Standards of beauty

She stood on a stool across the wall looking at her reflection in the mirror. Her mind races with thoughts eliminating everything around her but her reflection. She stares for hours at her boring brown eyes, her hollow cheeks, the bags under her eyes, the freckles across the bridge of her nose and her cheeks and her curly dark hair.

Are people born with a set idea of how they are supposed to look? Does the pressure exerted on them by the society shape their standards of beauty over the years of their lives? Little kids appeal to everyone, don’t they? With their bright mischievous smiles, skipping about without a care in the world. Those days are over when someone asks you why your skin is a different colour, why your eye colour is different, why you don’t do anything about the acne or pimples on your face, why you don’t try to gain/lose weight etc. That’s the thing. You never thought there was something wrong or different about how you look until someone tells you, you aren’t supposed to look like that.

In such a way, I believe, the society around us decides who we are and how we look. People aren’t given the freedom to look at themselves and assume they are beautiful unless they fit into most people’s ideal beauty standards. This is where you are given a chance to look at yourself and be satisfied, to be happy with how you look, anything you do about it should be to please you and by doing this you would be proving millions wrong. People who do think they are beautiful are the ones who have broken free of others’ ideas and views. They are those who are most content. People who hate how they appear just because they do not appeal to some people around them are putting themselves down, and that’s not even according to their own standards.

I think anything you do, you should do it only for pleasing yourself first. Changing for others might not bring you joy. You always come first.

I believe no one is born with an idea of how they should look. They are taught about it. They collect ideas from those around them. Ideas such as dark skin is undesirable, boys should be taller than girls, being plus size is unattractive etc. We can see that change is taking place but where we are now is far from perfection, there is still a long way to go.

Beauty comes from confidence. It comes from within. That line maybe a cliché but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. A strong opinion can change others opinions. That is how these standards or ideals of beauty were made, and that is exactly how they should be destroyed.

(image cred: youreadmymind)