“The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today’s woman has become her beauty.”
The Beauty Myth
Words beautifully dictated by Naomi Wolf, stuck in my head, for years now.
Unfortunately, we’ve reached an era where most women have forgotten what it’s like to simply “be”, to be ‘human’, to intuitively be who they are at their core.
We continuously strive to reach the “ideal” but the thing is, the “ideal” is always changing and we repeatedly chase it, like a loop that never ends, in hopes of feeling “content” or “satisfied”. Self-satisfaction and contentment are now correlated to how foxy our eyes look or how symmetric our lips are to each other. What happened to us? What happened to the sacred art of being a unique human being? When has physical appearance become a woman’s foremost and only concern?
The way we’re prioritizing external beauty is becoming so dangerous. I often come across posts on Instagram showing how a celebrity has dared to step outside of her house without any makeup on, confronting the idea that it’s okay not to wear makeup and have some blackheads or pimples on your skin. Such posts showcase a profoundly misogynistic culture that has groomed women into believing a make-up-less existence is sinful.
This is where my frustration lies, because in one way or another, unconsciously or not, there’s a lot of emphasis on women’s looks, as if a woman was born to be labeled as ”beautiful” or “ugly” and the worst part of it all is that the label derives from generalized societal standards.
The effort of normalizing beauty screams that it is still stigmatized. Authenticity means effortlessness. And the effort put into telling girls that how they look is okay, screams inauthenticity. It emphasizes nothing other than a woman’s looks. An icing but no cake. It tiptoes around a vagueness that cannot quite be defined. It lurks over a gap that cannot quite be known. But it’s there nevertheless. The emptiness, the void within femininity, is there. The glitter screams no gold. The question of “what is gold in the first place” screams invalidation.
Femininity is deeper than the superficiality of the surface, of the looks. It’s deeper than the skin tone or eye shape or foundation shade. Femininity is not just pretty. It’s smart, clever, powerful, forgiving, giving, taking, and everything in between. It’s all the shades of anger and calm.
There’s a beautiful quote by the amazing Naomi Wolf I’d like to end my article with that I think resonates a lot with what is happening around across diverse fields not solely within the beauty industry:
“You do not win by struggling to the top of a caste system, you win by refusing to be trapped within one at all.”
The system of materialism, of beauty standards, of the never ending loop of proving yourself, of shells rather than pearls; the system of the outside rather than the inside. You do not win by staying at the top of it, being the prettiest or the trendiest. You win by living by your own standards, being the best you can be, authentically, effortlessly, and escaping the wolf trap of society
Break the stigma
Be you
Intuitively, fearlessly, authentically you.