Humanity has come incredulously far from its beginnings in a relatively short period of time. We do things today that weren’t imaginable a thousand years ago. We have seen and recovered from disease that shook the globe, dragged our way through world-wide wars, people of all shapes and sizes have fought for nearly every right that they enjoy today.

It’s amazing if you consider everything; how far we have come and how far we have yet to go.

Despite all of our leaps and bounds in the direction of innovation and positive change, there are some changes we haven’t even realized. Some changes that have been forming right under our noses and acting detrimentally to at least half of the entire world’s population.

I’m speaking of the changing beauty standards. That is, what it means today to be beautiful.

How you may think you personally define beauty is not how the world makes it out to be. Whether you realized it or not.

Here is a rough definition of beauty in the world’s view:

Anyone can be beautiful. But not really. There are millions of naturally beautiful women in this world. And by naturally beautiful I mean there is usually photography in their natural state followed by about three hours of Photoshop, touching up, shadow enhancing, thinning and elongating. Beautiful women are noticeable in everything that they do. In other words, how do your Instagram likes compare? Do people care about your existence?

But don’t worry right? Everyone can be “beautiful.”

The truth of the matter is that the world has made it impossible for just anyone to be beautiful. The growing media has painted a picture of the ideal woman and spoiler alert, not every female body fits the requirements. The high cheek bones and toned body, the long legs and dainty manicured hands, the big eyes and perfect hair, the flawless skin and illuminating smile.

It isn’t fair to ask that of every woman in this world. More important not everyone wants a girlfriend to look like that! A wife, a friend, a sister.

What ended up happening is as this image was painted, as younger and more influenced crowds got their hands on mobile devices and access to the internet, their minds were tainted younger and younger. No twelve-year-old needs to be reinforced day after day that they have an image to live up to. Twelve-year-old’s need to be busy creating their own image. Deciding who they are in this world. Not who the world expects them to be.

The earlier and earlier access to technology is absolutely a driving factor of this. To put this in perspective, I didn’t have a cell phone until I was thirteen and those cellphones didn’t even have access to social media like the phones today do. They maybe had internet. Most phones available at that age didn’t have readily access to anything other than texting and calling and taking extremely grainy pictures. I didn’t even have a laptop introduced to me until I was in the middle of high school. It simply wasn’t a necessity to keep up with the celebrities. I wasn’t waking up to the newest scandal between Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian.

Today I watch three-year-old’s flip through their iPads and I witness iPhones flooding elementary schools. I don’t even have anyone to blame here. It’s not the parent’s fault. It isn’t the kid’s fault. The earlier access to technology is arguably necessary because of how technologically dependent we have become as a society. They’ll be using their iPads and iPhones inevitably, might as well “start them young”.

It would be one thing if the image the media was painting for young women was a strictly positive one. And there absolutely are positive messages and role models out there. However, the negative has a habit of outweighing the positive. This is evidenced by how young girls have become sexualized through the media. It is now “ideal” to show skin and to wear tight clothes. I watch these twelve-year-old’s dressing to school the same way eighteen-year-old’s would on their way to a party. When did that become acceptable? A scarier question: when did that become the social norm?

Twelve was not about being fashionable at all for myself. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve burned all of the pictures I could find of myself back then thanks to those awkward t-shirt and patched jean combinations going on. But it was normal to be awkward in middle school! It is normal to not be trendy as a kid. This is all the start of you figuring out who you are. How can you do that when you have all of these celebrities telling you who you should be?

Thanks to media today I watch eleven-year-old kids tease each other for wearing knock off Sperry’s as opposed to the real ones. I watch girls being ostracized at earlier and earlier ages for things they can’t even control. Being overweight or having acne wasn’t something I considered when I was choosing my friends at that young of an age and it’s because I didn’t have this image implanted in my head.

Being overweight wasn’t ugly to me. Having acne didn’t make you unattractive. Why would I think negatively of it? The only influence I was receiving was my parents telling me the same crap all parents tell their developing kids “be nice to everyone.”

I think what people forget nowadays is that beauty isn’t an adjective anymore. It isn’t something we can call someone anymore. Because beauty isn’t what you look like anymore since we’re all being told to look the same. Beauty is a noun today. It’s a feeling. Beauty has become something you experience internally because living life not looking “ideal” has become something you must endure.

A writer truly inspirational to me, Shayne Koyczan, speaks of his wife in one of his projects: “Despite a loving husband she doesn’t think she is beautiful because of a birthmark that takes up a little less than half her face. Kids used to say she looks like a wrong answer that someone tried to erase but couldn’t quite get the job done. And they’ll never understand that she’s raising two kids whose definition of beauty begins with the word Mom.”

That right there is what I am talking about. She was told all of her life by peers directly and roll-models indirectly that she would never be beautiful. And it stuck.

Take foot binding and corsetry into consideration. People act appalled at the concept of them. Who on earth would bind themselves and go through that immense amount of pain to be deemed more beautiful? But hello! Is that really so different than what is going on right under our noses? These tactics are considered female body modification through physical manipulation. And I see these changing standards as this modification but through mental manipulation. It’s no different to me. It appalls me all the same.

It doesn’t appear to be doing much damage. Until you talk to the eleven-year-old girls who feel they need to sexualize their appearance, until you watch the ten-year-old girls who have a slight belly be left out of their group of friends, until you see these children grow up and watch this mental struggle they have been going through show itself, you won’t see the damage.

And that is the depressing part. Young girls need to be taught more than ever that being beautiful has nothing to do with how you look and everything to do with who you are.

Young girls need to be taught now more than ever that if you ever can’t see anything beautiful about yourself. All that means is that it’s time to get a better a mirror. Look a little harder. Stare a little longer. Because it’s there, no matter what they tell you.