”  It is when we feel gratitude that our happiness expands and if you really begin to take stock, you will notice that with the more gratitude that you feel, the more happy moments you experience. It’s just the way it works. I promise. Try it!

Set an intention for your day. What do you want your day to be like? What do you want to feel or experience? Do you want to be more patient? Do you want to be more productive? Do you want to slow down? Do you want to laugh more? Do you want to have fun? Setting your intention when you wake up guides your day. You get to choose how you want to feel every single minute. Why not choose to feel good?

Q: Anything else you’d like to add about your work, body image, self-confidence or a related topic?

A: Thank you for the opportunity to “talk” with your audience. These topics are close to my heart, so I appreciate that you have created a forum for us to share and grow. I hope that I will get a chance to interact directly with your readers through my workshops and teleclasses. They can find out about upcoming events by joining my mailing list on my website www.barbsteinberg.com.

Copyright (C) 2010 Psych Central. All rights reserved. Reprinted here with permission from http://blogs.psychcentral.com/weightless/2010/10/helping-teen-girls-improve-their-body-image-qa-with-barb-steinberg/ and http://blogs.psychcentral.com/weightless/2010/10/body-image-self-esteem-barb-steinberg-on-empowering-your-daughters-part-2/.

• 42% of first, second and third grade girls want to lose weight. Collins, M. “Body figure perception and preferences among preadolescent children.” International Journal of Eating Disorders 10 (1991), pp 199-208.
• 45% of boys and girls in grades three through six want to be thinner; 37% have already dieted; 7% score in the eating disorder range on a test of children’s eating habits. Maloney, MJ, McGuire, J. Daniels, Sr., and Specker, B. “Dieting behavior and eating attitudes in children,” Pediatrics 84 (1989) pp 482-487.
• 46% of nine- to eleven-year-olds say they are sometimes or very often on diets. Gustafson-Larson, A. M., and Terry, R. D., “Weight-related behaviors and concerns of fourth grade children.” Journal of the American Dietetic Assoc. 92 (7)(1992), pp 818-822.
• 70% of normal weight girls in high school feel fat and are on a diet. Ferron, C. “Body Image in adolescence in cross-cultural research” Adolescence 32 (1997), pp. 735-745.
• During puberty, most girls’ bodies need to gain, on average, 10 inches and 40-50 pounds, including more body fat. Friedman, Sandra Susan. When Girls Feel Fat: Helping Girls Through Adolescence. Firefly Books, 2000.
• Females need 17% body fat in order to menstruate for the first time and 22% to have regular cycles. Cooke, Kaz. Real Gorgeous: The Truth About Body and Beauty. Norton, 1996.
• Over half of the females age 18-25 studied would prefer to be run over by a truck than to be fat, and two-thirds would choose to be mean or stupid rather than fat. Gaesser, Glenn A., PhD. Big Fat Lies: The truth about your weight and your health. Gurze Books, 2001.
• A survey of college students found that they would prefer to marry an embezzler, drug user, shoplifter, or blind person than someone who is fat. Gaesser, Glenn A., PhD. Big Fat Lies: The truth about your weight and your health. Gurze Books, 2001.
• Up to 35% of normal dieters will progress to pathological dieting and, of those, 20 to 25% will progress to partial or full-blown eating disorders. Shisslak, C.M., Crago, M., and Estes, L.S., “The spectrum of eating disturbances,” Intl Journal of Eating Disorders 18 (3) (1995) pp. 209-219.
• The death rate for eating disorders is 5 to 20%. American Psychiatric Association, “Practice Guidelines for Eating Disorders.” American Journal of Psychiatry, 150(2) (1993) pp. 212-228.
• Americans spend $50 billion annually on diet products. Garner, David W., PhD, and Wooley, Susan C., PhD. “Confronting the Failure of Behavioral and Dietary Treatments for Obesity,” Clinical Psychological Review 11 (1991), pp. 729-780. $50 billion is more than the Gross National Product of more than half of all the nations in the world, including Ireland.

From the Council on Size & Weight Discrimination, website, www.cswd.org

I just discovered the blog Faces of Beauty and absolutely love it!  Please take a look at what she is doing; I’ve pulled a few pieces from her blog and posted them below.  I am so inspired by this because my hope for this blog Beauty Message was for women to take on the challenge of telling themselves they were beautiful for 10 days and then sharing the experience here.

Faces of Beauty is on a mission to celebrate the incredible and unique beauty in all of us.  It throws off the societal pressures to look a certain way and gives an opportunity to share what we love about ourselves.

The hope is that Faces of Beauty will help start a revolution of men, women, and children learning to love themselves just as they are!

Just take a (happy!) picture of yourself from the shoulders up and email it to Heather at heathersdish @ gmail [dot] com.  Make sure you include a little note (500 words or less) about what you love about yourself, what makes you beautiful, and/or your journey to learning to love yourself.  The photos will be posted one photo and paragraph each day under your first name.  Please let me know if you would like to be linked back to your blog/website if applicable!