Beauty used to be in the eye of the beholder.
Now, beauty is in the eye of the fashion magazines and Hollywood ingénue tropes. For years and years, women have been seen as objects of beauty and attention. Helen of Troy’s beauty started a war. Mermaids were famous in mythical tales for luring men to their deaths with their beauty. Even the beautiful Jennifer Aniston started the “Rachel” haircut movement in the 1990s.
Beauty has been claimed to be subjective to the viewer, yet in modern culture it seems more objective than ever.
Tina Fey explains it in Bossypants:
“Now every girl is expected to have: Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll t*ts.”
When this checklist appeared, women were subjected to strict standards. If you aren’t conventionally beautiful, you need to make yourself conventionally beautiful. If you don’t conform to the checklist of conventional beauty, then you are instantly shamed for it until you make yourself conform.
Shaming comes in all shapes and sizes—fat shaming, skinny shaming, shaming for being too tall, shaming for being too short, slut shaming, prude shaming—but all forms are equally as harmful. Society is shaming average women into a fruitless battle towards obtaining the unattainable Ideal Female Template.
Jennifer Lawrence, Lena Dunham, Mindy Kaling, and so many countless other actresses and models have made statements about the unhealthiness of today’s Ideal Female Template, stressing how much time it takes to look the way they do.
But with this growing advocacy for body positivity, why is it still so hard to embrace one’s originality and imperfections?
I’ll admit that I suffer from poor body image. I am more than well aware that I do not conform to the Ideal Female Template. Some days, I look in the mirror and I’ll say, “I’m too hot (hot damn),” but other days I’m much less than satisfied. It feels like there’s always something wrong, though, even on my best days. Either my eyes are too small or I have acne along my hairline or I feel bloated from eating an entire pizza the day before.
They say you spend a quarter of your life waiting for things, I believe I’ve spent more than that worrying about how I look.
We all have. We’re all guilty of it.
Why do we spend this time worrying anyways? There are so many other things we all could be thinking about! We’re so preoccupied with how our bodies look that we forget about the amazing things that they actually do.
We worry about having a “thigh gap.” We forget that our thighs are strong so we can explore our world.
We worry about arm fat. We forget that our arms are made for throwing our own punches to stand up for ourselves and for pulling others in close.
We worry about scars and stretch marks. We forget that they tell stories and prove that we’ve had life-changing experiences.
We worry about being too fat or too thin. We forget that our bodies are the how they are to best protect our organs.
We worry about not being enough. We forget that we are already more than enough.
Even knowing all this, it’s still so hard to accept oneself. So, how can we finally own who we already are? Maybe it starts with a change in society. Maybe it starts with a change inside us. Either way, it’s not going to be easy.
Let’s start by focusing on what we already are than what we are not. I’ll start: I am short, smart, sarcastic, and super sassy. I look awesome in my glasses. I totally rock a baseball cap. I love wearing t-shirts and sweatshirts and boyfriend jeans with holes in them. I’m a good singer. I make brilliantly horrible jokes, most of which are puns.
I was able to come up with a list of things that I am, and it feels good.
Maybe that’s where it should start. Everyday will be a challenge, but if we focus on the good things we are, we can improve upon ourselves from there. Why should I worry about what I’m not when what I am already is so awesome? I’m going to own it.
Here’s to owning it. Here’s to owning who you are.