The word “beautiful” would never suffice as a descriptor of art. It’s too vapid, too hollow. All art is beautiful, so what? Instead, we prefer “poignant,” “jarring,” “ethereal.” A piece that may not have been well received in the Baroque period is lauded in the Neoclassicist style. Then if we are art—if we are more than art—why is “beautiful” all we are? 

Why is “beautiful” all we seek to be? 

We are nuanced, complex individuals, but we are crudely dissected, every inch of what makes us whole taken apart until only the barebones of our appearance remains; we are our high cheekbones, our Cupid’s bows, our epicanthal tilts. We are three-dimensional beings reduced to one dimension of our existence. 

But sometimes, you look into a mirror and that one dimension is all you can see. 

Every cosmetic imperfection, every asymmetrical facial feature, every flaw you can’t conceal with makeup—or perhaps don’t want to—is magnified under the harsh lens of your own insecurity. 

What it means to be beautiful has shifted so frequently throughout history, and yet why is it that I never seem to meet those requirements, to pass those ever-changing goalposts? 

Not thin enough, then too thin. Lips too full, then not full enough. Too curvy, then too flat. My body isn’t enough, I think.
My face isn’t enough. I’m not enough. 

I hate my nose (I have my grandmother’s nose). I hate my jawline (I have my father’s jawline). I hate my lips (I have my mother’s lips). 

It’s unfair, I think, to dislike our bodies so much. It’s unfair to hate the way your features fall. It’s unfair to the people around you, who love all those hidden aspects you find unappealing and it’s unfair to your parents, your ancestors, whose history is written across every slope of your cheek, every ridge of your nose. But most of all, it’s achingly unfair to you, your own harshest critic. 

In a world where beauty is thrown at you at such an overwhelming volume, you start to become painfully aware of your own flaws, all the ways you don’t measure up in all the ways everyone else does. You’re part of a race you never knew you were running, barely cresting the first hurdle while everyone around you is on their final lap. 

We’re surrounded, bombarded, by media portraying the “ideal woman”— as if there were one. As if there ever could be. Images of Hollywood stars and Victoria’s Secret models flash all around us, and we stare decidedly at the mirror in an attempt to sculpt our faces into theirs, suffering the crushing blow of inadequacy when we realize how futile our efforts are. And this creates a vicious cycle. After all, our self-consciousness fuels markets. 

Women prod and poke and pick at themselves in an effort to mold themselves into these unattainable shapes— shapes we were never meant to become. Shapes that change as fluidly as the tide, shapes that were singularly determined, yet universally held. 

In modern day, there have been efforts made to diversify the kinds of shapes we are molded into, expanding to include different skin colors, different body types, different facial features. But what has not changed is that there are and have always been, shapes for us to mold into. There is no universal beauty standard. But there is a beauty standard. And the fact that these expectations fluctuate so frequently does not diminish the fact that they continue to exist. It does not diminish the fact that a generation of young girls will continue to grow up thinking they are not enough, simply because they do not meet some rigidly superficial declaration of what it means to be beautiful. And it does not diminish the fact that women will pull at their smile lines, suck in their stomachs and smooth out their stretch marks, siphoning away what makes them human in favor of pleasing the same society that will chew them up and spit them out after a certain age. 

We need to stop evaluating women, evaluating people, through the lens of attractiveness. We are more than the sum of our parts. And if we want to create a truly diverse society, take away the shapes. Take away the standards. Take away the number on the scale. Take away everything that makes women think that there is any sort of product they could buy, any sort of procedure they could undergo, in order to become “good enough.”  

You do not need to be beautiful by society’s standards to be good enough. You do not need to be beautiful by anyone else’s standards but your own. If there’s one thing you take away from this article, let it be that. Let it be known, as Erin McKean wrote in her blog “A Dress a Day,” that prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female.”