Monday, February 22, 2016

The Beauty Ideal



I used to love buying magazines but every year I get more and more annoyed with the negative messages that are sent to women through magazines. I scanned the magazine isle in the store on Sunday and one of the clear messages was: "you need to look young no matter what". Young equals beautiful in today's culture, but only if you are a woman, men are allowed to have wrinkles and still be considered attractive.


 Headlines like "World's Best Anti-aging Secrets" are everywhere.


You can get "younger skin while you sleep"! How awesome, because getting younger looking skin is obviously what will make me happy and make the world a better place.


Thank goodness there are some healthier messages among the headlines, like "Embrace Your Natural Hair Texture". The natural hair movement has forced the media to adapt and include more than only one type of hair in the magazines.


InStyle magazine wants us to be "Forever Young"-looking but thankfully also included a more positive headline: "Love Your Body".


"Love the bod you're with", now that's what I like to read in women's magazines! Can we also please be allowed to "love the age we are at"? Do we have to start the anti-age beauty routine at 20 and then hate the way our body (naturally) changes when we hit 30 or 40? Is this what it means to be a woman?



One of the most beautiful people I have ever met is my grandmother. Today she is in heaven but she is still my role model in life and I loved everything about her. She was so beautiful inside and out and everyone I know thought the same. Do you think she herself thought she was beautiful? No. She used to always tell me she didn't like her wrinkles. I used to tell her in response: "You are 60+, you are supposed to have wrinkles!" We all grow up in a culture that tells us that we aren't enough, that we aren't beautiful the way we are. A culture that wants us to believe that we need to change this and fix that to be beautiful, so we spend our lives feeling less than beautiful although we are absolutely stunning! That makes me really sad.

I see many millennials all over the world choose something different, they are choosing to love and embrace who they are, and that makes me so excited! Let's make 2016 the year we all stop following the negative beauty ideals in the culture and start loving what we've got! :)

No comments:

Post a Comment