Repsonse

Beauty

     When we think of what beauty is to us, chances are we all pictures different things. Beauty is not something you can hold or touch, it is intangible. It is more or less a concept that we create and picture is our minds. We are able to create representation of what we believe beauty to be.

     When I look at a magazine I see tall stick skinny girls with long perfect flowing hair and flawless skin. When you look at a magazine you can get an idea of what a vast majority of the world look at and picture as beautiful. Though, it may not be everyone’s idea of beauty. The world today is rather materialistic. We think if we get nice expensive clothes, pay a fortune to get our nails done, our hair done that we will be beautiful. That’s the problem with the world today. Beauty can be whatever you make of it.

     For example, I work at a clothing resale store. I see women from every spectrum. When they try on their clothes they come out of the fitting room to ask for advice. “Does this make me look fat?” “Is this in style?” “Is this what all the young trendy girls are wearing today?”.  I hear it all day long and it makes me sad. We should not have to be worried about how the rest of the world is dressing. We all have our own individual beauty. Problem is the world itself has a very chauvinistic way to represent beauty.

     Watching television commercials sometimes makes me cringe. These girls on the hair commercials, for example, have shiny perfect curls in their hair. If I spent four hours in my own bathroom I can almost guarantee my hair will never come out quite that perfect. But since the world tells me that that’s how my hair should look I strive to make it that. We set the standards so high that the average person does not feel like they meet that standard.

     I think that a lot of girls have trouble understanding that you do not have to look like the “perfect” model on the television or in the commercials. I believe that that is a huge part of why young girls today harm their bodies. Picture this: A young teenage girl is sitting at home flipping through her magazine and sees perfect girl after perfect girl. She then goes and looks at herself in the mirror and wonders, “Why can I not be skinny like her?”. From there she begins to nitpick at herself, thinking that she is fat or that she isn’t pretty. It is in my opinion that the idea of self-image is ruining young girls and their self-esteem.

     The thing that upsets me most about beauty is we have no idea what that really is! No one is ever as perfect as they look in advertisements. Photoshop and retouching can alter an image immensely. We do not think about how the person might have looked before they get in there and clear the blemishes or erase those little annoying pieces of hair that tend to stick out in everyday pictures. What we see almost always is not what the image started out as. A prime example is the Dove beauty campaign.  (as seen below)

    Your average typical woman walks into a photo shoot hair just normal, no makeup, and blemishes on her face. You can see all the makeup and hair they do to her and she looks gorgeous. But then they extra lengths to lengthen and thin her neck, plump her lips, move her hair, and even adjust the placement of her eyebrows. We do not understand that altering images to this extent has a huge impact on the women who see it. We think we need to be just like what is in the ads and that’s just not the truth.

     People do not see their beauty for what it is. My cousins used to tell me growing up that I did not need to wear makeup, that I was beautiful they way I was. (Back then I did not put much makeup on) Those words from them have stuck with me to this day. I try not to be something I am not I understand I will never be a size 2 and I am 100% okay with that now.
 
     If everyone had that person to tell them that what you see on television is not reality, then we would not be so judgmental towards people and everyone would see everyone as individually beautiful. We were made to look differently for a reason, so why do we all feel the need to conform and look just like everyone else. I think everyone is beautiful for their own reasons. maybe one day the world will share my outlook.