I think the part of the female beauty standard that upsets me the most and makes me the angriest isn’t the fact that it’s so arbitrary. It’s not that it’s impossible, or materialistic, or sexist, or Anglo-centric, or violent, or unnatural (though those are maddening and heartless).
What makes me angriest is that we tell women the only way to be beautiful is to become less.
Literally, less.
Don’t be you. Be LESS than you.
Be beautiful. But only as beautiful as these narrow parameters allow. Ignoring other, natural states of beauty, or those that may be different deprives us from understanding the spectrum of beauty around us.
Be thin. Be beyond thin. It’s not empowering to decrease. I don’t want a “thigh gap” (seriously, when did this become A Thing?); I want a strong, healthy body that suits me.
Be silent. Give up your voice. Your appearance is what matters, not your intelligence. I want to laugh too loud, to have a voice, and speak my mind.
Be sex (but not sexual). I don’t want to be viewed in advertisements as detached parts, like cuts of meat at the butcher. I don’t want to be ornamental – a thing used to sell another object.
When we start promoting the view of women as parts, we make it easier to extrapolate that all women are merely things. To be objectified, owned, and used. Nearly all sources of violence begin with thinking the other person isn’t actually a person.
In giving women and girls the message that our end goal is to become less, it distracts us from living a large, rounded life. By ingesting this lie, we rob ourselves of personal growth and self-identification. It is never empowering to give up your agency. Much has been debated around the glass ceiling keeping women from their potential in business, but not enough people are incensed by the glass box that our culture insists women restrict themselves to live in to be acceptable.
I want to be a full, complex, imperfect human being and be valued for living and living well – just like the other intricate human beings around me.
By saying that our value is to be less, it affirms that our culture’s standard is arbitrary, impossible, materialistic, sexist, racist, violent, and unnatural. And wrong.
What would happen if we actually lived fully and shattered the glass walls? We are enough, exactly as we are – we don’t need to force ourselves to be less. And we can be so much more if we let ourselves.
