At What Price Beauty?

For hundreds if not thousands of year’s men have been dictating the standards of beauty to women. No matter what time in history beautiful women have been admired, sculpted, painted and sought after.

​Being beautiful was something that every woman wanted to be for being beautiful gave women power over men. Look at Helen of Troy who started the Trojan War she was considered the most beautiful woman of her time, and her face was said to have launched a thousand ships.

Being beautiful gave a woman an edge in the world of men.

Today, just like sex, beauty has become a commodity. Beauty is cash currency and in the modeling industry it is sold as a lifestyle. In the documentary Chasing Beauty these stats were shared. "25% of young American women would rather be on Americas's Next Model than win the Nobel Peace Prize and 23% would rather lose their ability to read than lose their figure." 

​ Naomi Wolf in her book The Beauty Myth, shares how women for decades has been sold a bill of goods by the marketing moguls of Madison Ave., and that women have believed them. The standards of beauty continue to be dictated by the men and women who create the fashion industry.

Hollywood the music industry and MTV are brainwashing not only young women but girls as well and we continue to believe that we are not the right kind of beautiful or not beautiful enough.

In each era, you will find the standards of what defines beauty in a woman changes. In one era, it might be ivory skin, tiny waist, rosy cheeks, and in another being voluptuous and full figured or as in our own day, being a top model or blonde, skinny and busty resembling our favorite icon Barbie.

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 I find it interesting that women themselves have had very little say as to what they feel defines being a beautiful is. We allow ourselves to be told over and over again how we should look, act, dress, smell and be.

Don’t you think it is the time that we women take our power back from the dictates of these megala industries, from anyone who has told us what it means to be a beautiful woman and finally decide for ourselves? 

Since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we must train ourselves and our daughters to see beauty in your/herself and to begin to question what the media and the collective consensus is telling you and her.

We have the opportunity to move forward at this time and to change the status quo. For never has there been a more urgent need to do so. It makes me heartsick to see another generation of girls grow up thinking that being beautiful is the only value that they have and that being beautiful has to look a certain way and by being beautiful you will be more valued than if you are not.
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I dare you to take the time to discover where you too may have been or still are in some way supporting a system that is detrimental to the health and well being of women and girls everywhere.
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I invite you to take the lead in being a woman who dares to define for herself what being a powerful, strong and beautiful woman is. To become a living example for the new generations.

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