I am a woman in her 20s, so inevitably body insecurities routinely plague my mind. Somehow despite all my efforts to build up self-confidence and a resistance against media messages about the ideal kind of face or body to have, I still once in a while break down under the toxic beauty standards perpetuated by society. It’s nothing dramatic, I don’t actually hate myself or anything. I am convinced that I have been blessed with a capable body, with a pleasant-enough face, and no innate health concerns that damage my physical appearance so much. For all these I am extremely grateful. Or at least when I remember to acknowledge my fortune. At other times, I only zoom in on what I consider ‘inadequate’, ‘imperfect’, ‘un-standard’ about my looks, in comparison to an ambiguous, unrealistic set of ideals for what beauty ought to entail. Today I want to break these insecurities down and perhaps establish a new standard and rationale for beauty aspirations.
Some of the things I’m prone to grow unsatisfied with are quite minor, but they stand out to me nevertheless, almost every time I take a look at myself in the mirror. One thing is my nose and how the nostrils are wide, not exactly the “cute and petit” nose. Another is all my facial and body hair (I spent much of adolescent years staring at my unibrow in the mirror). This bothers me far too much for something so common and natural. I also have quite severe bloating when I consume certain types of food, though I concede that this is an outlier among all my insecurities because it is actually a medical concern. But nothing tops this in terms of absurdity: I used to not mind it but ever since I became interested in Korean entertainment and celebrity culture (the epitome of highly particular beauty ideals), I started to think my face/head is too large for my body, and my legs are not long enough to give me “good” (lean, long) body proportions. Again, the face size is an absolutely ludicrous thing to obsess over or even notice, but my brain has chosen to internalize these stupid thoughts because I became aware that at least one random stranger must watch out for these details when looking at me.
So I have all these parts of myself that I feel less than content about, despite the numerous other parts which I should be more grateful for. The problem, of course, is the ridiculous, ever-changing beauty standards set for women to perpetually catch up with. Somehow we have grown accustomed to these ideals being the sole ambition that matters, because apparently we can only be worthy, accepted, loved, successful, and happy if we are “beautiful”, and a very singular type of “beautiful”. There are of course some racist, classist notes in this kind of beauty standardization, because the bias is almost entirely skewed towards a Western, upperclass version of existence. Frankly if we trace the history of beauty, it always correlates with whatever is deemed wealthy and white in society. But that’s not the point of this blog post, and either way we know striving to match the standards is a losing battle. Somehow the main victims happen to almost always be young women, who perpetually experience a conditional kind of self-worth because women also don’t have much else to fall back on to measure their values. Being worthy in another other way isn’t quite as validated as in the beauty department, because being a successful woman is “threatening” and being a humorous one “lacks allure”, for example.
Anyways I’m getting off track from my initial purpose in writing this. What strikes me about all these insecurities is that perhaps we amplify the importance of our looks far too much. Not that we need to shift our insecurities to other aspects of ourselves, but we can first tone down with the obsession over physical appearance. Our looks reflect a lot less than we assume about our character, value, and worth. Some of the physical traits do indeed speak to our lifestyle choices, but even then these choices matter far too little for us to attribute our whole identity to them. Most importantly, when we exist as complex, multidimensional beings, why bother feeling inadequate in just one tiny area of ourselves just because society likes to push for one particular agenda? Not only that, some agenda are mere bullshit, created out of problematic notions for the benefits of a few, yet most of us just embrace them without any rational justification.
I have come to a few ideas for how to approach this whole tendency to feel insecure about my physical appearance. First of all, I ought to see myself as a multitude of traits and characteristics, thoughts and ideas, values and principles. How I look matters almost close to null compared to my whole person. And each tiny part of my physical appearance matters even less. It’s hard to shake off the exaggerated emphasis on beauty that has been sneaking around in our mind for eternity, but with self-awareness and self-respect (which both take work to cultivate), we can hopefully recognize how irrational and strange all these notions of beauty are. Second, even all the “more substantial” traits such as my personality, social life, or career success that make up my identity shall not even have so much importance. This is going to sound cheesy, but can you imagine fixating on a minor detail on the body being more meaningful and fun than trying to have a good time, to experience joy with others, to take in the wonders that exist out there in the world, to perhaps contribute some of our existence to something bigger than ourselves? If being preoccupied with any part of myself, especially with the superficial part that is my looks, deprives me of these other scenarios, I am probably stuck in the wrong lanes of life.
After all, what these two ideas share is their roots in the concept of perspective. When I look too closely at just one tiny thing and make a big deal out of it, I am missing out on the larger fun and joy beyond my tunnel vision. Sometimes I remember life has so much wonder to offer, yet here I am sulking over a temporary pimple – it all just seems laughably odd. I know I might sound as if I am dismissing actually significant concerns about physical appearance or health that others have to deal with – which I would not dare pretend I could relate to or have resolutions for. But with these small suggestions and rationales, I only wish to offer an antidote for those of us who have so much more to appreciate about ourselves to counter the preexisting insecurities about our physical self.
Postscript: I got inspired to write about this after noticing how the actress Kim Taeri strikes me as such a beautiful and attractive person, not because she fits neatly in the mold of beauty standards (in fact she has many of the physical traits that I share and often feel insecure about, but not to toot my own horn). Instead, I just realize she is immensely attractive because she seems to not only be more invested in other aspects of herself, such as her dedication to her acting career, her other hobbies, the people she works and hangs out with, but also has a genuine joy in the activities she engages in. Of course I don’t know anything about her private life or self, but seeing her radiate comfort and enjoyment in whatever does and can show in public makes me realize that maybe life is more fun and worth living when I channel my energy away from the trivial stuff (especially the stuff about myself) and just focus on having a good time instead.
