You Would Never Be Pretty Enough...Stop Trying
I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but that’s just the plain truth.
Oh, you thought you could stay ahead of the trends and beat the trend makers at their game each time? Come on, you know better!
You get the trendiest outfits, you stay ahead of every beauty trend, and you probably went to bed with the new face mask that promised to give you buttery airbrushed skin overnight.
You woke up this morning and there is still something missing?
Well, that’s because you would never be pretty enough.
If you’re familiar with marketing, there is a term known as “demand generation”.
It’s a very successful marketing technique that makes you keep buying products you do not need.
Every successful brand is successful at demand generation and there is nothing wrong with it. I’m hoping it’s something I can master myself for when I start my business.
Demand generation in the beauty industry though…to put it lightly, it’s toxic.
The beauty industry feeds off the insecurities they create.
I’m a black woman. Growing up, and even today, the beauty standard in my country is having fair skin.
I have a friend who is naturally very fair. We were hanging out together one day and just scrolling through social media.
We came across a picture of two really beautiful women, one was dark-skinned and the other was fair-skinned.
The caption was “who is more pretty?”.
My friend laughed because “how can they compare a darker-skinned woman to a light-skinned woman, there is no competition”.
I don’t need to tell you that she thought the lighter-skinned woman is prettier.
It’s funny how these beauty standards contradict each other across different cultures.
In the western part of the world, it’s all about having darker skin.
Like I said, demand generation.
In Africa, where most people have darker skin, it would not make sense to try to sell skin-darkening products.
It’s like trying to sell ice in Antarctica.
In the western part of the world where people have white skin, it does not make sense to try to sell anyone skin whitening products.
So they make the grass look greener on the other side.
They make me feel there is something wrong with my dark skin and they make you feel there is something wrong with your fair skin.
That’s a good example of successful demand generation.
We see this with body trends too and it’s always more dangerous with body trends.
Slim teas...waist trainers...appetite suppressants...bbl’s anyone.
It’s crazy and it might never stop.
This is why you would never be pretty enough.
There would always be something new and you would always keep trying to achieve “the look”.
I would not tell you to love yourself the way you are, I'll probably be the 1000th person to tell you that.
Keep trying...maybe one day when you spend your last dime trying to achieve “the look", you would realize that even those trying to sell you the look have not been able to achieve “the look".
