Yara Shahidi Says The Only Way To Define Beauty Is To UN-Define It

Yara posted a makeup-free selfie where she embraced her blemishes.

Imperfection is beauty and a part of redefining beauty by undefinining it is accepting the skin you're in in all states and all ways. While Yara has been known to stunt on magazine covers and on red carpets with an epic face beat, it doesn't take away from moments where she is makeup-free and experiencing hella blemishes. It might challenge beauty standards, but it's a commitment she is trying to live by.

"I have to actively remind myself to not sweat the details (aka the blemishes) and reframe it as a reminder to make sure I'm taking care of myself."

She made a big 2020 New Year's Resolution.

For the new year, Shahidi posted a picture on her Instagram with the caption:

"We (My hair and I) are taking up more space as we enter 2020."

In the pic, she dons no make up and frizzy hair to match her large golden hoops, making the profound statement that she has arrived as she is, and she's unapologetic AF about it. Siren emojis surrounds her statement, driving the nail in.

Yara partnered with Essie to preach the importance of finding, and being, yourself

In 2018, Shahidi curated a partnership with Essie for National Nail Polish Day. And even then, at a young 18, she used her platform to express the importance of her generation being who they are. She told E! News:

"I've learned to look at beauty as a creative outlet. Use makeup to express yourself rather than to cover yourself. This is why I gravitate towards louder colors — there's that feeling of taking up creative space when you go bold."

Yara removed her mustache on the 'Gram (before the Emmys).

Yara got closer to all of us by uploading a video of her removing her all-too-real lady 'stache for the entire world to see. She hilariously continued to show the actual maintanence it takes to get ready, by following up with a glowing, no-makeup selfie, checking her teeth for food, and rocking braids and a natural look for the virtual show.

Yara posed natural and un-retouched on the cover of 'Harpers Bazaar'.

For the August 2019 cover of Harper's Bazaar, Shahidi opened up about how she's using fashion and beauty to make a difference. She told People:

"True beauty is being unique, experimenting, exploring, sometimes unsettling. True beauty is expansive, is happiness. True beauty is my unibrow! I think we have a tendency to materialize beauty, and connect it with product. You should do whatever makes you feel good, and we're addressing beauty as not something that's even attached to a product, but as something that's attached to this overall feeling of support and confidence which we all get from different things."

Spoken like a true beauty, un-defined.

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