By Kehinde Ajose

BEAUTIFUL  written by Funto Oni can actually be described as a manual for living a beautified life or a guide to giving your life a beautified make over from the inside out. It contains beautiful nuggets for leading a life full of beauty and relevance.

According to the author,: “Real beauty goes beyond the skin. It comes right from within. You can tell whether a lady is beautiful or not with or without make up. No matter how perfect the make – up looks on her just by interacting with her for a couple of minutes , you would know if she really is as beautiful as her made up face suggests”

Funto Oni is an authority on the subject of beauty and style. A trained chartered accountant, Funto has a keen passion for all things relating to beauty and strongly believes that there is a queen in every woman that needs to be unleashed.

Funto presents to us in her conversational tone, a well researched guide to attaining true beauty. In this volume of non – fiction, she invests her creative energy in providing beauty tips, style tips, make up tips, and thoughts on living a beautified life.

Her major preoccupation is to take the reader on a journey of beauty beyond face value. While she is not the first to write on the subject of beauty, her foray certainly becomes crucial and timely in a world where more emphasis is placed on beauty and less emphasis is placed on what is on the inside. Unlike it’s title that gives that the impression that the book only addresses the outward beauty, Beautified provides a clear balanced roadmap for true beauty.

In 121 pages divided into four parts, and laced with amazing “Beautyspiration” tips , that nourishes the heart and adds flavour to the soul, the author makes it abundantly clear that physical beauty can be marred by an ugly personality. Each tip dwells on a subject matter that can help one attain true beauty. In the Beauty tips section of the book, the author hinges essentially on caring for the nails, dealing with stretch marks, and natural remedy for black spots e.t.c

In the second part, she focuses her writer’s lens on make- up tips. She offers Make up guidelines for the rainy season, make up for office, how to use your blush, and the amazing one make up for guys. She puts it this way” Make – up could be a woman’s greatest weapon if applied properly, when it isn’t applied properly, it could be disastrous”.

Dressing to look big

Style is not about dressing to look big, thin, or fat. Style is expression. She addresses the subject matter of style in the book’s third part. In this section, she attempts to provide tips on steps to become stylish, style tips for guys, success lessons from her favourite style icon –Michelle Obama, and over dressing verses under dressing. She says it is easier to make a dressy outfit look casual than to make a casual outfit more dressy. On wearing perfumes she opined that the best time to apply perfume is right after a shower or bath.

In the concluding section, the author weaves her words around a series of tips which she calls Thoughts. This section revolves around building one’s confidence, the beauty in forgiveness, beauty by simple living e.t.c. She says you cannot live beautiful going around with bags of grudges and an unforgiving spirit. According to her, :”Unforgiveness is not just a reaction to express how badly someone has hurt you, it’s a spirit set out to keep you in bondage and hinder you from enjoying the beauty and abundance of life.”

Oni presents the tips in an easy to grasp diction. It can be compared to a feature article in a lifestyle magazine. The book is quite captivating, once one is soaked in its tips, bible quotations, and motivational aphorisms, it becomes difficult to put it down. Beautified is a collector’s item, capable of rejuvenating the reader’s ugly life’s experiences.