We hear it all the time. We see it happen all the time. We are suffocated by the idea that women are supposed to look a certain way or act a certain way to impress not only men but everyone. Ladies, bottom line is that this misconception of social injustice needs to be put to rest once and for all. If I had a dollar for every time I heard the words, “She would be hotter if she had a prettier face” or my absolute favorite, “She would be way cuter if she had longer hair.” Maybe she doesn’t care what you think about her hair? Like hello newsflash... 2016 is the age of the short sexy bob! No women, and I mean no women, should ever have to hear the words, “You would be prettier/sexier/cuter/ if…” Women should feel pretty/sexy/cute in their own way; the way they want to look; not the way society tells them they should look.
The duty of being a woman today is actually exhausting. We are told to keep up with the latest fashion trends or we are told what to do in bed to keep men interested in us. I can’t even open up a Cosmopolitan magazine these days! They put attention grabbers on their covers that will read something like, “10 positions to try that will blow his mind” or “How to make sure he asks you out on a second date.” If a man doesn’t ask you out on a second date that is his problem, not yours. You don’t need a magazine to tell you that! Magazines and the media in general include articles to drive women to buy a certain product, do something spontaneous in bed, or to act a certain way.
As I’ve matured and paid more attention to the media, magazines don’t include real women. They don’t have real, average women model in any type of media because all these magazines care about are what sells, what will make them the most money and the perfect woman sells, the perfect woman is what makes money. Real, career successful women aren’t what sells? We as a society teach the young women that when they open a magazine they should look like and dress like models and actresses. If a teenage girl opened up a magazine and saw a woman with a Harvard law degree dressed in a suit, would that girl’s perception of what makes up the perfect woman change? Would the teenage girl begin to understand that you don’t have to be a model or an actress to be beautiful and to be successful? Being who you truly are is what is beautiful. Short, tall, skinny, round, freckles, no freckles- there is no such thing as a perfect woman. There is no such thing as a list of requirements to be considered “perfect”.
If our society as a whole doesn’t destroy this idea of the “perfect woman” then women will forever be trying to change who they truly are and what they look like. A woman cannot help what her face looks like, she can’t help that she was born with brown eyes instead of blue, and she definitely can’t help the fact that she is utterly and desperately in love with food and not so much with working out (yes, this is about me; guilty!). We don’t need magazines or the media telling us what will makes us perfect, stronger, prettier, or thinner. We have ourselves, we have every flaw and every perfect part of our body we were born with; we don’t need to change, society does. You are all perfect woman just the way you are now in this very moment.
