"I don't believe in Botox, especially when [people] do it so young. They destroy themselves. They keep telling young girls, 'Do it young, so you never get wrinkles.' No, your face is going to fall,” Salma Hayek, Mexican actress and producer, tells People Magazine. Hayek happens to be one among the many actresses who have openly discouraged Botox and face-lifting treatments. Body enhancement, face-freezing, and plastic filling surgeries used to be aesthetic trends, but have now turned into something uglier and more harmful. Preserving and enhancing one’s looks, and beauty has become so commonplace now that we do not stop to consider the effects such treatments have on us- both physically and mentally.
The global cosmetic market is currently valued at $532.43 billion and has seen exponential growth in the past few years, especially among the youth. Our generation is so obsessed with meeting the standards of beauty and enhancing ourselves that we forget to consider its consequences.
Remaining ‘young and graceful’ forever is an idea that has been instilled in the human mind ever since man started valuing materialistic goods over emotions. Beauty has become synonymous to changing yourself until you are accepted by others rather than embracing who you are and accepting yourself, youth has become synonymous to no wrinkles instead of the joyful rigour that we once valued. This craze of looking young and trying to defy ageing has been popularised to the extent that it is considered normal. People have forgotten that thin isn’t perfect, that wrinkles aren’t imperfections, and that curves aren’t a defining factor of our personality.
Our social media accounts are governed by what the society deems as beautiful, what will please people the most, and what will garner the greatest number of likes. Validation as a mechanism of gaining confidence is not even questioned, but it does not make it improper or correct. The second we start craving acceptance on the basis of our looks rather than on the basis of who we are is the second we truly start to lose ourselves.
The real problem here, though, is that we blame all of this on the way society is structured and how it functions, but are we not part of this society ourselves? Don’t we, as humans, play a part in defining what we consider acceptable? Somewhere, somehow, we have played a part in defining these standards of beauty and have become our own oppressors. The first step to redefining the standards of beauty is accepting the flaws in our society, and that we are the ones who make set these goals for ourselves.
Works Cited:
https://www.reuters.com/brandfeatures/venture-capital/article?id=30351
