The concept of beauty has expanded a great deal over the years when it comes to women.
A woman that is beautiful can be any shape or size and even any skin tone. Usually, a woman seen as physically attractive in some way to most people is seen as one who possesses beauty. It can be a woman of any color or size. However, sometimes society places too much emphasis on who is beautiful physically and constantly praising them instead of seeing the beauty in everyone else.
Over the last decade, the LGBTQ+ community has been making huge strides in civil rights, legislation and also general societal acceptance. However, I have found that because someone may not look like a typical woman or man, they are seen as unattractive or less than someone who lives up to a societal standard. Personally, I have seen social media hurt and help this cause in many ways.
There are millions of people who embrace transgender women and are encouraging them to be themselves no matter what society thinks about them. Numerous pages on social media are dedicated to supporting transgender women and men, showing everyone else that changing who they are is okay and they are still beautiful. These pages go so far as to defending them because there are still a lot of people who still have problems with a person changing gender.
With social media, just like there are positive pages that support members of the LGBTQ+ community, there are also negative pages that try to tear them down. Several pages are made just to call the LGBTQ+ community demeaning and horrible names and sometimes even spread false information to the public. They comment negative things under videos and photos and try to draw attention and spark negative conversations about being transgender. Their goal is to make them look as bad as possible and to turn people against them in any way possible. Thankfully, these people can be reported and the pages can be taken down.
All women should be seen as beautiful no matter how everyone else depicts them. As a cisgender woman, I hope that we continue to encourage not only support members of the LGBTQ+ community but also any woman dealing with self esteem issues and not finding the beauty within herself. Beauty can be anything we make it and it’s not only about the outside and appearances but our character as well.