Beauty as Action with Lisa Lindahl - S4E5 (Part 2 of 2)

Lisa Z. Lindahl is an award-winning inventor, artist, author, and entrepreneur best known for transforming women’s sports with her 1977 invention of the first sports bra, the Jogbra. As CEO of JBI Inc. from 1977–1992, she helped shape a global industry, earning ten patents and seeing her invention archived at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and even displayed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art as a “revolutionary piece of women’s undergarments.”

In 1999, she co-founded Bellisse and co-invented the Compressure Comfort® Bra, a breakthrough medical garment now supporting breast cancer survivors worldwide. She has been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2022), received a U.S. Congressional Commendation, and has long served as an advocate for women’s health, most notably through her leadership roles at the Epilepsy Foundation of America.

She is the author of Beauty as Action (2017), her philosophical guide to practicing “True Beauty,” and the acclaimed memoir Unleash the Girls (2019).

In this second part of our conversation, we talk about:

1. True beauty is harmony rather than glamour
2. The problem of living in a culture rooted in fear, competition, and accumulation
3. “Practicing beauty” works through simple, everyday disciplines
4. Lisa’s 16 practices of beauty
5. The three-legged stool of truth, beauty, and justice

To learn more about Lisa’s work, visit:

• https://www.lisalindahl.com/ 
• https://beautyinaction.com/ 

Links Mentioned:

• Beauty as Action by Lisa Z. Lindahl
• Unleash the Girls (Lisa’s memoir on inventing the sports bra)

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust.

Transcript

(intro)

Brandon: I'm Brandon Vaidyanathan, and this is Beauty at Work—the podcast that seeks to expand our understanding of beauty: what it is, how it works, and why it matters for the work we do. This season of the podcast is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust and is focused on the beauty and burdens of innovation.

Hi everybody, this is part two of my conversation with Lisa Lindahl, inventor of the sports bra and author of Unleash the Girls and Beauty as Action. In this half of our conversation, we turn to what Lisa means by true beauty, why it matters for our communities and our civilization, and how to practice it through simple daily disciplines which can change the way we live. Let's get started.

(interview)

Lisa: So my master's thesis was on beauty, the importance of beauty. I was so excited when it got accepted as a thesis because I thought, "Okay, maybe I'm not crazy." And that was in 2007. I'd had the epiphany about beauty probably around 2000 — I don't know. Early 2003, I don't know. One of the things I'm fond of saying and at the time I found so annoying was that, to talk about beauty, everybody thinks you're talking about what is, in fact, glamour.

Brandon: Right. Yeah.

Lisa: I say in my book and I say to people, when I talk to them about beauty, I say, "I'm talking about cosmology, not cosmetology."

Brandon: Right. That's great. That's great. I mean, yeah, you search for beauty online. You type it into Google, and you get beauty products and the cosmetics industry, right? That is our immediate association with the word. It's really been captured by either that or by fashion, or on the other side, by maybe high art, right? And so Mozart. But yeah, you're talking about something else. And so, what is true beauty? How would you define or articulate that?

Lisa: Can I cheat?

Brandon: Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Lisa: Because I did, I said it well in here somewhere. True beauty is about harmony. Harmony implies a lot of different parts, right?

Brandon: Yeah.

Lisa: The analogy I like to use is musical notes. Every musical note is a little different. They can come together and create cacophony—ugh, sound awful—or they can come together and blend and support each other and create beauty. So true beauty is about harmony. So when you look at the leaves blowing in the wind and the sunlight is on them and it's all coming together, all those same elements could be a hurricane, just the cacophony, if you will. But there's beauty there too as well. So that's what I came to. I was worried at first because I thought, "Oh, that's so simple." But so what?

Brandon: Yeah, I think that, yes, sort of that sense of harmony becomes the sense of fit, the ways in which things come together, things resonate, seems really critical. I think you draw a link between the decline of beauty, or at least the decline of the importance of beauty, and the decline of civilization. You really see this as it's not just something that matters for us to personally feel a sense of harmony, but you think this really has broad implications. Could you sketch that out? Why does this matter?

Lisa: To me, it is so clear. I mean, the three part, what beauty is, is about passion, relationship and — there's a third one that is escaping me at the moment. We are so much now a culture of what I think of as fear, ugliness, and competition, rather than openness, being supportive, building. We're not about building relationship or building connections. And so much of it is that we've become — I'll try not to make it too broad. We've become a culture of accumulation rather than connection. I think a lot about the demise of community, which modern civilization is seeing. You know, it used to be people could sit on their porches and talk to their neighbors. Well, there are no porches anymore. Community is now online. We're not meeting in person and having this chat. Actually, among certain crowds, there's been discussion about, can you have spiritual connections online?

Brandon: Right. Yeah.

Lisa: Yes. Actually, yes, you can. But you have to understand that that's possible and that that's something you're willing to be open to and share and make happen.

Brandon: Why does talking about beauty—I mean, true beauty in the sense in which you're describing it—matter in today's context?

Lisa: Because again, it's back to this whole concept and idea of harmony. I mean, beauty is the manifestation of harmony. I guess we talk about harmonics and such. The opposite of harmony is a lot of what we're experiencing now—conflict, disagreement. There will always be disagreement. A disagreement in and of itself is not a problem. It's an opportunity.

Brandon: You told me you were in grad school, and you recognized that you were called to do this work on beauty. You wrote this thesis. Where's your journey led you since then in terms of following this path of beauty? What does that look like in your life?

Lisa: So much philosophy is, you know, a lot of words. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Beauty is something you do, something you feel, something you are, something you create. So rather than just be blah, blah, blah, I said, well, what does practicing beauty — how do you create more beauty? What does that even mean? There are like 16 practices, and it requires no interesting equipment or expense of this or that. For instance, the first practice is to see. All that means is getting off of automatic pilot and really taking in the light on the leaves or the smell of the air. Another one is, so it's practicing. Another one is practice cultivating awe. You see, but how do you respond? How do you take it in? Another is operating in a "both-and universe" rather than the "either-or universe." Another one is practice feeling compassion. I mean, what does compassion really mean? How do you actually practice it? That's always a challenge. Being wary of the "truth" is another practice.

Brandon: I mean, off these 16 practices, do you find some of them are ones that you're particularly gravitating to these days?

Lisa: No, they're all operative at different points at times. Like when I wrote, be wary of the truth. It was way before there were such polarizing entities in the world. "This is true. This is the way it is, blah, blah, blah," versus, "No, it's this way." So I talk about what is truth.

Brandon: One of the challenges I think a lot of people have with trying to emphasize something like beauty, in this sense in which you mean it, is it feels to people—at least the kind of critique I get—this is sort of naive. It's sort of wishful thinking. It's nice to be compassionate, blah, blah, blah, but we have real conflict in the world. We have to win, and we have to make sure that our side, our perspective gets to influence people. We have the whole concern about economic survival and the challenges that people have. And if you're working through three jobs, you don't have the time to sit and attend to trees and so on, right? And so there are a lot of pressures that make it seems really challenging for people to take this seriously, and they lead us to, I think, trivialize beauty. So I wonder if you have any suggestions for what it would take to, in the face of those sorts of challenges — whether it's political challenges, whether it's human rights challenges in society, whether it's individual pressures to survive, I mean, what can people do in the face of that that wouldn't feel naive and pollyannaish, and yet can help them perhaps recognize something about this deeper truth you're trying to draw us to?

Lisa: Rather than think of it as naive, think of it as thoughtful, looking at it again. True beauty is not about appearance at all. Well, because we could get into the — yes, visuals are important, but we've trivialized beauty so much. But may I be so bold as to read you just this a little bit.

Brandon: Please, yeah.

Lisa: Beauty is a common thread throughout all experience and backgrounds. The way of beauty is non-religious, non-political, and intends no ethnic bias. Practicing true beauty will help evolve human consciousness. Any individual can do it. I really mean that whether, it's so not about our standard of importance now is way out of whack. We've lost community. Community begins with family. The family is the first most intimate form of community. Then it's the neighbor or the person that's delivering. We have gone almost out of our way to isolate and to separate and to differentiate. Now there's a lot of work being done about how the consciousness of other entities, we humans, we think we're in charge. We're better than and more — well, I can't say that word. That's not the case. Trees are sentient. Mushrooms talk to each other, sends messages around. They just have different languages, different ways of communicating, but they do communicate. And who the hell are we? Anyway, we have to get over ourselves. By paying attention to what I'm calling true beauty is a methodology to do that, to really shift the paradigm.

Brandon: It seems like it really is — it is pretty radical. Because, again, I think one of the dominant ways in which we engage with beauty is to want to possess the beautiful object, right? People argue that if beauty is that de-centering and unselfing, then how come the Nazis loved beauty so much, et cetera, right? And so you can have one way of encountering beauty in which you consume it, you possess it. It's an amusement. It's something that might make you feel intense pleasure. But it's not really transforming you. It's not really leading you beyond yourself. It's not de-centering you. And so I think that is another challenge. And again, it is an obstacle that I regularly encounter, with an objection that I encounter with people I talk to about beauty, which is that isn't it just about beautiful things that you can possess? Or doesn't it just draw you deeper into either this kind of selfishness or consumerist mindset or even a denialism—where you have a nice experience, and then so what? Ultimately, why does it matter? Versus the kind of beauty that is perhaps maybe more, perhaps you might call spiritual or transcendent, right? It seems like there really is a distinction. I don't know how to help people overcome that hurdle. I wonder if you have any thoughts there.

Lisa: I do. But let me refer to this stool and see if this speaks to what you're talking about. I have this image of a three-legged stool. The number three has been significant in all of humankind's history: the virgin, the mother; the crone, the father; the son, the Holy Ghost; the Jnana, Bhakti, Karma. I mean, I'm not probably pronouncing those right. This idea of three: truth, beauty, and justice. If you take away one of those, the stool topples. It becomes unbalanced. That's where we are. Because as humans, we tend to do is we tend to privilege one of those concepts, like whatever it is. Truth is more important than beauty. Beauty is more important than anything else. Then things get out of whack. So I started thinking about — well, actually that's what brought me to: what if beauty is the seat of the stool that these other three hold up? And when justice falls out or something else — I think that's what's happened to us. I'm not sure I’m answering your question.

Brandon: I think you are, yeah. Yeah, I would say that that kind of danger of beauty being untethered from truth or from justice. Then it's sort of this free-floating thing, which can then be co-opted by whatever our own pursuits are, right?

Lisa: Some of the stuff, one of the things — I mean, I know you have children. When I look at what is on the screens these days, especially this time of year, it's all about — I mean, it's all murder, horror, scary,

fear. It's all about elevating and encouraging fearfulness. That's not beautiful. That is not true beauty.

Brandon: Lisa, you've lived with epilepsy for most of your life. Could you say anything about how that has shaped your sensibility about beauty?

Lisa: You know, I've never actually thought about that. I have what's called an invisible disability. That has taught me a great deal. Because I look and act and appear like anybody else, I can get away with it. But I have to be way more thoughtful. I just wrote a piece called The Things She Worries About. I worry about the basement floor. If I'm alone in the house and if I fell on the basement floor, I'd crack open my head. Now, that has actually happened—not in the basement, but in a bathroom. Maybe this is related to the beauty thing. I don't know. But I've learned to become aware of — I'm not on automatic pilot as much as most people are. I have to think before I go swimming. I've almost drowned two or three times because I didn't think before I jumped in the water. Does that stop me from swimming? No. I have to learn. So I don't know. I don't think I'm answering your question, except that curiosity is a really important attribute. When you have something you have to deal with that most people don't, I mean, most people don't—

Brandon: Yeah, I suppose it certainly makes sense that it would dispose you in some way towards being innovative and creative and having to figure out how to make things work, especially if you want to be resilient and not just be resigned to difficulty, right?

Lisa: Yep.

Brandon: Please, yeah.

Lisa: No, I don't want to actually say that.

Brandon: I also just was thinking in terms of a recognition of — you mentioned the attentiveness, that you have to constantly cultivate. But also, I imagine a sense of vulnerability, a keener sense of the body, of embodiment. I think there might be a connection to beauty there.

Lisa: I will say this. I have traveled all over the world. I've had by myself often. I have had convulsions, the tonic. There are many different kinds of seizures. The one that most people think of is when you fall and you shake. That's a tonic, clonic seizure. They're very dramatic, and they're scary for the people witnessing them. I have had those sorts of seizures in restaurants, in airports, in the backseat of taxi cabs. No one has ever harmed me, stolen from me. And the fact that I was in those situations is on me, especially the taxi cab one. I got an early morning flight. I knew I wasn't 100%. I should never have gotten on the plane. I really wanted to go to this meeting, so I did. I got off the plane. I knew I was not okay. I got into this taxi.

I remember looking at the taxi driver's name because I thought, "Oh, man, if I have a convulsion here, I'm restrained, a woman, alone in her high heels and skirt, at the backseat of a cab." It was some foreign name that I was never going to remember or anything else. That's the last thing I remember until I woke up on a gurney in Bellevue Hospital in New York City. I woke up because I felt someone pulling my skirt down. This is the days of miniskirts and panty hose, just a little bit. I kind of went, Brandon, I woke up. My briefcase was with me. My purse and my wallet was with me. The driver had not even taken out the fare from the airport from my wallet.

Brandon: Wow.

Lisa: So this guy had seen me in the backseat, changed the location, took me to the hospital emergency room, dropped me off. That's been my experience. I have sat in an airport, where I'm waiting to get on a flight and had a convulsion sitting there and thinking it was important. I took out my wallet before I went out to open it up so they'd know who I was. It's what I was thinking, because you're not thinking.

Brandon: Right, right, right.

Lisa: Nobody touched my wallet. My experience of humankind is that it is basically good. I choose to believe that because that's been my experience. Is there a lot of crap going on in the world now? Yes. I want more of the message of the true beauty that is available to us is being handed down to, shown to our children, the upcoming generations, rather than this vampires and Halloween, and all this stuff, you know. Oh my God.

Brandon: Well, that's great. Well, I mean, in that vein, I suppose if there's maybe one practice you might recommend to our listeners and viewers to really learn how to live more fully into this sort of true beauty, what is perhaps one starting point you might recommend?

Lisa: The number one practice, which is practice seeing. Just turn off that automatic pilot. I mean seeing broadly. It's not just visual. When someone says something that rubs you the wrong way, how do you respond? Are you going to ehh right back? Or are you going to go, where's that coming from? There are actually three practices. One is practicing compassion, seeing, practicing compassion. Of course, I forget.

Brandon: I think creation, right, was the other?

Lisa: Creating. Right. I've just re-read Beauty as Action. Because I wrote it so long ago that I thought, "Oh, I should reread this." So I reread parts of it. It's easy. It's not difficult. I mean, I do. I wish everybody would at least read it. Whether or not you take it on or not is a whole other thing.

Brandon: Yeah, I can't recommend it enough. It just resonates so much with everything we've been doing on this podcast. Certainly, the spirit that animates the work I'm doing is deeply resonant there. So I definitely recommend it to our viewers and listeners. The practices that you've recommended are really important, I think, for all of us.

Lisa: Well, that's why I'm so excited with what you're doing. I mean, I'm, "Oh, wow. Beauty's time has come."

Brandon: Right. Well, let's hope so.

Lisa: Thank you.

Brandon: Well, Lisa, thank you for your time and for your insights. It's been fantastic.

Lisa: Well, I hope we can keep in communication and to keep this role and to keep it going.

Brandon: Absolutely.

Lisa: Anything I can do to help, let me know.

Brandon: We'll do, yeah. Also, we'll guide our listeners and viewers to your website. Is there anything else you're working on these days that you would like to share, or anything that you want to add?

Lisa: Life—I'm working on life. Life and living this. No, there are things in the works, but I'm not at liberty to talk about them yet. So check back. There's stuff in the pipeline.

Brandon: Wonderful. All right. Thank you, Lisa. It's been a real treat.

Lisa: Thanks, Brandon, so much. I appreciate it.

(outro)

Brandon: All right, folks. That's a wrap for this episode. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it with someone who would find it of interest. Also, please subscribe and leave us a review if you haven't already. Thanks, and see you next time.