Beauty: An Artificial Obsession

‘Be your own kind of beautiful’ - A sentence I read and heard repeatedly in my early teenage years. It was one of the common clichés but I never really understood what it meant. What does it mean to be your own kind of beautiful? Is such a thing even possible? If yes, then how?

From a very young age, I remember the very concept of beauty being engrained in my mentality. As if this is what defines you as a girl and later on as a woman. What I noticed around me was beauty being almost an obsession of every woman of every age group. The entire idea of their womanhood, femininity and personality was built on the way they look.

Like everything else, the concept of beauty was defined and standards were set by each society. I received an international education where I was exposed to many different cultures at one time. I noticed that although many girls around me looked different but what they had in common was their obsession with beauty and this competition to look the best, as if beauty is a standardized test that you can score high on if you meet all the criteria. The common standard was to be thin, of a certain body shape, fair, with long hair, to have big eyes, medium sized noses and of course this is what was proven to be attractive through media trends.

One of my most prominent childhood experiences was being part of my secondary school fairy tales performance. I was given the role of Pocahontas; I was a tall, chubby, shorthaired and brown skinned girl at the time. At the day of the performance, I saw my friends dressed in pretty dresses of Cinderella, Snow white and little mermaid with their pink blushes and white skins, I remember looking at them and feeling ugly. I certainly did not feel like a princess, neither was I given the compliment ‘you look pretty’. The experience stuck with me since. As a young girl I was taught and trained to believe that certain colors, certain way of dressing and a certain skin color means beauty and if you are different than that, you are not pretty. The message was simple but the implications were huge and now this is exactly what I see but on a more extensive level. Of course, with time I grew out of this mentality and this pre-conceived notion of beauty that is transmitted to almost every girl at a certain point. For me, it was my fascination with art, with literature, with different cultures, nature and different perspectives which made me view beauty in a different light. I found beauty in everything and appreciated everything that was rare and uncommon.

During my early teenage years, I went through an eating disorder, border-line anorexia. The attitude and comments of my friends and family as well as their comments contributed towards my eating disorders just in order to feel beautiful. I went through a routine that was unhealthy. What validated this behavior were compliments from people reinstating the positive outcome of my eating disorder. It is this kind of skin-deep beauty, which emphasizes what’s on the surface, which leads young girls to obsess with what people have to say. It leads to broken personality, lack of confidence, psychological problems and anxiety issues.

Generalized standards of beauty exist in every society and all over the world. It is very common to see that many women base their entire existence and link their femininity with this concept of beauty, which is mostly just physical. Beauty of the soul, heart and mind are things you hear in inspirational quotes but in reality this deeper sense of beauty is rarely upheld or even promoted. Physical appearance is given priority over things like intelligence, confidence, uniqueness, and being different.

What I see is that women are so conditioned into somehow believing that beauty is the very essence of their womanhood that they find it hard to think independently outside of this influence. They are subconsciously being dictated by social norms. They may not realize that some decisions they make are not their own. However, many times the choice is conscious, led and inspired by the new media and celebrity culture. Popular celebrity looks and trends create criteria against which the beauty standards are constantly being bench-marked. In the Middle East for example, it is common to see girls wanting to look like Kim Kardashian,Fouz Al Fahad, Fatima Al-Momen, Haifa Wehbe (to name a few) Instagram celebrities or new social media bloggers who project themselves as icons of beauty. Amongst other things, one would witness young girls getting their eyebrows tattooed in a certain way, getting lip injections, cheek fillers, to abide by these new international standards of beauty. This is quite similar to Asian societies where there is fascination with European looks. Young girls find it convenient to go through surgeries in order to conform to common standards. The ultimate goal however is to feel good about themselves, because they are conditioned to compare themselves against others.

What I find the most interesting and worrying is this sense of competition where each girl/woman would want to appear “better-looking” than others. What feeds into this behavior is people’s attitude and comments. It is quite natural to see women getting compliments on her beauty. It is usually the first and many times the only thing they get complimented on. The results can be damaging for girls who find nothing else but beauty to build their self-esteem on. Their sense of self and worth is indirectly based on people’s comments, approval and treatment. The physical beauty becomes their most important trait.

The outcome is a certain version of uniformity. But beauty is not uniformity. Humans are naturally different by appearances, which is what makes them unique and interesting. Following beauty rules and standards, they lose their uniqueness and what makes them stand out is what they hide.

To sum up the message I want to give to women reading this; in the words of Rupi Kaur:

“I want to apologize to all the women i have called beautiful before i’ve called them intelligent or brave I am sorry i made it sound as though something as simple as what you’re born with is all you have to be proud of when you have broken mountains with your wit from now on i will say things like you are resilient, or you are extraordinary not because i don’t think you’re beautiful but because i need you to know you are more than that”

Photo from:

https://www.behance.net/gallery/8592211/Beauty-Is-Only-Skin-Deep