Q-tips never told us to stick the swabs in our ear canal to clear out earwax. Yet, somehow, we use it for the very thing it specifically warns us not to do: Putting it inside our ears.The humble Q-tip was so perfectly designed for the purpose of cleaning our ears, that it turned into a generic word for a product.

Q-Tips: The Cotton Swab To Clean Ears And Eyes

Q-tips were positioned as an essential tool for women's cosmetics and beauty routines.In the 1950s and 1960s, they began to tell consumers they were for more than just for babies or women -- they were handy for any project around the house or in their lives.

The Beauty Assistant

Every Q-tips box has a warning label: "Do not insert swab into ear canal," and if you're going to use it to clean your ears, gently swab the outer part only.

Stashed ideas

How we got addicted to using Q-tips the wrong way

When we are young, we are more vulnerable to fashion and teen monthlies targeted at women. Their glossy pages offer an escape from our dreary lives. While women's magazines offer celebrity-centred advice, it is never evidence-based. Instead, it has largely frivolous, unhelpful, false and often harmful advice.

Giving your 16 year-old-self advice

You won't achieve a healthy weight through buying a particular product or going on a crash diet. Women's magazines have pages on how to lose weight fast or maintain a healthy body size using some new product or trend. Actual claims on the covers of Women's Health magazines, such as "Hot body express!" "Bikini body now!" "Have the baby, keep the body!" These are lies. There is no magic diet.What really works is watching what you eat every day, over a lifetime. No magic diet or miracle pills are needed.

Achieving a healthy weight

There's no need to aim for perfection in your diet 100 per cent of the time. Restrictive diets are unsustainable and often backfire. Yet women's magazines fixate on strict eating patterns. Whatever the trend, you'll find it in the pages of these magazines. Offering short-term perfection sells better than ideas about grinding along to achieve long-term health.

You don't need to be super strict about your diet

Many women's magazines depict exercise as a daunting task. Exercise often requires fancy gym clothes and lots of time and discipline to give you an "awesome body wherever you go." However, exercise is something that gives you energy, lifts your mood, and makes you feel strong and healthy. Exercise doesn't necessarily require gym clothes or running shoes. You can do it throughout the day, every day.

Exercise doesn't have to be annoying or overly complex

Women's magazines uncritically show faddish health advice from celebrities. Beyonce is held up as the go-to authority on the vegan lifestyle. InStyle states it is the reason behind her "#flawless" looks and "killer curves." Gwyneth Paltrow's popular gimmicks include <a href="http://goop.com/detox/">detox cleanses</a> and <a href="http://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/advice/g1523/get-flat-sexy-abs-without-doing-crunches/">special workouts</a>. In reality, almost every celebrity-driven trend falls apart under even modest scrutiny. The fads are often motivated by a celebrity's business interests more than by research about health.

Celebrities aren't good sources of health information

Author <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/05/01/gwyneth_paltrow_is_wrong_about_everything_my_adventure_in_goop_endorsed_cleanses/">Timothy Caulfield</a> spent years researching the science behind celebrity health and beauty tips. He found that most beauty products had either no data behind them or very small and unreliable studies to back up the fantastical claims. Using beauty products in your daily routine is not bad, but the promises they carry on their labels are probably bunk. When they come with heavy price tags, you're probably getting ripped off.

Expensive creams and potions won't make you more beautiful

Women's magazines sell the idea that we can all look better. It usually involves looking like someone famous like Kim Kardashian. However, we look like ourselves. Only Kim Kardashian looks like Kim Kardashian. Her career depends on beautifying her face and body. And even she doesn't look that way without a lot of help.

You shouldn't aspire to look like Kim Kardashian

Women's magazines may give so-called health advice, but they still carry ads from cigarette companies that depict smoking as a glamorous exercise for beautiful people. Given what we know about the harms of smoking,<ul><li>that it is one of the worst things you can do for your health,</li><li> it prematurely ages your skin and body,</li><li>it promotes many terrible illnesses</li><li>and makes you less attractive,</li></ul> it completely undermines all the other so-called health "advice" in these magazines.

Smoking isn't glamorous

The pages of women's magazines are filled with diets and products that supposedly help you "cleanse your body." This includes clarifying shampoo, detoxifying salads and juices, supplements, enemas, and even colon cleanses. Science-based medicine had long rejected the concept of a detox other than when someone was poisoned or is weaned from heroin addiction. Our bodies are quite capable of getting rid of harmful stuff by themselves.

Unless you're a heroin addict, you probably don't need to detox

The advice in their pages is too often insane, aimed at fearmongering, and totally science-free.

Flat abs fast! Hot body now! Why you should (almost) never believe health advice in women's magazines

“Stop trying to fix your body. It was never broken.”

“People often say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder.”

“I don’t want to wait until I’m 73 to embrace my body. To look back and think of my beauty: How did I miss it? Let’s not wait another moment.”

“To love yourself right now, just as you are, is to give yourself heaven. Don’t wait until you die. If you wait, you die now. If you love, you live now.”

“YOU ARE WANTED. Big, small, tall, short, pretty, plain, friendly, shy. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, not even yourself. Especially yourself.”

“And I said to my body softly, ‘I want to be your friend.’ It took a long breath and replied, ‘I have been waiting my whole life for this.’”

These body confidence quotes can inspire you to love your body as-is. Feel beautiful in your own skin with help from these body positive words of wisdom.

50 Body Confidence Quotes to Inspire Self-Love - Fun Loving Families

Our culture has many different perspectives about what “beauty” entails. Beauty isn’t all about just nice, lovely-looking things or people. It is more about an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth, and a kind of homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding life.This could include anything from the sunset on your way home to the budding magnolia in your driveway. It may also show up in the piano piece your child is learning for the first time or in your newborn’s smile.

What Is "Beauty?"

<ul><li>In our often hurried lives, it's easy to pass right by objects and experiences of beauty. Taking the time to appreciate and find beauty can actually promote our health, relationships, and well-being in several ways.</li><li>Research shows that when we engage in expressive outlets such as music, dance, poetry, and art, we can experience improved physical and mental wellbeing.</li></ul>

Beauty’s Benefits

<ul><li>From the perspective of interpersonal neurobiology, the mind is able to flourish when its' domains are differentiated and linked, a process described as integration</li><li>Beauty encourages this integration process, encouraging present moment awareness, attunement, and emotional sensing between other people and objects</li><li>Engaging in expressive, artistic, aesthetic experiences supports our mind's ability to flourish</li><li>This is amplified when we can engage in such acts in the presence of a larger community and relationships with others.</li></ul>

Beauty and Interpersonal Neurobiology

Our culture has many different perspectives about what “beauty” entails.

How Beauty Can Support a More Wholesome, Meaningful, and Integrated Life

Art isn’t a knock-knock joke, and squinting at an exhibit isn’t going to elicit a punch line. Everyone — artists and viewers alike — will have a unique experience. As in the rest of life, there will be times when you can’t relate to the artist, or even understand where they're coming from. Accept that, and move on. Don’t write off art, an entire genre, or even a particular work just because it doesn’t agree with you at the moment. As you go through life, your tastes will change.

1. Stop Trying to “Get It.”

The best way to see art is to see it alone. Don’t be swayed by your peers or even your teachers. Remember that your unique experiences leading up to the moment you encounter a work of art will shape your appreciation of it, as will all the experiences that follow. Like what you like, even if you're not sure why, or can't put the reason to words.

2. Don't Be Afraid To Like Something.

Anything within the context of art is art. It might make you roll your eyes to think about a highly paid artist flinging paint at a canvas like a toddler. But much as John Cage taught us the difference between noise and sound, seeing art that you disagree with can challenge your notions, or help you suss out your beliefs.

3. Consider More Things As Art.

Creativity is one of the many benefits of human intelligence. Our ability to make art and think critically about it separate us from dolphins and monkeys. I don’t care what you majored in, or how your figure drawings (or stick figures) always come out. Every human being has artistic ability. Trust in this.

4. Trust Your Instincts.

Once you’re comfortable with allowing yourself to feel something about art, take it to the next level. Try to go beyond considering whether art is cool or offensive, and find a personal connection to the work. Even if you're relating art to something as simple what you ate for breakfast, it’s a step in the right direction.

5. Make a Connection. 

Assuming you have the aforementioned human intelligence, then you also have artistic ability. Anything that you consider to be art will be. Walk backward through a crosswalk. Take a photo. Instagram it. Experiment. Cook an amazing meal (bonus points if you don’t look at a recipe). I guarantee you’ll feel better about art after exercising your right to create.

6. Make Your Own Art.

Most of us think that understanding art is too difficult ... But it's not that difficult.... So here are some ways by which we can understand art in a better way.... 

Human beings have been making and benefiting from art for longer than our recorded history. While contemporary art might seem exclusive or confusing, all viewers have to do is meet the artist halfway. Here are six easy steps to help you appreciate…

How we got addicted to using Q-tips the wrong way

Flat abs fast! Hot body now! Why you should (almost) never believe health advice in women's magazines

50 Body Confidence Quotes to Inspire Self-Love - Fun Loving Families

How Beauty Can Support a More Wholesome, Meaningful, and Integrated Life

How to Understand Art in 6 Easy Steps

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