eye of the beholder

By Maridel De Los Reyes

Roughly 89% of girls worldwide do not feel comfortable calling themselves beautiful. That’s according to the Dove Self Esteem Project in 2004.

Self-confidence issues plague people all over the world but are especially common amongst teenagers and more specifically, teen girls.

Especially now in the digital age, we are exposed to advertisements, magazines, and photos at a rate higher than ever before. What’s more, photo editing and manipulation is far easier and widely accessible. Anyone with a smartphone can manipulate images. We are surrounded by the media, but the media is even more fabricated than ever before.

“Each image is painstakingly worked over. Teeth and eyeballs are bleached white; blemishes, wrinkles and stray hairs are airbrushed away” According the Louis Grubb, a leading New York retoucher. “Almost every photograph you see for a national advertiser these days has been worked on by a retoucher to some degree…Fundamentally, our job is to correct the basic deficiencies in the original photograph or, in effect, to improve upon the appearance of reality” (Jacobson and Mazur 1995).When exposed to these perfect people, one may start to make comparisons with oneself. I have seen many girls I personally knew, at my age, obsessing over how their bodies weren’t as skinny or curvy as they’d like. They feel that the heavily edited and manipulated Instagram posts and advertisements are how they should look, perfection. “I believe appearance affects daily life by a lot. It affects our confidence and self esteem. I find that people treat attractive people better than those who are less attractive” says a sophomore at Independence High School.”

Trends on social media can create new beauty through aesthetics and challenges. I have personally fallen victim to certain trends that “judge your beauty” through mundane methods like whether or not your finger can touch your lips while on your nose or if you keep your features even with certain filters on. Some social media platforms also have algorithms that analyze faces so that more “attractive ones” are promoted more than those the algorithm doesn’t find attractive according to The Intercept. We are funneled a certain kind of beauty, skewing our perceptions.

These standards are not just a result of social media. They have been around for a long time and social media just exacerbates them. My family is very critical of beauty. In the Philippines dark skin, low nose bridges, and short hair are considered ugly. My mother would often point out how someone had a long chin or flat nose and how it made them ugly. I normally would never notice these things until my mother pointed them out and seeing as they were beautiful in my eyes, it was very disheartening.

The strict standards and high importance placed on beauty can make it difficult to remember to value your own worth. You may look at others and feel they don’t make the cut but it is important to remember that the people around you are more than posters or pretty faces. They are living breathing human beings with goals and ambitions. They have memories and experiences and the futures they will live through. Building your opinion on someone based solely on their physical appearance and objectifying them does them no justice. You are one of these people. You are beautiful because of what you went through, not because your nose is at a perfect 90 degree angle. You are beautiful because of what you will become. You are beautiful because you are you.