“I believe everybody is beautiful.” Adedoyin Omotara
My perspective is this, beauty is who you are. It’s understanding the qualities that you have within you, the strengths that you have within you, the skills that you have, all the things that make you who you are is how I define beauty.
Women, we make up our face, we use an eyebrow pencil to define our brows, eyeliner to define our eyes, and foundation to even out our skin, it takes time and effort to enhance our outer beauty. That’s exactly the way I see inner beauty as well. It takes attention and effort for us to connect to that inner beauty. It’s tough work to be a whole person, to be whole and to love yourself, but that’s when the true beauty shines.
If we think there’s a lot of work to do on the outside there is so much more to do on the inside and that’s why my idea of beauty comes into the personal development space, it’s about working on everything that you have inside, connecting with your soul. That’s when you find yourself truly beautiful.
I came by all this because I love to see the impact makeup has on women. I had a 9 to 5 job, but I kept switching roles trying to find fulfillment. I switched roles all the way up to managing my own team. I felt this was finally it, but six months later I started feeling that drain of energy and asking the same question, is this all there is? So I quit the 9 to 5 and gave myself two years to do what I love.
Because one person doing makeup alone is not sustainable I built a product line to sustain my business. At my product launch, I asked guests a question — what does beauty meant to you? There were women from all walks of life and the answers were surprising. Their answers weren’t about outer beauty at all they were saying amazing things: beauty is confidence, beauty is vulnerability, beauty is who you are, beauty is just showing up. These women had a lot of things to say about beauty and all of it was about inner beauty not the superficial. Most surprising though was when we asked them — are you beautiful? Instinctively, women would hesitate. I remember a Dove survey that said only 4% of women say that they are beautiful. Women understand the meaning of beauty, but they don’t know how to get there with confidence.
Ask a 13-year-old girl what does beauty mean to her and she will tell you because she knows. Sill that is not what we’re seeing. Beauty companies say they want to redefine beauty but that’s not what’s going on. They say the words, but it’s just a marketing tag for products with names like kiss or scandalous or rebel.
When I saw what was happening I started thinking how can I make change happen and the first thing that came to mind was to change the names of my products. My lipsticks have names that are empowering: I am unique, I am valuable, I am confident. I wanted something positive and empowering because I believe everybody is beautiful.
This is a short dive into a deep conversation with Adedoyin Omotara, owner of a visionary beauty company, Adoniaa. The paradigm of beauty is changing from the inside out. Listen to podcast #29 – Beautful… are you?
