When you meet a woman who is truly confident and glowing and feels healthy, you think she looks beautiful—but you don’t really say, “Oh, her hair is beautiful.” You just think the whole package looks good. You don’t really know what it is that’s beautiful about her—you just know she is.So, what is beauty? What is beautiful hair?My name is Guido, and I’m a hairstylist. After working for many years in the fashion industry creating hairstyles to make women, models and actors look beautiful, I’ve come to understand that hair is only one piece of the beauty puzzle.I’ve become interested in the psychology behind beauty because I see that even the most beautiful women in the world, the people who are put on a pedestal and told they are beautiful, don’t always feel beautiful.So what is it that makes women feel beautiful? It’s not just a pure, obvious aesthetic. You can have all the so-called beautiful pieces—the hair, the face, the body—but it doesn’t always add up to a beautiful person. There are lots of factors that go into making a woman alluring—how she feels about herself, her personality, her positivity.Where I’m concerned is women’s hair. I see women using their hair as a device—meaning they use their hair in different ways throughout the day, unintentionally and intentionally.A woman plays with her hair a certain way. She puts it up, she pulls it down. She puts it in a ponytail to make it easier to do the housework. She might use hair as a safety, as a nervous thing, to attract men or to make women jealous. She uses her hair in more ways than she thinks she does.So when you say to a woman, “Oh, let’s cut off your hair,” you’re cutting off a lot of things she’s used to doing every day.This is why hair is such a part of a woman’s identity, and ultimately, her beauty. What I plan to explore at YouBeauty is, what are all the reasons women do their hair? It’s not just for vanity’s sake.A very obvious thing is when a woman finds out she has cancer. It’s a horrible thing, and one of the first things she often thinks is, “I’m going to lose my hair.” She’s going to lose something that gives her beauty and an identity.When you start talking to women about beauty and what makes them feel beautiful, lots of different things come out. YouBeauty is a great forum for women to get together and pour their hearts out about what makes them feel beautiful. We, the YouBeauty experts, can help answer questions. Like myself—I’m surrounded by women most of my life, so I hear their insecurities and problems with their hair, or what they’re trying to get out of their hair.One thing I want to help women with is getting over the idea of perfection. It doesn’t exist. Every single person in the world is different, and this ideal of the perfect beauty with perfect hair isn’t real. We’re often told this kind of hair is beautiful and that kind of hair isn’t beautiful. Well, hang on a minute. If you’re feeling good about yourself today and your hair is a little frizzy, then who’s to say your hair doesn’t look good? How you project yourself matters—as soon as you start to feel beautiful, other people start to get on board and see you in a beautiful way.Every woman has the potential to be beautiful. Every woman has beautiful qualities. And that has nothing to do with shape, size, age or color. It’s just a matter of learning to make the best of one’s self.In this column and at YouBeauty, we’ll encourage positivity instead of negativity when it comes to beauty. Forget that beauty is for the young—beauty goes all through life. As you get older, your beauty changes and your hair changes. But no one loses her potential to be beautiful.