Have you ever looked at yourself in a mirror and wished the reflection staring back at you was different? Whether you’re wishing for longer hair or a flatter stomach, we all have things we wish we could change about ourselves. No matter how much we try to change these little imperfections, sometimes we just can’t. We have an idea in our head of what we should look like: what the perfect person should look like. Today’s society builds up images of men and women with “the perfect body” and “the perfect face,” and then the media forces them down our throats. We see countless pictures of girls with flawless, pore-less skin and instantly wish to look like them. Men see women drool over muscles and brawn while women see men drool over skinny bodies and big boobs. And if you don’t have those qualities then what? Should you pay to get these “perfect” features?
We live in an era that strives for perfection. We want everything around us to be modern and beautiful. Unfortunately, this idea that everything in our life has to be perfect has diffused past just our possessions. We want the people in our life to be perfect too; we want ourselves to be perfect. We feel pressured to make sure we look as good as the people around us. Buying expensive clothes or undergoing expensive and dangerous surgeries just so people will look at you and say “wow, she’s beautiful.” Of course we all want to feel what it’s like to have a room full of people look at you as you enter, frozen in awe of your beauty, but that’s not reality. It’s a fantasy that has been brainwashing young women for years. And each year it reaches out to a newer generation, torturing young girls with reasons why they’re not good enough and why they need to change. People joke about “how they looked at 14 compared to how 14 year olds look now” because now they wear loads of makeup and dress to reveal their assets. But can we blame them? They soak in what the media shows them, then aim to copy what they see.
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Learning to accept yourself and how you look is the key to all this madness. If you can be happy in your own skin and accept that you can’t change how you look, other people will accept you too. If you’re confident about what you wear or what you do then people won’t question it. And you shouldn’t change your style or how you act based on what people say. As Dr. Seuss once wrote, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” You might think your flaws are unsightly, but someone else may happen to love them.
