Individuality Is The New Beauty
The standard is that there is no standard.
Following society’s conventions, I am just a common woman. I am not gorgeous.
Like many teenagers back in high school, I used to be obsessed with how I looked. “My ears are too big”, “I have too much acne”.
Then in the first years at the university, it didn’t improve much. I studied computer science, so I was part of the 20% or less of girls there. Many of the boys’ comments about women were strongly focused on the socially constructed ideas of beauty. I won’t go into details, but many comments were even disrespectful.
In the first year at the university, as a 17-year-old girl, it was hard for me to speak up. I was still searching for who I was, lacking self-confidence and seeking approval. Yet as the years went by, as I became an adult, self-confident and activist, I started to refuse to let people offend others based on their physical appearance, at the risk of being considered as the party pooper.
No one has the right to do so. For there is beauty in everything, and there isn’t a universal definition of it.
Poor Body Image
As teenagers and young women, we are still too often expected to look up to a certain standard of beauty—the one silently imposed by society. What we constantly hear and see does nothing but worsen our amour propre.
This inevitably results in a majority of adolescent girls experiencing a poor body image and lacking self-confidence. What should we expect, being surrounded by an environment of flawless bodies in the media, retouched photos, beauty pageants, public health campaigns for weight loss, and so on?
A documentary on Netflix, The Social Dilemma, highlights the increase in depression and anxiety since 2011 for teenage girls. For older teen girls, the numbers have increased more than 60% since that year, and suicide numbers follow the same pattern. As they say in the documentary,
“A whole generation is more anxious, more fragile, more depressed.”
Leaving aside the general influence of social media onto our lives and the addictions it creates—this is another debate—, a major problem it creates is that people are constantly comparing their appearance to that of others on social media.
Beauty standards are mostly, for both women and men, filled with negative stereotypes.
Fighting for Change
Thankfully, this is beginning to change. “Beginning”, because there is still much to do. Social media sure has a negative influence on teenagers’ —and even adults’— self-confidence, yet we can’t deny it is also a major player in the fight against socially imposed beauty standards in society.
Over the years, people have protested and fought for change, and it is starting to pay.
Halima Aden, model and activist born in a refugee camp in Kenya, made history in 2016 when she became the first woman to wear a hijab and burkini in the Miss Minnesota USA pageant. As she tells in her TED talk,
“I saw it as an opportunity to be a voice for women who, like myself, had felt underrepresented. And although I didn’t capture the crown, that experience opened so many doors for me. I was receiving emails and messages from women all over the world, telling me that I’ve inspired them by simply staying true to myself.”
A few years later, she also became the first model wearing a hijab on the cover of Vogue and Sports Illustrated.
While in 2018 Victoria Secret’s Chief Marketing Officer, Ed Razek, disagreed to have trans models in the show; a year after, Brazilian model Valentina Sampaio became Victoria Secret’s first transgender woman.
And these are only a few examples. Plus-size models like the famous Ahsley Graham—should they really be referred to as “plus-size”? this is another debate too—, models with disabilities like Jillian Mercado or Aimee Mullins, with Down Syndrome like Madeline Stuart, and so on; are participating in redefining the true meaning of beauty. They are finally breaking the often-rigid rules imposed by society for too long. “There is beauty in everything”, says Winnie Harlow, a Canadian model with vitiligo.
Meanwhile, more campaigns also participate in the fight to make beauty more inclusive — although let’s not forget it serves companies well to gain market share too. Dove’s #ShowUs campaign, for example, aims to create “a more inclusive vision of beauty”:
“Women & non-binary individuals from around the world are redefining beauty on their own terms.”
Final Thoughts
Slowly but surely, diversity and inclusivity are making their way into the standards. The definition of beauty is expanding more than ever. Sure, it has evolved throughout history, and among cultures. But the new beauty ideal is that there is no ideal; no matter what the differences, there is beauty everywhere. And in everything, as Winnie Harlow put it.
“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”—Confucius
Well, now, society is —finally— starting to see it.
Beauty ideals aren’t about body shape, age —JoAni Johnson started her modeling career at 65— or skin color anymore; they are about individuality.
Anyone has the right to be beautiful in their own way.
The standard is that there is no standard.
And this is only the beginning.
