Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast, Kelly here.

And today I want to follow up from our fun and incredible interview with Achille King and talk a little bit more about beauty.

But this episode is all about opting out of aesthetics. I asked a lot of you on socials, what made you feel beautiful? And I was so

encouraged and delighted to see your answers. So many of you said, being fully myself, feeling accomplished, you listed off qualities and

goals and not so much aesthetics. And that's really what this episode is about. I want to pause

and say that last week we talked about aesthetics and we talked about our favorite skin care products,

Achille and I. And Achille talked about her journey and how she's really proud about how she

is aesthetically redefining beauty as a black woman who now has the power of the pen and can

pick who she centers. And so she centers women who have locks and who are bald and women who are of different ages and

different skin tones and really centers them as physically beautiful.

And I could not be more excited or happier that that exists. And we need more and more and more of this in a world that is constantly forcing black women to be a certain kind of aesthetic. And that aesthetic changes from day to day. But we see people financially rewarded for having a certain kind of aesthetic.

We see social media accounts and social media followings applying and multiplying to certain aesthetics.

In a world that is that, it is important to see someone saying, no, beauty looks different across the board and someone who centers the differences

and celebrates them. And so that is wonderful. But this episode is going to be about

beauty beyond aesthetics and understanding and tapping into what makes you feel beautiful and making sure it's not

always attached to an aesthetic goal or an aesthetic moment. What I mean by that is I want you to feel

beautiful from the inside out. And that in so many ways is a harder journey and a harder thing to accomplish than it is

to feel beautiful and the reverse.

When I was younger, I worked a lot on my quote unquote aesthetic.

I never was somebody who, like I've said before, was super into makeup

or anything like that. And again, this isn't shade to anyone who is. I kind of love makeup now

when I wear it. But I was very much into an aesthetic. I wanted to look a certain way,

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