THE CONSTRUCTION OF B-E-A-UTIFUL IN SOCIETY

With the flood of social media the divide between expectation and reality has never been so prevalently reinforced into our everyday lives, consuming us from the minute we wake up and look at our phones. To add to that we live in a world where our level of perceived beauty is directly correlated to our sense of self worth and yet when we define beauty we focus on aesthetic appearances and a significant part of who we are goes unrepresented.

When we look in the mirror we see all of ourselves. All our rawness, our flaws, our depth, our scars. We are unable to focus only on the things we like in ourselves, instead we focus on everything we don’t. We then tend to assume that is also what is going to resonate in other’s opinion of us. Yet we forget what we are presented by others is completely constructed. It is only what they want us to see.

Theoretically, knowing this I shouldn’t feel the need to compare myself. I don’t need to have self doubt and yet I of course I still do. We all do! So how do I personally remind myself that someone else’s beauty doesn’t make me less beautiful? What do I do to remind myself my appearance doesn’t reflect my self-worth? How do I remind myself that beauty can’t be gauged by numbers or other’s opinions?

When I’m struggling I refer to the piece of advice given to me about public speaking. Picture everyone naked. Only I don’t mean with no clothes. Strip everyone of the makeup, plastic surgery, big muscles, expensive haircuts, fake nails, fancy clothes, fancy cars and Instagram followers. Naked of all the external pressures and masks people front.

Strip them back to the essence of who they are.

I remind myself of how a blind person would define beauty. I don’t do this in an attempt to make me think of them ‘less beautiful’, but to highlight the qualities that I value in defining beauty.

We feel the pressure to conform to a particular image whether we are aware of it or not. We say we don’t value looks and yet we continue to do the things that make ourselves society’s definition of aesthetically beautiful. We justify doing this because ‘that’s the way the world works’. We know that this ideology and harmful in society. Rates of low self-esteem and related mental illnesses are peaking as the accessibility and acceptance of altering our looks increases.

The only way our view of ourselves and each other are going to change is if we change them. Change our mindsets and our practises. Rather than doing things because ‘that’s the way the world works’- change how it works! To do this all I ask is that you QUESTION WHY you do the things you do. Why do you want the bigger boobs, smaller waist, bigger lips, wear the makeup, buy the expensive clothes, get the fake tan, take the steroids, want the muscles, need the nails…? Does it affect your self esteem that you don’t have them? And should it?

I don’t judge anyone’s character according to these things by any means, I just want to encourage us all to question the extremities we go to in order to construct and conform to a particular image. Why we feel the underlying pressures that we do. We say we change these things ‘for ourselves, not anyone else’. But more often than not we change these things and are still left with the insecurities we were faced with before. You are able to achieve complete security within yourself without changing what you look like.

As soon as I shifted my inner dialogue to reflect the things I actually valued, all of the pressure I felt dimmed. Your world becomes so much bigger when you change the way you see, not the way you look. I now know that life is so much more incredible when I don’t take myself so seriously. Knowing that what I put out to the world and how I view the world reflects my internal values is so much more important to me than anyone’s opinion of how I look.

And that is so much more beautiful than you could ever imagine.