Redefining Beautiful
The ways in which people view their bodies has changed significantly throughout the years. Society’s standards have always had the upper hand, playing us like puppets and watching us dance to the beat of its qualifications. It seems that people are encouraged to find their self-worth in appearance, and are only deemed acceptable if they meet exact specifications on how a body should look. This way of thinking is an extremely detrimental aspect of our culture, and has caused long-term damage on how people view themselves and others.
I can’t count on my fingers how many times I’ve sat in a room full of girls and women getting ready for an event, and witnessed almost every single one take a look in the mirror and say something utterly self-deprecating in relation to their body and how they look. And it’s broken my heart every time without fail; to hear incredible, strong, whimsical, intelligent, beautiful women not acknowledge a single one of these traits and instead focus on something about their bodies that society told them was a flaw. If you’re reading this, I know you’ve experienced it. You’ve probably said those things about yourself, too. I know I have.
Presently, a significant majority of the fashion industry’s media contributes to the utter plummeting of self-esteem and confidence when it comes to loving one’s own body. Models displayed in magazines and advertisements are often airbrushed and edited into an unreachable ideal. In reality, these people are not people at all, but optical illusions designed to guilt their audience into setting higher standards for themselves and spending money in order to attain those standards. Today’s society is consumed with self-deprecating voices, saying they are not thin or toned enough for that swimsuit, or do not have the “correct” body type for a certain clothing style. These twisted views need to be abolished. We must remold our minds, exchanging hateful intolerance with love and acceptance. We are responsible for the culture we set up to future generations. Do we want the next generation to endure the pain of body-shaming and self-hate?
In a Ted Talk by Kelli Jean Drinkwater titled ‘Enough with the Fear of Fat’ (please give it a listen), I experienced a truly beautiful example of an unapologetic fat person, who refuses to conform to society’s warped regulations on how a human body should look. We live in a culture diseased by fat-phobia, which in Kelli’s words is “rooted from the complex concepts of capitalism, patriarchy, and racism.” Why is it that our culture feels the need to dictate what people do with their own bodies, and if our BMI fails society’s unachievable tests, we are denied basic humanity? There is no wrong way to have a body, and obliterating the damaging notion that being happy, healthy, and beautiful only lies within a specific size can spread the lost art of confidence, self-love, and acceptance.
The fashion industry and media conditions our minds into thinking that in order to look beautiful, you must have the right body type. But every body type is the right body type. Today’s size of women averages between a size 14 and a size 18 (approximately 80 million women fall into this range). We should be celebrating the diverse nature of the human body and encouraging each other to love our bodies exactly as they are.
Overall, the harmful effects of social media and the fashion industry’s outrageously corrupt beauty standards are driving our self-confidence into nonexistence. The influence of cultural expectation may never disappear completely, but the root of the problem requires each of us to take a stand against what is deemed beautiful by society and define the meaning of the word for ourselves.
https://www.ted.com/talks/kelli_jean_drinkwater_enough_with_the_fear_of_fat
