As women, it’s nearly impossible to escape the societal pressure of beauty standards. This pressure has led to women exploring multiple ways to measure up to those standards, naturally and unnaturally.
From television shows to magazines to music, the depiction of women is not always realistic of what women look or should look like.
Beauty standards for women vary widely across different cultures. For example, East Asian beauty standards often include pale skin, large eyes and a bridged nose. Western culture, including the U.S., typically finds tan skin, large lips, small noses and slim faces to be more attractive. While cultures have different standards for women, they affect women all the same.
From a young age we are exposed to public figures, especially women, who change their features to fit what society wants to see. Oftentimes, these women are already conventionally attractive which is why they gain popularity. However, as they are continuously subject to the public eye, even they are ridiculed.
We watch these celebrities from a young age and continue to see them as we grow up. As we age, they age too. Aging is inevitable but the rising glorification of looking young has made aging undesirable.
One example of this is Kylie Jenner. She is arguably one of the most famous women in the world with nearly 400 million followers on Instagram and multiple companies that profit off of “beautifying.” She has a skincare line, makeup line and is heavily involved in her sister, Kim Kardashian’s, underwear and shapewear company SKIMS.
Jenner and her sisters have been at the forefront of social media and are praised for their beauty. While there is absolutely no doubt that they are beautiful, even they have undergone cosmetic facial surgery to fit Western beauty standards. Jenner has openly talked about her journey using lip fillers, and Kardashian has admitted to her use of Botox.
These women, famous for their beauty, still felt the need to get them done. While many women and men alike get cosmetic surgery for reasons outside of pleasing others, it is hard to imagine that the Kardashian-Jenner sisters got work done purely for themselves after being the center of the media’s eye for years.
I would like to point out that no one should be shamed for using cosmetic surgery or other methods to feel more confident. The issue is when women, specifically teenagers and young adults, are taught that their outward appearance is what matters most.
As a young Hispanic woman myself who does not naturally fit Western beauty standards, I struggled a lot with feeling pretty as a teenager. I felt like my wider nose did not fit my face and my thick facial hair made me feel less feminine. How was I, along with other young women, supposed to ignore that I did not look like what was depicted in the media?
There are plenty of reasons to get cosmetic procedures done on your face or body, but when so many public figures are either doing these procedures or promoting ways to reduce aging, it’s no longer about feeling good about oneself. It’s about fitting the media’s standard of beauty so that you can succeed.
As more and more women get Botox and other facial filler procedures, they are losing sight of the drastic changes that are being done.
You may have heard the term “blush-blindness.” It’s a real thing in the facial cosmetic surgery world and it’s called pillowface.
Pillowface is exactly what it sounds like. When someone gets too much filler or their filler migrates or is incorrectly placed, their face looks puffy, uncontoured and sometimes even uncanny. This puffiness creates an unnatural look in the face and disrupts the ability to make facial expressions. This look is not naturally achieved and creates a highly unrealistic picture of beauty.
This constant desire for looking the most beautiful is starting to become dystopian in the way that society is losing touch with what is realistic. We are constantly evolving and wanting the next best thing. The idea of beauty’s role in that trend is not new. Beauty standards have been set for centuries, only now do we have the technology to take those standards to extremes.
These extremes are further pushing the agenda that you must be beautiful to be desired and have worth.
“Stay young,” “stay beautiful,” “stay unwrinkled,” “stay skinny,” all these statements have caused women to believe the notion that attractiveness is everything and that there are strict guidelines to what is attractive and what is not.
This mindset is damaging and we need to stop accepting it as a society.
Women shouldn’t be afraid to age; to age is to live and aging is a privilege not everyone has. Women shouldn’t be afraid of fitting outside the beauty standard. If we all fit that standard, we would lack individuality, which makes us, us!
If we continue this development of overusing cosmetic surgery, women are never going to feel comfortable in their skin. Young women are always going to see that the women who are successful look a certain way and think that they should look that way too.
It’s a heartbreaking reality, but we don’t have to let it continue. It’s important to remind ourselves that our appearance isn’t an indication of who we are. Many celebrities do get work done on themselves to make them look a certain way, but that doesn’t mean that we have to. Makeup, editing and oftentimes surgery are used to achieve the look that celebrities do online. Not everything we see is real or natural, and we have to be mindful of that.
This isn’t to say that we should avoid those things at all cost, but our looks do not define us. Those changes should help us feel confident for ourselves, not an act for other people.