“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
Beauty is an attribute present in a thing or person that provides happiness or immense contentment for the human mind. This arises from sensory perceptions (such as shape, color, sound, etc.), an appropriate pattern, or something else (such as personality).
How does beauty make us feel?
From a progressive viewpoint, beauty can make us happy because attractiveness implies health.
Physical attractiveness can form a first impression on the mind, it can be so impactful that we start thinking much beyond looks and start developing assumptions about an individual’s success, status, parenting, and intelligence, but it does not mean that they prove to be true.
Due to these predetermined assumptions about beauty perspectives, society has become sensitive about what it believes to be beautiful.
There is a specific mindset about the criteria with which beauty is matched, and if any individual doesn’t fall into those criteria; people do not consider them beautiful.
The impact of beauty standards on society:
In general, beauty is not about having a pretty face. It is about having a pretty mind, heart, and, most importantly, a beautiful soul. However, it is unfortunate that our society has moved to “unrealistic archetype of beauty.”
Some familiar Beauty Standards:
Due to such powerful impact of beauty upon individual influences, society has indulged in many acme of beauty, which has led to individual competition, including every gender and age range.
On the most common beauty attributes every individual is being be judged. These included things like:
Hair color
Hairstyles
Hair length
Neck length
Face shape
Body shape
Eye color
Clothing size
Flatness of stomach
Lip size
Eye size
Nose size
Skin color
Chest size
Prominence of butt
Age
Height etc.
Why is it important to meet society’s beauty standards?
Today the world is becoming a hard place to live in due to the extremely high competition in every industry. In this era of social media, there are certain aesthetic standards worldwide. Every day we see influencers trying to portray their best by using unrealistic beauty approaches to how they look in real life. Due to this portrayal, individuals following them wish they were anything like them. But something that they do not realize is that self-criticism often has negative effects on both the mind and body.
Society’s beauty standards affect women and teens:
Teenagers (especially girls) from a very tender age, have become subject to the images and impressions to be perfect and this exposure extends to adulthood.
One of the beautiful features, which is a decisive factor, is that body should be slim and smart, and the consequences of the thin ideality may cause lower self-esteem, increased stress, aggressive dieting regimes, and eating disorders. The standards set for such beauty goals are dangerously unachievable, especially in terms of body slimness, because there is a big gap between realistic expectations and the ideality that continues to grow larger.
Role of the cosmetic industry in unrealistic beauty:
Because of the huge gap between realism and idealism, the cosmetics industry is playing an influential role in matching and attaining the so-called archetype of beauty.
Thousands of advertisements promote this elusive, beautiful image to women of all ages, shapes, and sizes by placing photo-shopped and computer-enhanced models in advertisements. Society has built up impossible beauty standards, leading to feelings of inadequacy among women.
As a result of the above, the cosmetic industry has grown rapidly in terms of unhealthy products that could damage the skin, some fast effecting ingredients leading to quick weight loss, chemicals products and creams which lead to fairer skin to achieve that certain level of acceptance in society in general and preferably in relationships and workplaces.
Generally, college girls are high users of cosmetics.
Women today are constantly reminded about beauty standards; therefore, the cosmetic industry has given birth to certain beauty trends that are now widely spread almost everywhere and is taking a strong position in the minds of many individuals. These trends are becoming important in leading confident and acceptable positions in life.
Trends to fit in the beauty world:
Beauty filters
Makeovers (BB glow treatment)
Artificial eyebrows
Extensions
Beauty pageants (explained in detail).
Cosmetic surgeries
Lip Fillers, etc.
Beauty Pageants:
Regularly, the dominancy and the race to look perfect is taking many variations in the society. One of the increasing trends in the beauty world is beauty pageants. Famous beauty pageants are conducted on various platforms to set high competition standards to look perfect. Women today are highly interested in participating, going beyond the beauty requirements of these competitions.
A very alarming situation is where these beauty pageants have taken the children into their zone. Many beauty contests involve kids where parents go beyond their ways to ensure their child wins.
Pressures of Beauty Pageants for kids:
Kids face extensive pressure to win. Your child is marked against many other kids and is expected to rise and shine above them.
The Downsides of child beauty pageants:
Beauty Contests may deprive a child of innocence.
They may become over-anxious and even go into depression.
Perhaps beauty pageants are educational and confidence-boosting to some, but the negative effects include depression and low self-esteem. In addition, young girls who participate in pageants learn that beauty equals success.
Adverse effects of unrealistic beauty approach on mental health:
A women’s anxiety can come from hundreds of sources, beauty advertisements, peer pressure, innate feelings of insecurity, etc.
It has been observed that overall the beauty industry has very negative effects on women’s self-esteem and perception of beauty on the whole. By using upward comparison, women constantly compare themselves to the beauty standards that society shows to them.
When an individual’s realistic body conflicts with ideal body images, this can often lead to mental health issues such as eating disorders, mood swings, and anxiety disorders. There are eating disorders that are centered on body image concerns.
How does appearance affect mental health?
Although body outward show concerns are not a mental health condition in themselves, they can be a risk factor for mental health problems such as poorer quality of life, psychological distress, and unhealthy behaviors, including abnormal eating patterns.
Various surveys have proved that aesthetic norms directly contribute to anxiety and depression. They can trigger body dysmorphia (a mental illness where sufferers believe that their body is wrong or inadequate) and disordered eating. They can contribute to low self-esteem, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts. These conditions have been hyped in recent years, and all of them are unequivocally connected to beauty standards. Thus, pageants are of the substance to put an impression on young children that there is value in focusing on their appearance as much as possible as judged through the eyes of others. Because of such expectations and impressions, youngsters opt for various beauty trends (discussed above), leading to significant
body-image distortions, and those adults who participated in child beauty pageants may experience low self-esteem and poor body image later in the future and carry the same thought processes from generation to generation.
Closure:
As a society, it should be considered our duty to lower such huge expectations about beauty. Following such standards, we are slowly killing our bodies to reach those high-standard beauty goals, which are not actual depictions of true beauty.
Social media trends can play a vital role in bringing out the content reflecting true beauty.
True beauty does not mean looking in a certain way with certain body and face requirements.
Real beauty is the beauty of mind and soul, as they beautifully say:
“Beauty is a state of mind, not a state of the body.”
