Question: Hey, Sid… I feel like I can’t keep up. One day it’s skinny legends, the next it’s BBLs, then suddenly, everyone’s on Ozempic? Like—what’s the standard anymore? Am I just supposed to shapeshift every decade? I feel messed up.
The beauty standard. The thing we’re all supposed to follow, despite the fact that it changes faster than celebrity friendships.
The Standard That Never Was
The lie was elegant.
Told with enough conviction and repetition that it nestled into our collective subconscious. That there was an ideal to reach. That if we bought the right products, wore the right shade, adjusted the right part of ourselves, we could arrive at a kind of finish line: beautiful.
But the truth is this:
You were never meant to feel beautiful. Not in the quiet, resounding way that brings peace. Not in the way that stops you in your tracks and lets you say, This is enough. I am enough.
Because if you had arrived. If you had felt whole, they wouldn’t have had anything left to sell you.
The beauty standard, as we know it, is not a legacy of biology or evolution. It wasn’t born in a field of flowers or carved into cave walls by early civilizations. It was built in boardrooms. It was assembled, brick by insecure brick, by industries whose survival depends on your doubt.
It was never about beauty. It was always about control.
The Algorithm of Insecurity
The reason beauty ideals contradict themselves so often is because they were never based on anything solid. Not science. Not health. Not even genuine attraction.
They’re dictated by history, commerce, and increasingly, by algorithms. Whatever the machine pushes becomes the new standard. Until that, too, is discarded.
At fourteen, I met the illusion head-on. Locked in a mall dressing room under harsh fluorescent lighting, I tried to hide my nose with my hands. It didn’t “fit.” It had a bump. I had just learned what a rhinoplasty was. And in that moment, I realized I was already failing a test I didn’t know I was taking.
Who taught me that my body was wrong? Who flipped the switch from child to project? It wasn’t me.
The Colonial Hangover
We can’t talk about beauty standards without naming the deeper rot.
Colonialism didn’t just erase languages, lands, and lineages—it also erased bodies.
Eurocentric features were held up as the ideal across continents. Skin-lightening creams were peddled like salvation. I was gifted a tube of Fair & Lovely once. I thought it would fix everything. Instead, it reminded me I wasn’t enough—at least not as I was.
Hair texture. Nose shape. Eye color. All scrutinized through a lens sharpened by empire. We’re still unlearning what centuries taught us to hate in ourselves.
So What Is Beauty, Really?
The most quietly radical idea of all might be this:
Beauty is not universal. There is no single definition.
Some people are drawn to sharp cheekbones. Others to soft dimples. Some love lean bodies. Others seek out warmth, softness, strength.
That variance alone should dismantle the myth.
Because if beauty were a standard, it wouldn’t be personal. But it is. Deeply.
The Confidence Rebellion
We’ve all met people who defy convention. People whose charisma bends the air around them. They walk in and you can’t look away.
They’re not selling you a trend. They’re living in their skin like it’s a cathedral. That’s what confidence is.
Not perfection. Not symmetry. Not unattainability. Presence.
How to Opt Out Without Disappearing
This isn’t a self-help listicle or a slogan on a canvas tote bag. It’s a slow rebellion. Here’s how I started:
Put the mirror away. Not forever. Just when it begins to feel more like a weapon than a tool.
Wear what honors your shape. Not what tricks the eye. Beauty isn’t deception.
Say something kind to yourself each morning. Your brain believes what it hears often enough. This isn’t affirmation fluff. It’s neural rewiring.
Unplug when the feed turns hostile. You’re not missing anything real.
And If We All Opted Out?
The economy would shift. Entire industries would have to pivot from exploitation to expression.
Marketing would become about joy, not shame.
Social media would evolve. No more filters that distort us into strangers. No more praise for starving ourselves in silk.
We’d begin to value energy over aesthetics. Wisdom over symmetry. Presence over polish.
Dating wouldn’t feel like an audition. It would feel like meeting.
And maybe, just maybe, we’d start to reclaim the space in our minds currently occupied by calorie counts and contour tips.
So What’s Stopping Us?
Conditioning. Centuries of it. But you can start unlearning today.
Because here’s the truth that the beauty industry will never print on its packaging:
You were never meant to chase beauty. You were meant to remember it.
You already have it. You just need to believe it before someone else profits off the doubt.
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