BEAUTY: If the idea of beauty is subjective, why are we continuously pushing women into molds and scorning them if they don’t fit that particular shape?
By Amy Wang, Opinions Editor
Somewhere in the middle of angst-ridden pre-teen years and a messy move away from my old friends to a new school, I developed a cripplingly low self-esteem. Even now, it’s a struggle for me to talk about this without cringing or hiding my face in embarrassment. But it’s something that I need to talk about and others need to hear.
Today, the gossip-saturated media fills our brains with perceptions of “beauty.” Images of tall, thin women and built, broad-shouldered men flood magazines, television and every other social medium out there. Our definition of “beauty” is no longer human; instead, it’s the result of professional photoshop and buckets of make-up.
It comes as no surprise that over 8,000,000 people in the United States have an eating disorder and that 90% of them are women, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associate Disorders. Eating disorders tend to emerge during teen years, when teenagers are exposed to the most media influence, but some eating disorders begin as early as the age of eight.
Eight! Can you imagine a sweet little elementary school student skipping out on dessert because she is afraid her stomach will be too big? I have nightmares of my little cousin, only four years old now, growing up to become a pile of bones sewn together with the words of society–skinny, skinny, skinny–pressed into every crevice of her small body.
But the worst nightmare imaginable is that my little cousin becomes me. When I was twelve years old, it was hard to look in the mirror, much less meet people’s eyes when speaking to them. A heart-wrenching fear in my gut kept telling me that everything both myself and others saw when they looked at me was hideous. I avoided going out as much as I could just so I didn’t have to worry. I shut myself in, both physically and mentally, until all I could hear was myself screaming my flaws into my own ears over and over. Your hair’s a mess! Your face is too round, stomach too large, legs too chubby! You’re a wreck!
Fast-forward one year: I get my hair straightened permanently. Fast-forward two years: I start counting calories and exercising here and there. Fast-forward three years: I cut out junk food and research real exercise routines. Fast forward four years: I make smarter food decisions and actually follow up on exercising. Physically, my health improved, but mentally, I couldn’t get out of that dark hole that kept telling me I wasn’t good enough. Back then, I didn’t know that there was nothing wrong with my body; there was something wrong with my thoughts.
Fast-forward five years: I’m sitting in front of my laptop, at a weight I haven’t been in who-knows-how-long, recounting a story I’m still living. My thoughts have cleared, and I can finally look at myself in the mirror without wanting to turn away after five seconds.
Why am I telling you this? Am I bragging? Am I venting? Am I trying to make you uncomfortable? Maybe, to all of those questions. The point is that I understand how it feels to not feel good enough, for neither yourself nor others. I understand every skipped meal, food binge and counted calorie you have experienced. I understand how painful body images are to hear and talk about; yet here I am, talking about it through my own story for the very first time to strangers, to show that I got through it. I’m healthier and happier now because I started accepting my body, instead of yelling at it to be skinnier just so I could fit what I believed to be society’s one and only definition of beauty.
Now, you can imagine my utter disdain when I see people on the Internet and in real life bashing beautiful women, labeling them anything from “plus-size” to “too skinny,” as if a woman cannot simply be a woman without having a label attached to her name to tell us her worth.
There is no label I resent more than the “plus-size” label that models with more curves than your average Victoria’s Secret model receive. While it’s meant as a cushioning device, it really just screams NOT SKINNY. A model, by definition, is simply a person hired to wear and display clothing. Nowhere in that definition is there anything about size. A model is a model; her size should never have to be pinned onto her title.
But the criticism doesn’t stop there. When H&M’s model Jennie Runk became a hit for advertising bathing suits with her curvy body, everyone praised her and bashed skinny models. It’s as if the media believes that bashing skinny people is less unacceptable than bashing curvy people, simply because skinny is a trend. Yet we backtrack when it comes to celebrities, highlighting every sign of weight gain visible.
There is no middle ground in this onslaught of a woman’s image. Either women are shamed for being sticks or bashed for having curves.
The worst part of all of this is that it’s not just men telling women they’re not good enough, but women telling women they should work harder to achieve this unattainable idea of “perfection.” What is it that compels a woman to hate another simply based on outward appearance? Why is it that when we see a woman, we forget all of our own insecurities and focus on hers instead?
The media is a life-sucking force that pits us against each other, telling us to hate people if they don’t look the way we want them to. It’s hard to change something already so engraved into society with just mere words.
So this is what you do instead with your words: when you see your mother staring at herself a little too long in the mirror, tell her she looks beautiful in that bright, new dress she just bought. When your sister skips a meal and opts for running around the neighborhood until she passes out, bring her favorite snack to her and plead that she takes care of herself. When your friend tells you she wishes she were as skinny and pretty as the model on that magazine, remind her that the model wants the same thing.
Everyone runs after that perfect ideal of beauty, unaware that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. Beauty has no mold. Beauty is simply what you make of it.
To me, beauty is a Thanksgiving dinner with all of my family, everyone too busy stuffing their faces with turkey to care about their waistline sizes the next day. Beauty is the way my little cousin dresses in bright colors and way too many sequins, because she’s young and the world is in the palm of her hands. Beauty is when my friend looks in the mirror, grins crookedly, and says, “I look good today,” because to me, that’s beauty in its rawest form: acceptance of yourself.
Now tell me: what is your definition of beauty?