Down the Horizon

“If you are not beautiful as per the standards, the rest doesn’t matter”.

Men and women are both drawn to getting the “right” image, the “correct” look they see from everyday’s life. Anyone can see the pattern in this crazy expanding aesthetic industry that evolves around the idea that a woman is meant to constantly keep trying to reach the ultimate, perfect beauty that keeps on changing like a wardrobe. Everyone is being bombarded from TV commercials, movies, billboards, social media, TV shows, etc. All those ads objectify mostly women, transferring this idea into the real life, too, where even very young girls are literally displaying their body parts to “the world”. “Real” women are hiding behind the filters on social media, ashamed of their “imperfect” breasts, lips, legs, etc. Is this really the new crazy normal we are supposed to bring our children in?

Scrolling down the social media platforms became routine, subconscious. Commercials are sliding down, repeating themselves after all those clicks. You see big, plumped lips done by thousands of “doctors” that by promoting the idea of bigger lips eventually make you start checking yourself in the mirror, right? As a consequence, we start persuading ourselves that we actually need bigger lips since “everyone’s doing it”.

       Aesthetic surgery has never been so popular and is becoming the “new normal” even among teenagers. They all want to look like photoshopped in school I guess. Markets are flooded with facial products and treatments claiming that can “fix” our “great problems” – scars, wrinkles, age itself and insecurities we would never even know about unless it weren’t for commercials. Overall, women risk their health just for the sake of men liking them. But do men actually like the fake and insecure women…no, the real men do not.

      Nowadays among the most popular low self-esteem indicators is the imposed need of taking “selfies” for Instagram and Facebook social platforms. But what selfies actually “say” is> “Look at me, I’m worthy.” There is this urge for a sense of self-worth. People these days are people being burdened to create a richer and a more beautiful version of themselves, hiding their real personality, individuality in order not to “pop out” from the mass. It seems like “being different” is not “in”.

      One follows the other – low self-esteem that has been generated through ads won’t stop circling in time if society doesn’t take measures against this problem. Excessive use of surgical operations trigger mental health issues like depression, etc. The more these boundaries are crossed, the more society will allow this degradation to become the “new normal”.