Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. At least that's what we tell people, however we have been sending mixed messages about beauty versus accepting our natural looks.
All of us are born unique, true some people can look similar, even identical twins can have some different features. But we seem to be fixated on the idea that everyone should look the same, while at the same time promoting the idea that we should accept our differences.
Take for example a magazine, any magazine will do. Many of them promote some form of self-love and appreciating the looks we're born with. However within those pages are articles promoting the idea that we should look a certain way.
For example, a magazine will promote a section on loving your curves if you're a bigger girl. But then it will feature an article in how to lose 20 pounds in two months and how 'skinny' should be celebrated. Rewind, how does loving your curves yet telling people they should be skinnier work? Short answer it doesn't.
This doesn't just apply to body image but everything. Hair, muscles, clothing how are we supposed to decode these mixed messages?
We want everyone to feel good about themselves because well why shouldn't we? Not everyone looks the same yet we praise those who fit what our standard for beauty is and ridicule those who don't.
A prime example of how this has affected not just women but men too is an incident involving Daniel Radcliffe. About a year or so ago a journalist mentioned to Daniel that he wasn't the "conventional" male lead. The journalist later defended this statement by adding that many associate him with Harry Potter.
Well okay that makes perfect sense in a very warped way. Safe to say it was probably their backwards way of saying, "well you're not tall, dark and smooth-skinned like Ryan Gosling nor are you rugged beyond belief like Hugh Jackman but you're still talented." In a way they basically said Daniel was not handsome.
It's ridiculous that we put these perceptions on people by saying they're attractive but could be even more attractive if they just tweaked this one thing or lost this amount of weight then they'd achieve what we as a society deem "perfection."
This kind of thinking is horrible, rather than telling people how the can be more aesthetically pleasing to our overly judgmental eyes we should only tell them how attractive they already are.
We all want to be seen as attractive but thanks to media and our own preconceived ideas we freak out over someone who is "less than ideal."
Yes we all have those we are attracted to and that can't be helped, but when we automatically write someone off for being "unconventional" or "average" without even giving them a chance we completely overhaul the idea that we accept everyone as beautiful.
