Unrealistic Beauty Standards and how they mess up our minds!

Have you ever experienced a time in your lives when you wanted to look just like the celebrity models you saw all around the city up on billboards?

We’ve all had that thought when we saw those idealistic bodies and faces of models and celebrities all around us. We praised their perfection and were mesmerized by their flawless beauty.

These unrealistic beauty standards set by our society have truly messed up our minds and crushed our confidence and self esteem.

Surprisingly, these standards are not only troubling women today, but also men. Men are also being objectified by these unrealistic standards and they too have a hard time living their lives the way they want to.

Here are a few standards set by society that qualify for a person being ‘beautiful’:

The Stereotypes!

Throughout history, we have seen that people consider fair individuals to be ‘beautiful’ while dark skinned or dusky individuals are always advised to carry out tips and tricks to make their skin lighter and ‘more beautiful’.

This has had a lot of negative impact on people’s minds who have gone through harsh treatments and procedures which were extremely harmful and unhealthy for them just to appear prettier.

The beauty industry today is earning a fortune based on people’s insecurities. They cast celebrities and models who fit the requirements set by society to appear beautiful and they play with people’s psychologies to look like them. What people don’t realize is that none of what we see is true.

The pictures that we idealize are photo-shopped and made to look perfect and flawless while in reality, they are not even close to it.

Similarly, we idealize people with perfectly slim bodies and try to be like the by starving ourselves. The only reason why ‘Snapchat’ filters are so famous is primarily because they make our faces ‘slim’ and that’s what we all want!

Makeup has helped people all around the world!

New techniques have been introduced through makeup which create an illusion of a slimmer face and girls are going crazy after it!

According to  researchers, women use around 18 different types of products on their faces everyday which contain hundreds of harmful chemicals, half of which have not been assessed to be user-friendly.

Apart from temporary changes, some people go so overboard with these standards that they decide to get permanent changes made to their body such as surgeries, botox fillers and liposuctions which changes the anatomy of their natural body and makes them look better.

Why are women of today so obsessed with looking perfect?

It’s because our minds are being trained this way. Every day while scrolling through our social media feeds, we look at numerous pictures of models who have perfect skin, face and bodies therefore we aspire to be one of them.

Our thoughts about beauty have changed and we as a society want to see idealistic versions of every individual.

We hardly care about inner beauty, confidence, personality and uniqueness of a person but we all want them to fit the criteria set for them by society to appear beautiful.

Sadly, this problem is not only limited to women these days. Even men experience the same kind of objectification as male models also appear to have well built bodies that are strong, tall, muscular and well maintained.

Men are also a prey of our society’s unrealistic beauty standards and hence they too are working their way into becoming ‘perfect’.

The point is, there is nothing wrong in working out and aiming towards a healthier body but the problem today is that people have to pay a very high price to achieve this. The amount of mental pressure that a person goes through is traumatizing, whether it is a man or a woman.

You don’t have to work hard to look pretty

Achieving the set standards of beauty is not a piece of cake and it is definitely not for everyone as every person has a unique body structure which is primarily genetic and there nothing they can do about it.

Any means of artificial methods that people acquire today are highly harmful to their bodies and they might not turn out as well as expected.

These are the reasons which lead to drastic consequences such as high levels of depression and self-loathing for people even in their teenage years.

This is the reason why everyone is so angry, sad and demotivated today because we feel like we couldn’t achieve the perfection that we’ve always strive for. This had made us look away from the real achievements in life.

We have stopped aspiring to be better human beings with a kind heart and loving soul. We have also stopped looking for uniqueness and inner beauty in one another and are shallow enough to judge other people on their looks.

We have not only ruined the sense of beauty for ourselves but our future generations too are falling into the trap of endless depression and low self esteem.

You are beautiful no matter what

It is about time that we see through the tactics of beauty industries of playing with our emotions and making us insecure about everything that we should be proud of instead.

We must look past flawless, fair skins and perfect bodies and focus more on how a person is brought up and what values they hold because years from now when every beautiful face is filled with wrinkles, it’ll be a kind heart that we will all look for.

We are all unique and beautiful in our own ways and we do not need any one else to set standards for us. Some of us are god gifted while some of us aren’t and that is completely okay as long as we’re happy and confident in our own skin and we push each other to rise up other than pulling them down on every chance that we get.

We must learn to respect our physical differences and focus on things that are more important. Every person, no matter what they look like have the right to live their lives with confidence.