 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.  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. 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. 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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 I recently revisited the growing fad of what is commonly called, labiaplasty as I did an article on some years ago. I wanted to see where things are today and because I also teach about sexuality to women and girls. Since 2016 there has been a 39% increase in labiaplasty surgeries. which can roughly be estimated at more than 12,000 women. This fact still astonishes me and saddens me at the same time. Recent research done by Refinery 29 who took a poll of 3,670 women stated that 48% of them were concerned about the way their vulvas looked. “A third (32%) of women told us they had been made to feel that theirs were not "normal", and when we gave them the chance to expand on this, their accounts made for a disheartening read. Porn was cited time and again, with 72% of women who compare their vagina or vulva to others' referring to it. One woman described her labia as "larger" than she has seen depicted by the industry, another said hers "doesn’t look like what [she sees] in porn," while another summed up the problem perfectly: porn, she said, depicts "vaginas that all look basically the same". (Refinery 29) As a writer and teacher about women's sexuality, and founder of a new program for teen girls, Sasse Girls, (Sexually Aware, Smart and Savvy Girls), I have to do my research and keep up with the times. With more and more young girls and boys being exposed to porn and learning about sex and body image from this medium, the damage to girls self-esteem and the demands of physical perfection that are projected on to them is on the rise. The lack of adequate sex education in most states including many schools in California is appalling, and kids are turning to what is available to them to learn from about sex. The fact that the porn industry has taken over this job by default is a fact and is something that could be changed. There are much better ways to learn about sexual intimacy and all that it encompasses. "Porn also feeds body-image woes indirectly via partners' viewing habits. Time and again, research has flagged its pernicious effect on heterosexual male viewers – links have been drawn between viewing porn and issues ranging from erectile dysfunction and unprotected sex to potentially even the shrinking of the male brain – and judging from our survey, women’s self-perception is a major piece of collateral damage. Men's views of the female body appear to have been severely skewed by porn, with many respondents telling us they’d been made to feel their vulva or vagina was "abnormal" by an ex-partner." ~ Refinery 29. What Can You Do?
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