There are approximately 7 billion people on this planet and none of them look the same. We all have something unique about our appearance and even then we constantly feel the need to fit in. Media, celebrities and the entertainment industry over decades have defined the word ‘beautiful’ and people around the world struggle to fit into that definition. All media represents is the picture perfect idea of a person with flawless skin, glowing hair, an hourglass body type and everyone out side of this little sect of people feel unentitled, worthless and unwanted. These beauty standards continue to deteriorate our society and despite desperate attempts we as a society simply cannot evolve until we learn to get rid of these beauty standards.

We live in a world where beauty standards are so deeply rooted in everyone’s brain that everyone is extremely quick to judge whether or not someone is ‘beautiful’. We look at a magazine and the front cover is a highly edited picture of someone with fair and flawless skin, radiant hair and the exact kind of clothing that makes one fit into the ‘ideal’ beauty standard. You open social media and all you see is a curated feed full of posts of people looking there absolute best having worked countless hours to make sure that they too fit into the ideal beauty standard. The magnitude of this problem can further be seen by the fact that people have started advertising certain products to fix these ‘imperfections’ and help people fit into the ideal standard. These include hair straightening tools, whitening creams, body oils, diet pills and the other long list of products that have been introduced to make people especially women fit into society’s beauty standards.

From such a young age we are told who is beautiful and who isn’t. Whether this is done through TV shows, movies or advertisements it effects the way that people who are just kids view themselves and people around them. For example the princesses in Disney movies that are targeted towards young girls also show that fair skin, light eyes, light hair, a perfect body type is the way to look beautiful. According to a study done by WebMD, the self-esteem of girls as young as 5 years of age is already being affected by the TV shows they watch and until and unless we do something about this these statistics will only worsen.

These beauty standards have been so explicitly instilled in everyone’s brains that social media apps are coming out with an entire set of filters that help one fit our society’s extreme beauty standards. Apps such as Snapchat and Instagram have introduced a wide range of filters that make one look fairer, remove any blemishes, change the structure of their face and completely change the way one looks which make beauty standards completely unachievable. When celebrities and influencers post pictures that have filters and are edited without actually stating that they used a filter, people start to presume that they actually look like that which makes these beauty standards completely unrealistic. It makes people want to look like someone that does not even actually exist.

These unrealistic beauty standards move our society backwards and have devastating effects on the people of our community. Under the constant pressure to fit these standards people start altering the way they look and instill unhealthy habits. People start taking diet pills, instill eating disorders, get plastic surgery, become victims of depression and feel worthless all because of these beauty standards. Our society shuts down any ideas of accepting the people who don’t fit into these standards and instead of promoting products that can make people feel more confident in their own skin our society introduces products to change the way we look. A classic example being that our society promotes hair straightening tools rather than products to better curlier hair or fairness creams rather than a wider color range for cosmetics.  

While some countries such as France are progressing and introducing laws that ban the use of digitally photoshopped images of women in the beauty industry it still is not enough to help our society progress. We need to actively start having discussions about beauty standards and stop pressurizing people into fitting into them. The world needs to shift away from the present definition of attractiveness and toward a more healthy and realistic depiction of beauty. We need to let go of the present beauty standards and stop promoting only one type of women in our media but instead celebrate and showcase people that look and come from all different walks of life. If we don't, unrealistic beauty standards promoted by the media will continue to harm women's self-esteem. It’s not wrong to wear makeup or straighten your hair if you feel as if it makes you more confident but it is important to recognize why you do it, whenever you post a picture if it is edited or has a filter you need to explicitly say so and next time when you see someone instead of telling them they look too fat, their skin has too many blemishes, their hair isn’t straight enough try appreciating the uniqueness of their beauty and their confidence to break these beauty standards.