Our (impossible) Standard of Beauty
Is interesting to see how the Patriarchy forced us, during millennials, to compared us towards an impossible ideal of beauty.
Let's talk about this:
Yes, I remember having "Barbies", with a perfect breast, blond and blue eyes...Yes, my brothers had "He-Man", perfect muscle action figures (other word for dolls for boys by the way). However, as they grew up, they never felt the need to go to the Gym and be constantly perfect for the rest of society....then... why do we women have to do it? Why are we so beauty-obsessed?
Let get this clear before we start... I have absolutely no problem with people wanting to change their bodies....what does this means? It means to me, that if you want to be a rat Gym, go for it. You want to have breast the size of Manhattan? Go for it. Want to make your nose smaller, cheekbones bigger? Go all Jackson and change your skin color? Want to stuck a vacuum up your ass and drain all the fat between your vertebrae? That is fine! As long as you do it for the right reasons. Sorry, I express myself incorrectly, what I mean to say is....as long as you don't do it for the following reason:
When we feel the need to change our bodies because we are afraid of being left aside, invisible, ignored, choose your adjective (irrelevant, inconsequential, insignificant, trivial, nonessential) by society.
And I specifically write Society, because is not just "Men" that we want to please, is the whole spectrum, and we cannot control what they think, but we can control what we think. How many times we heard that we don't dress for men but for other women. We are program to perceive other women as competition instead of what they are...just women. How many times we are judgmental about other women, how they dress, how they talk, how they...whatever...just find a reason, there are thousands.
We are the first ones to judge ourselves. We cannot avoid the mirrors anymore. We cannot continue lying to ourselves. We are who we are, with all imperfections and all perfections. We are beautiful. We have to stop that inner voice telling us that we are not good enough, we are not tall enough, not pretty enough. Let's just liberate ourselves from ourselves.
The pressure imposed to us for millennials is so great and so effective that Society does not have to do it anymore. They won, they won so spectacularly, that the pressure does not come from Society anymore, we impose it ourselves. It is us who judge us.
The good news is, that feminism is changing that. It took many years to come out of that ignorance. It will take many more to improve and make it world wide. But at least we are moving forward. You don't believe me, just check on YouTube old publicities to see how far we've come.
But the point of this post is first, to recognize where we come from. We are only going to understand our fears and insecurities if we understand where they are coming from. I got the answer to this...It was simply imposed to us women, we were not born with it. We were educated like that, the moment they give us a doll and tell us to stay home and take care of our Men. Society see us just from the point of view of our value -body wise-. The more beautiful I am, the more thin, and perfect body I have, the more value I have for society, the more desirable I am. But enough is enough. Now that we see were all this is coming from, is time to make some changes and move forward.
We are more than our bodies, we are more than what we wear. We are complex human beings and read this twice: our happiness and desirability cannot be attached to how we look. Read it again.
Ok, we recognized where this problem is coming for...now we have two options. Start complaining because life is not fair (spoiler alter...it never is), or we can start taking control of our lives and really be the change that we want to see. Because we couldn't control being born, we definitely couldn't control our sex or in which year to be born...but we can control how we perceive ourselves. We can decide what is beauty and what is not, we can decide to stop judging other women and specially ourselves.
Are you tired of missing fun things because you don't feel pretty enough? How many pools you would have love to jump in, but you were to conscious about your body. F...k You, enough is enough! Start having more fun and if somebody has a problem with it, then that person is still a prisoner of the conventions of an archaic society that needs to die. You are no wrong here, they are.
Let's no be afraid anymore, not shaved, big waist, small tits, white hair, that wart in your back, F... it. You are not the only one, we are all in this. We are all marked by something, just say with me...F...ck it.
I understand thousand of years of oppressions wont disappear overnight. But let's start moving forward.
One step at a time.