"They keep saying that beautiful is something a girl needs to be. But honestly? Forget that. There are an eternity of other things to be other than beautiful. And what is beautiful anyway, but a set of letters strung together to make a word?" – Nikita Gill
Today, I calculated that I spend approximately 26 minutes every morning trying to make myself more "beautiful." Between makeup application, hair-straightening, and picking out a "good enough" outfit, that's 182 minutes per week, 780 per month, and nearly 9,500 minutes per year.
Today, I realized that that number is insane. 9,500 minutes equates to over 150 hours per year spent on trying to change my appearance. And for what? To wash it, scrub it, and take it off at the end of the day.
My takeaway from this mini math lesson is that I do not want to be this kind of beautiful. The kind that feels she needs to use makeup to impress others, to dress up and straighten or curl or crimp or braid her hair for anyone other than herself because society revels in us being unhappy with or ashamed of our bodies. And I refuse to play along any longer.
Makeup companies sell enough beauty products every day to make a 50-foot solid arsenal, and plastic surgeons make far too much money just to make people feel as though they need to alter their bodies in order to fit a singular "beautiful" mold or shape or size. (What even is "beautiful," anyway? And why do we constantly bend over backwards to try and be it?) Celebrities and models gain front page attention on magazines and TV advertisements for their "flawless" faces and clothing and makeup, even when their inner beauty is anything but flawless.
I refuse to spend another day feeding into the lies that I am not enough when I don't have makeup on. That I am inadequate for having a pimple on my face or flyaways in my hair.
Don't feed into being this copycat kind of beautiful, simply because you don't need to.
Be kind. Be outrageous. Be quirky. Dance in the rain, make poetry or art or things that make your soul happy and don't ever apologize for being yourself. Be gentle with others, but don't forget to be gentle with yourself, too. You are human. And that will forever be more than just "beautiful," more than just "enough."
At the end of the day, the prettiest face on the cover of the issue of the "Hottest Woman [or Man] Alive" won't matter in the slightest. The clothes you wear to impress anyone other than yourself probably won't be remembered. That cat eye you mastered for your crush in biology class is great, but don't feel the need to impress anyone else for the sake of society's constructs of beauty. Your personality, your heart, your words, and your soul will forever be more meaningful than the makeup in your drawer or that number on a scale. Don't spend time, energy, and money trying to be society's definition of beautiful. Instead, be yours. Who you are is always more than enough and don't you ever let anybody tell you otherwise.
