I was five years old when I began to think my legs were too big. I had just started kindergarten when I began to despite the shape of my nose. I hadn’t even reached puberty when I began to long to look like the fully-grown models I saw in my mother’s magazines.
Many women say that their childhood was the only time they felt free from the male gaze, but I cannot say the same for myself. Since I can remember, I have been aware that there were always eyes on me that I needed to please. Whether I was trying to get my elementary school crush to notice me or ensure that my family members would continue to shower me with compliments, I always knew that, as a woman, I was placed on this earth to perform. That is where my constant adherence to beauty standards began.
At 16 years old, my boss told me that I would be taken more seriously at work if I “put on a little lipstick.” To this day, I am told to dress my best every day by other women on social media because “you never know when you’ll meet your future husband!” God forbid I leave the house without makeup because that would be a felony, wouldn’t it?
No matter how many hairs I waxed off of my body, how many calories I burnt on the treadmill or how much money I spent on skincare, I am still not pretty enough. I could exert all of the energy I have toward maintaining my appearance, but society will always find a way to tell me that there is something wrong with it. I am told to constantly perform, not only for the male gaze but for society’s gaze as a whole.
I feel bad for the ugliness of society and the way women are treated. Women are asked if they are ill if they come to work or school without makeup; women of color are told that their natural hair texture is “unprofessional; women of all body types are shamed for their natural physical features. No matter what, we can never win. We are on a neverending hamster wheel of beautification.
I am doing my best to free myself of the shackles that the ever-changing beauty standard has on me. I am finally in a place where I view my makeup routine and outfit planning as a means of self-expression, rather than a prerequisite of womanhood. I have taken ownership of my body in that my routine maintenance is now a form of self-care, rather than a requirement to be deemed worthy of femininity. I have learned to look at myself more holistically, seeing a multifaceted human being, rather than a pretty face and big breasts.
Though I may never fully achieve my goal, every step away from the box society puts me in is a step in the right direction. No matter how appealing my external appearance is, I deserve to love myself and other women deserve to do so too.