Comparing yourself to others is one of the most notorious human tendencies. Often it feels like all anyone ever cares about anymore is what they look like and what they’re doing compared to other people their age. The focus is turned so far away from recognizing each individual person and instead placing them into categories of who they should be based on commonalities such as age, gender, race, religion, and the list goes on. Specifically, the beauty industry has literally painted women to be perfect. An airbrushed face of flawless skin plasters every Covergirl and Revlon makeup commercial. If a girl chooses to go to the gym with a natural, bare face, it’s assumed that she doesn’t respect herself enough or it’s used as a sign of immaturity. Confident and empowered women only wear tight clothes that hug their bodies to rid ‘insecurity’ from their vocabulary. If a girl chooses to wear loose-fitting clothes instead of form-fitting ones, she’s told she’s too modest or she isn’t proud of who she is. Society will always find something you could change about yourself. Here’s the thing: it’s a hoax. That’s why you need to remember these points as the biggest lies the beauty industry tells us.
- Age is something you should hide
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The other day while I was watching TV, a Botox company commercial came on. It showed numerous women in fashionable clothes spending the night out with their friends having a good time. Each woman was surrounded by neon city lights in the background as the camera circles her in her element. This is only one example of how we’re told that growth and change aren’t things to embrace. We’re supposed to always stay young and beautiful and if you don’t, you shouldn’t be happy. It’s setting us up to hate ourselves for the natural occurrence of aging. That people have the most fun and desirable life when they aren’t themselves is one of the biggest misconceptions of the beauty industry.
- The lower the number on the scale, the more beautiful you are
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There’s a growing misunderstanding of the similarity between wanting to be active and wanting to lose weight. The truth is that there is no correlation at all. Little girls are taught from a very early age that the scale defines who they are. They learn this because of so many contributing factors around them from social media and Hollywood to the image of what a supermodel or cheerleader is. In my personal opinion, the normalization of counting calories and the obsession over stepping onto the scale has too big of an impact on girls today. It’s disheartening how accustomed people are to women being fit into so many boxes instead of recognizing them each for their individuality.
- The tag on your back defines your worth
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Retail stores like to push the idea that you can learn so much about a person based on what they look like, what they wear and where they shop. In the TV show Glee, it eventually comes out that Marley wears clothes with tags her mom sews on from high-end clothes brands to cover up that they don’t have very much money. This demonstrates how desperate people are to fit in with a crowd when it comes to how they look even if they have to sacrifice their individual identity and beauty. A staple example as far as status, class and sociability set expectations of a typical customer means that there’s always going to be someone excluded from the norm. Instead, the norm should be that your clothes are not telling of you or your character. There is no reason to judge someone for their choice of expression. Ideally, judgment would come from what makes that person a person.
You can’t know who a person is just by looking at them. But by looking at them, you can learn the difference between beautiful change and an obligation to stay the same despite how hard society pushes to blur those lines. You’re only as you are right now once. Why not embrace every day and take life as it comes at you?