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So by the logic of "beauty standards"...I should starve myself, curl my hair, get a tan, cut off both my feet to lose height and then remove all of my ribs to get an hourglass figure? You know...can't argue with that 🙃
Gladly...would
(except maybe the tan part, I really like being pale 😭)
Close, but its actually "whatever sells you a solution".
That is exactly what 'beauty standards' are. Unobtainable. How otherwise could they constantly sell you stuff to 'improve' your look? Fashion, beauty, fitness, wellness sales are 100% dependent on you being convinced to hate yourself enough to buy, buy, buy.
How exactly do you "look whiter"?
There are products designed to whiten skin. They're popular in India, and probably more places (I only know about it in India because I learned about them from reading an article about India specifically.)
Have to market products somehow.
It's a selection bias. The only unsolicited comments about your body are from mean people.
Spray tans look bad IMO but technically its less harmful than tanning beds which are just dumb, literally just inducing UV damage. Faster skin aging and cancer risk increase, sounds really appealing.
Curly and straight hair are both great. Hell I like messy hair and short cuts on women. Admittedly, I couldn't pull off short hair right now...
Gaining or losing weight is arguably a red herring, how hot you look has more to do with exercise and eating healthy consistently but not crash diets. Losing too much weight too quickly will make anyone (man or woman) look like a ghoul and gaining a ton of weight by eating garbage and not exercising generally looks pretty bad obviously.
I wonder if this is related to the IKEA effect. It was shown that people value something more highly if they helped creating it, like assembling IKEA furniture. Similarly it could be that people like their look better if they actively helped creating it instead of staying how they looked naturally.
Well, sure. Nobody should be proud of something they got by birth, and I do think beauty as something you DO or even buy is more egalitarian than a standard based on heredity, where you can just lose or win and can't change it.
Overall I have seen the ideal of beautiful get much more varied and diverse over my lifetime, which is nice, too.
Then why do I fucking hate IKEA
That's a pretty interesting idea, something relating to self determination I imagine.
Creating demand is a centerpiece of a Western world since about Edward Bernays.
Thank you. As a plus-sized girl, this is something that I really needed to see tonight. I've been feeling very ugly & disgusting because of my weight.
As someone who is married to a plus-size lady, I can assure you that anyone judging you for that is not worth the time of day. Be comfortable with who you are, if you want to change yourself in any way then do it because you want to, not because of irrelevant dillweeds.
<3
Some of us vastly prefer plus sized girls.
Can confirm ⬆️ Even more people prefer people that are comfortable with who they are, irrelevant of size ✌️
🫂
Being plus-sized is not a flaw and I hate how badly society treats plus-sized people. That's disgusting, the shame and fatphobia society directs against plus-sized people...it's really extreme.
You're neither ugly nor disgusting. I see you and appreciate you. I hope you are well 🩷
Thank you. <3
I feel a lot better when I am able to go to the gym regularly, but I haven't been able to go in months because I just can't afford it since I'm try to go back to school (college) and books are hella expensive.
Women with brown/black hair are encouraged to dye their hair to look more "unique".
Women with blonde hair are encouraged to dye their hair to avoid blonde jokes.
Women with red hair are encouraged to dye their hair to avoid ginger jokes.
It's about making women have low self esteem and always willing to change ourselves to meet expectations. It makes it easier to get us to submit in other ways.
While also selling solutions to "problems." Meta platforms in particular have set up their advertising algorithms to know when women are feeling bad about themselves based on their posts, to sell cosmetics
Yeah. I honestly hate it more and more each day :/
Being comfortable with one's self is attractive
I am trans, and my goal is to look as trans as possible. Take that society!
How's the blahaj collection coming along?
If you take a mathematical average of all women or all men, you get someone out that is quite attractive. A few parameters are deemed more beautiful at the extremes, but if you are: neither overweight nor starving, have slightly wavy hair, are of medium height, have averaged away all illnesses... you're starting from a good place.
I feel like that's some serious question?
It is like that coz some wants profits.
It is not enough to sell beauty products, as once achieved, income could drop - You need to pursuit another beauty. And poof, we have a fashion.
Nah, it was still not enough, so, they started to make You feel ugly, so spend more. Follow all these photoshopped ai enhanced pictures from ads everywhere, unreachable standard. Spend.
Fuck it, ignore standard, go get beauty in self from self (whatever that mean, rarely someone can judge self as "good enough" or "damn pretty enough").
Someone happy with who they are and what they have doesn't make as many purchases. In a capitalistic society, that's unacceptable.
Conversely unhappy people who can't fix what's making them unhappy will go find people who can tell them something they can fix about themselves to make them happy in a different way.
All potential solutions will be offered and the ones that resonate are the ones that target things we dislike about ourselves, call it out as a Big Solvable Problem, and offer you a solution at retail prices.
So yes, everything on the right hand column is always being offered to everyone all the time, and the ones on the left hand column have enthusiastically self organized and sought their matching targeted self esteem exploit.
The logical conclusion of this is that only men are beautiful
no, there's also plenty of fun beauty standards that men are required to uphold, and they also change from culture to culture. Most of the ones you see in western nations veer into toxic masculinity.
Kinda accurate tbh. British comedy sketch even did this.
Women's advertising: everything is going wrong and its all your fault, you need to buy all of this shit
Men's advertising: Shave and get drunk. Because your already brilliant.
Thus it is not only not gay, but indeed a moral imperative, to kiss the homies.
Nah, they get it too, unfortunately.
WHAT, HOW? 😭
I mean, it's true that I only find men hot, but like...how did you come to that conclusion?? 😭
A less interesting explanation is that everyone's comparing themselves to the mean. If any attribute is too different, it needs correcting. Weight, skin tone, number of fingers and toes, etc.
It's the opposite, you're comparing yourself to what's exotic in your community and generally only achievable by the elites.
In Scandinavia, being tanned has been a beauty standard for decades. As most people work indoors.
In Asia being as pale as possible is the aim, as the peasants have been working outside. Being pale was the beauty standard in Europe throughout the mediaeval years, as peasants then worked outside.
Anything that can make you appear well off tends to be a beauty standard, it's arguably the main reason some circles have obvious hideous plastic surgery as a beauty standard today, it proves you're able to afford such surgery
To add to that, in the past being overweight and unfit was a sign of wealth. Only rich people could afford to eat and sit around all day. Nowadays it's inverted; only well off people have the time to eat healthy and exercise regularly
With the price of food, we'll get there again
For some reason this reminded me of the foot binding stuff in the Benedict Wong Marco Polo series, which is legit some of the most uncomfortable scenes in TV ever.
how else can we sell all these beauty products
I feel more like I got close to what I'd choose, just never quite to the point I couldn't do better, if that makes sense? I'm tall for a girl, 5'9" but would have liked to be one inch taller, in my legs. Thin but would like to be thinner. Pretty happy with my hair, actually, except for the color. Loose curls are what I'd choose, and are what I have. Never had a waist, and yes did want one, bone structure thing, but "elongated athletic" is a body type I like, I don't care that much.
All my hangups relate to weight. I've been thinner but never actually felt like it wouldn't look better to be even thinner, which I realize makes no sense but is still how I feel.
Agree a lot of it is created by commercial interests trying to sell things.
I'm tall for a girl, 5'9"
Oof, feel you on that ;-;
It sounds to me like you already got it tho. Like, I know this isn't any help, but damn am I jealous a bit. I have never seen you, but at least from your description...yes you're beautiful 🩷
I know it can be different for trans ladies, but would encourage you to show it off. Height is an asset IMO. Wear heels, be tall, it's a good look, don't hide or shrink. No idea how I dodged that as an insecurity, I'm older and when I was young it was not seen as pretty, but models got tall and still it's mostly tall ladies who model, right? Because it's pretty, the long lines.