Beauty Is In the Eye of the Media

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder but unfortunately, the beholder tends to conform to the standards we've been taught.

The indoctrination by the media from a young age that we were subjected to is what we are still subjected to today. There is a black and white, still image of what is acceptable and what you should look like and what you should think like in order for your happiness to be justifiable.

And only now do people seem to be attempting to break down that wall only to be knocked back by oppression by those who are themselves, in a chokehold by the very ideals we try to fight, they oppress others because they feel the need to eliminate any opposition to the images they spend so much time upholding.

The unobtainable perfection that we are presented with every day is a mental landmine that destroys us all because we are so wounded by the fact that it's impossible to safely achieve it. We will never be what advertisers tell us is worthy.

The images we see all around us are edited in a way that are designed to make us feel disgusted by our natural features. It is an evil ploy to provoke us into impulsively buying dyes, skin creams and all kinds of tablets and pharmaceuticals in the hopes that we can become just like those false images.

Our exposure to this sets off a chain of events in all of us. The insecurities we gain cripple us, we are helpless, and like lambs to the slaughter we gambol further toward the dark tunnel of self-hatred and we cause ourselves this sickening harm. Harm that leads us sometimes into more conscious and dangerous harm until we are in so much internal and perhaps external agony, that when we finally see a speck of light in the distance, we run to it, often too fast and carelessly.

We stumble and we prey on that light. We build our new lives around it. We worship the light so much that we forget to tend to ourselves and suddenly, the light goes out in the cold wind. We begin to realise how we have been mislead and we hate ourselves for our mistakes.

Losing sight of all that we had temporarily gained, we only venture back into the tunnel of internal darkness. Unfortunately for some of us, the path deeper into the dark tunnel brings us to a head-banging, wall-scratching desperation that provokes us to take matters into our own hands and completely give up the fight to survive, ending our journey in an absolute way.

I find this to be the saddest consequence of all. It's shocking and deeply upsetting how many young people consider taking this route, yet it's actually incredibly common. However, for others the cycle continues on until/unless we find some flame of internal strength and build ourselves up. We finally grow sick of our own sadness and try to find peace. We learn to stop blaming ourselves. We realise we have to rely on ourselves first and foremost, that nobody can help you unless you are also willing to help yourself. We can begin to believe in ourselves and our worth.

And then, following our own direction, we can locate the dead end of the tunnel and pull it apart brick by brick, and lift ourselves, through gritted teeth, into the daylight for hopefully, the remainder of our days.

We look back at the tunnel as a reminder of where we came from As we grow older, we will teach our children how to love themselves, how to find that light and bask in it.

They will teach their own children and generation by generation, we will free ourselves from our demons and we will learn how to grow. And though we may stumble again, we will continue to build ourselves and each other up again.

And the internal agony that haunts us all at points in our lives will be less of a taboo to discuss, more easily defeated and hopefully will exist much less due to true self-love and true external support.

Lourdes Correia