Beauty Standard:
/byoo·tee stan·drd/
The feminine beauty ideal is "the socially constructed notion that physical attractiveness is one of women's most important assets, and something all women should strive to achieve and maintain".
I saw an Instagram post with an image of Angelina Jolie's jawline, it showed how it would look if she had a "weak chin" or "a small bump and droopy nose". The image defined the type of angles in jawline women should pursue and have, if you had this certain angle of jawline then it was considered "perfect" if not then, you are ugly. I kept scrolling down and one comment caught my eyes which is the one above and I'm asking myself. Why are women pressured to fit in beauty standards or the so called "perfection"?
The society we live in bombards young girls and women with images of what they should aspire to look like: flawless skin, shiny hair, an emaciated stick thin figure, perfect makeup, and impossibly expensive clothing. Is like they only promote a narrow view of beauty. This starts from a very young age, little girls grow up with a sense of self-loathing and internalize the belief that they need other people’s validation to feel whole. Women are applauded for being beautiful. It’s very rare that you will see a woman get cultural praise for the size of her brain.
Young girls are taught to be seen and not heard and that beauty is the ultimate achievement that they can strive for.
So we poison ourselves with toxic chemicals, make up our faces, starve our bodies, dumb down our minds, poke and prod ourselves with needles…for what? So you can think we’re “beautiful.”
"External beauty is something that has been dictated to us by society. It is not something that is truly real. The standards by which we judge somebody as “beautiful” is all made up."
I always see bad examples of what women should like, there is not a great and wider examples of beauty. It's shown in music videos, movies, instagram celebrities....NO REPRESENTATION. They all look the same!
The fact that beauty standards changes over the years surprises me a lot. I remember being criticized for having big lips but now its a fucking trend with the Kylie Jenner movement, or when freckles where seen as unattractive but all of a sudden I see females doing fake freckles. They critize you for what you naturally have and all of a sudden it becomes a damn trend.
"These phenomena have established insecurities among women who do not fit into these criterias. They feel unsatisfied and even get depressed about their body or their appearance. With the expectations to meet these standards, as an example, many plus size women undergo an unhealthy strict diet that might causing anorexia, while dark complexion women take skin whitening to make their skin brighter, which in many cases the-beauty-products promises to provide immediate result without concerning the safety ingredient of the products."
I remember being a carefree child, not worrying wether my features where desirable or not. Not worrying about having to "fix" my hair, my body, my imperfections. I was being me, but when I began to grow and entered in the teemage phase I started to see the things I didn't like about myself, I saw myself as the wrong gene. Pursuing perfection made me feel like a cage that had no escape. They are unrealistic, it doesn't exist. Sometimes what you find ugly in yourself is what others find beautiful.
I hope one day you definitely see yourself as beautiful without the need of what society considers pretty. The beauty I want us to embrace the beauty that comes from "imperfection". Don't spend your life chasing something that doesn't exist. Perfection only feeds you fear of disappointment and fear of not being enough.
"What is wrong? Beauty is often distorted by many pressures. It cannot be defined by only ‘íf you are not fit into those criterias, you are not beautiful’, it is much more than that. We need to broaden our perspective about beauty because it can take many forms. Beauty standards should be defined by ourselves. We need to believe that beautiful comes from within." - Virly Churianti
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