When one has straight hair they are envious of the ones with curly, when the hair is "baby like" thin they admire the ones with the thicker strands.
When one is very slim they look at those with the curvier frame in a secretly longing manner and those with the curves looking at the skinny girls the same - I never even knew that there was a thing called "thigh gap" that I recently heard the ladies are striving for in the gym or actually taking up surgery to create!??
One thing I will say, lucky for me as not all of us are told such a thing so frequently, that I was exposed to a gentle voice telling me endlessly how beautiful I was all the way through my life.
This voice, it was that of my Mother.
When I wanted to do something different with how I was naturally; when I was sad with the way I looked as it didn't fit into what was seen as beautiful at that time; at the times when I wanted to enhance or change something about myself whether it be plucking my eyebrows to changing my hair colour; when someone had told me I wasn't beautiful or at the times within my life that I found I was sucked into the "standard" of beauty that is projected onto us each and every day.... It was at these times that my Mothers voice would appear.
I have to give large credit to this being one of the first foundations to finding that inner beauty that all of us should and have the access to feel and discover, this was my foundation to reject this "beauty for the time" that is so heightened in today's age.
The 'beauty for the time' that I am discussing is forever changing and therefor an unobtainable standard in one feeling beautiful. If we look at 'beauty for the time' there seems to be constant change and conflict in the "standard" or what is seen as beautiful from the 60's blonde, stick thin, bombshell's to the most recent fascinations with brown eyes, dark hair and enhanced curves.
How can we keep up and if we are sucked into this "beauty for the time" which is forever changing, constantly contradicting and never stopping?
We should know that the industries vision of the "standard of beauty" is whatever it wasn't the previous week, the previous month or the previous generation.
The new beautiful is whatever it wasn't the last time they set the standard, encouraging us to change our minds constantly about what is beautiful over and over so we continue to strive for something that we are not and will never be able to become - that being something else other than what we are.
We are constantly bombarded with photo shopped images and all day long are told by the media, our cultures & our environments how and what we should look like to fit into what the "Standard" of beauty is for that time.
It is whatever will get us to want to try and change ourselves from we are.
Over time this "standard" of beauty that these companies, the media and overall the small higher sector that rules this world have been making up is only so we can invest our money and time into making ourselves want to look and strive to look like something different to what we are and encouraging us to be the seekers outside ourselves to obtain what we feel is beautiful an on top of this, before we even know it, the standard of what is beautiful has once again changed!
Its a crazy, ugly cycle. How can we keep up?
I stopped reading magazines, I stopped watching the latest reality TV, I stopped keeping myself informed with the latest IT girls and models that are paraded to us all over the television a long time ago but still I want us to address this!
What is the real "Standard" when it comes to Beauty?
Surely the standard of beauty is you feeling beautiful within your skin no matter your hair colour, no matter your skin tone, no matter your shape, no matter where the curves lay upon your body, no matter the size of your butt or the size of your breasts?
Isn't beauty within that graceful confidence that you ooze the moment you start loving your body the way that it is at anytime, anyway and at any age?
The standard of beauty does not lay within the time. Beauty is timeless and it lays within the way that we feel within ourselves, about ourselves.