Recently a friend asked me why wasn’t she as pretty and thin as the models in magazines. I stared for a few seconds and responded, “because you’re never going to be one of them.” Her reaction was priceless; but the real question is, do you really believe these models look as perfect as they do in the glossy pages of a magazine?
There is so much to explore and learn in life yet somehow society manages to focus more on appearance. Undoubtedly, we all have our ups and downs, in which we may not feel confident with our bodies but it is in moments like those when we have be strong and love our flaws.Women struggle each day to accomplish the narrow ideal of beauty that has permeated through the centuries. The media is constantly displaying perfect lips, perfect legs, perfect boobs- objectifying the female body while standardizing beauty.
The fashion industry is an explicit example of how, in the past years, they have been fixed with a concept of beauty. They have restricted the passage to a sum of models in the industry and have not revealed the diversity of women appearances. However, recently they have introduced models that have caused a huge impact in the fashion industry.
This year at New York’s Fashion Week, models who in the past would not make the cut, walked down the runways. The latest model sensation, Winnie Harlow, 20, was seen strutting down the runways. She suffers from vitiligo, a skin condition in which patches of the skin lose their pigmentation when pigment producing cells, melanocytes, die or stop functioning. However, she has reformed the face of the fashion industry. Harlow’s road to success was not easy.
“It started in middle school I would say, they call me names like cow, zebra, there were a few physical altercations,” she expressed in the video. “ As I got older and started accepting myself and loving all of my flaws, I was like ‘ I can do this’.”
Shaun Ross, has shaken the fashion industry- because he’s not your average model. The 23-year-old is an albino and has gained respect for his triumphs since working with highly notable business in the industry. “ I know there are going to be people out there that are going to make fun of me,” Ross said in the video. “…but I know that I have everything that it takes to make people see things differently.”
We have to learn to not take beauty standards seriously and believe in ourselves. Own that crooked smile, those voluminous thighs and any other feature that doesn’t fit the standard- because that’s all that beauty should be. Being pretty may hurt because we focus primordially on our defects. But remember, “ Perfection is a disease of a nation.”