The beauty standards for Korean women include big doe eyes, double eyelid, small lips, peitet figure, fair skin, v-shaped jaw line, ect. The standards for men include fair skin, slim, muscular body, sharp features that aren’t too sharp, a sharp jaw line, and a feminine face while also having masculine features. As you can see, these standards are naturally unattainable for every person. Yes a person might have a few of these desired features but to have all of these is insane. In these next few paragraphs I will discuss the reasons on why beauty standards for both men and women are toxic for your mental well being.

There are many problems with this ideology of always having to be perfect. First, is the fact that some spend thousands of dollars to look “perfect” when that money could have gone into getting a higher education or paying for books or even rent. But instead that money is spent on countless beauty products, the newest clothes, and making you look nothing like yourself. Some of these girls bleach their skin, they tape their cheeks back to appear skinnier, wear contacts to make their eyes bigger. After these girls get ready, they look nothing like themselves.  Second is the fact that these boys and girls are exposed to this all the time. If they listen to music, the idols must have perfect skin, bodies, voices, and dance movies. If they watch tv shows, all the actors and actresses are the Korean standard of beauty. If they walk down the street the billboards will have people looking flawless and perfect. Every where they walk, they feel pressured into being less and less of themselves.

But in all this darkness of not feeling good enough, there are women starting a new revolution of beauty, called escape the corset. One women, Lina Bae, had a platform on youtube where she would do makeup tutorials. One day when she was looking at the comments she realized that young girls would watch these videos and they would comment that they were embarrassed to go to school with out makeup on or that they had no confidence. Lina realized how damaging that is for young girls to not have confidence with out the mask of makeup. So she realized she had to do something, she chopped off all her hair, destroyed all her makeup, and instead of the making videos about conforming to beauty standards, her videos are her enjoying her life and tutorials on cooking healthy meals. Its not just Lina doing this, many other women have cut or even shaved their heads, destroyed their makeup and are living wonderful lives free from the belief that everyone must fit a cookie cutter standard of beauty.

Beauty standards have destroyed self confidence. It almost seems like the companies that put out this idea of human perfection, just want to gain a profit off of your self hate. It also seems that “beauty” is just the opposite of what you look like. If you have light skin, it needs to be darker, if you have dark skin it needs to be lighter. If your curvy you need to be skinny, if your skinny you need to be curvier. If you are constantly told you must look this way or that, you will never find true happiness in who you are. As high schoolers we must always remember this. We must remember the fact that God made you the way you are. He sculpted you with love and placed you here for a reason. The journey to self love is a long road, but one day you will be able to find comfort in your flaws and be truly in love with yourself.