This article originally appeared in the September 2016 issue of ELLE.

Whether it's by trying a new lipstick or undergoing a major overhaul, there's nothing like tweaking one's appearance to open new horizons—both in body and mind. This month, we celebrate beauty transformations great and small: those that bring us closer to who we want to be, and those that simply deliver a (very worthwhile) flash of joy

There are beautifully unexpected ways in which psychologists say people can grow. We usually think that, after a certain point, style, taste, wit, exercise patterns, political outlook, character, and talent are pretty well fixed. And that it will take nothing short of a lightning bolt, heaps of hard work, or a radical head-to-toe makeover (if not a brain transplant) to move the needle meaningfully in any of these domains. Yet studies have repeatedly found that people who dream of being different than they are today and begin by taking just one or two small steps off their beaten paths are more likely to achieve their goals than grand planners who try to change a slew of habits at once—and promptly burn out, having underestimated the brute challenge of sustaining self-control.

No one has seriously explored the power of micro-adjustments to hair and beauty routines to spur and support personal transformation, but the National Institutes of Health really ought to sponsor some bold initiatives here—if only to catch science up with what so many women already know in their bones. Because what woman hasn't—drawing on a clean, geometrical sweep at the outer edge of her lashes with a brand-new, pitch-black liquid eyeliner—felt almost instantly better equipped to tackle a new work project, or chat up a man she's been eager to meet? Or—after massaging a deliciously silky new rose-scented night cream across her cheeks and brow—veered from her usual direct-to-bed schlep to glide through a few gentle unwinding poses on her yoga mat, moves that help her sleep better than she has in ages and quickly become a healthful pre-bed habit that wouldn't even have occurred to her without the night cream's rosy nudge in the direction of self-care?

Right now, beauty ideals and values feel freer than they have in years. The tyrannical mission of chasing perfection—via the literal airbrushing of makeup onto body and face and other wearying procedures—is losing steam. There's a spirit of happy new possibility afoot; we're fascinated with women—like Rihanna, with her inimitable gift for finding looks that are by turns punky, sweet, and stone-cold sexy—for whom decisively changing hair and makeup is a way of signaling their own strong desire to transform. "One of the great things about being a woman is that we can use our appearance to project the woman we want to be," designer Diane von Furstenberg says. "A turning point—a breakup, a new job—is a perfect moment to ascertain and take charge with a new haircut, a hair-color change, a new dress, new shoes, and definitely a new attitude. I totally believe in this."

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This fall, there's an unusually eclectic array of fresh beauty looks and products practically begging to be taken up as a means of personal transformation. Maybe a recent college grad accustomed to heaping her hair in a messy topknot will morph gracefully into the role of a young professional by wearing a low-slung, sophisticated ponytail, like those seen on several fall runways—parting her hair to the side, smoothing it back, and binding it with a black-ribbon bow (and, as an added bonus of this crisply focused look, discovering her own ability to focus has increased by approximately 46 percent). And another woman, wanting to bring forth an unsung sparkly element of her personality, will press a light sprinkling of glitter onto her eyelids, creating her own subtly shimmery version of the captivatingly pretty disco-diva look seen on so many catwalks.

Sometimes, though, even the boldest aesthetic departures don't just move the needle but bring us home. From age 12 on, celebrity stylist Kate Young, whose clients include Michelle Williams and Selena Gomez, yearned to dye her brunette hair platinum, like that of her two aesthetic lodestars, Madonna and Marilyn. And when she finally found a colorist confident enough to help her make the switch, the immediate effect, she says, "was to feel more like myself. I didn't think about it intellectually. It was a purely visual recognition: This is the way it should be. This is the right way to look."

Young says she'll keep her hair bright-white blond for the rest of her life. But even if the changes women make to their looks end up being so subtle that they register with no one but themselves—or they eventually go back to hairstyles and lipstick shades that make them feel externally better aligned with parts of themselves that, it turns out, they really have no desire to change—science suggests they've still transformed, because any new sensation or experience leaves a lasting imprint somewhere in the brain. So, it seems, there's a jazzlike way in which playing up and down the scales with beauty—mixing, sampling, finding new looks and products that blow our minds and ditching the rest—really can help us better understand who we truly are and are meant to be. Each little bit of beauty experimentation adds up. And each little bit of experimentation tells us something new about ourselves.

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