Hello Love!
The truth is, beauty and body standards have no basis in actual reality.
Meaning, they are something we as a society, we as a culture MAKE UP. Invent. Generate out of our minds.
We then use these made up standards as justification for denying certain people access to certain spaces in society, to provisions and to rights.
We use these standards to justify why we exploit, undervalue and ignore certain groups of people.
We use these standards to continually push the idea that we aren't good enough, that we must be constantly changing, improving, fixing, shifting and adapting to the style/look of the day. We use these standards to justify our never ending cycle of consume, use, trash, repeat. These standards drive us to focus on what doesn't matter, so that we totally miss what does.
Beauty standards are permission slips we give ourselves to judge others on their 'health' status we feel we can deduce by looking at them. Shaming others in ways we think are acceptable or even from a place of concern.
They are how we justify a whole host of things that do not serve us as a culture, but that TOTALLY serve to keep our systems of exploitation, exclusion and over consumption/production going.
They are political.
They are about so much more than body image issues.
Stepping out of beauty standards is more than just loving our body or embracing different sizes and shapes.
It's a total overhaul of how we perceive worth and value, as well as a total rethinking when it comes to what we feel WE must be and do in order to be good enough.
It requires that we take a step back from the constant drumbeat of NOT GOOD ENOUGH so that we can untangle what we're doing for our bodies and expression that actually comes from true self knowledge and what we're doing to try to fit into a world we can NEVER fit into.
Today, let's talk about why beauty standards are a total fiction, and what it REALLY takes to step out of the illusion.
<3
