Cost of beauty culture

“Look younger. It’s smaller. Erase the lines.

We often mistake these things for truth.

We live in a culture that is saturated with non-unrealistic and positively harmful beauty standards. Thinness, wrinkle-free skin, symmetrical features, signs of aging, no “defects”. These are more than just preferences. They are socially constructed ideals that condition people, especially women and women, and equate how closely they match their values ​​with narrow and exclusive images.

As a therapist specializing in eating disorders Body image Pain, I witness the cost of these expectations every day. People aren’t just feeling bad about how they look. They internalize the belief that their values ​​depend on the fixation, concealment and punishment of their bodies.

Beauty standards are not neutral

Let’s be clear. These ideals are not about personal preferences. They are cultural, historical and profit-driven.¹ The fixation to thinness, youth, and “perfection” is not rooted in health or self-expression. It’s about control Fits. The entire industry, including fashion, fitness, wellness and anti-aging, is benefiting from our insecurities.²

We are taught to treat our bodies as problems to be solved rather than as homes. A messy mealcompulsive movement, obsessive self-monitoring, and shame It doesn’t seem to end.

When thinness and young people are mistaken for virtue

Many of my clients have been praised for feeling the most ill when they are hungry, purged, over-moving, or paralyzed. “You look amazing” was the code for “You lost weight.” These compliments were not about health or shine. They were about shrinking. And the praise reinforced actions that were often about survival rather than vanity.

Others explain the deep shame of being in a bigger body or being visibly aging as if those things were indicative of failure. Plus, some people are trapped in a loop that doesn’t “sufficiently” feel when they try to adhere to the script.

This is not about Willpower Or low Self-esteem. That’s trauma Response to a system that tells us what we should love only if we take up less space, erase the signs of life from our skin, and pursue ideals that have never been created for us.

This isn’t just about the appearance. That’s about losses.

The cost of following these standards is high. People lose time. peace. joy. Identity. Front of the audience.

And in some cases, they lose their health and life.

Eating disorders have the second highest mortality rate of mental illness, second only to opioid use disorders.³ And many people are not diagnosed because behaviors that harm them, such as restrictions, over-movement, and physical obsession, are socially rewarded.

In the name of “wellness,” we teach people to go to war with ourselves. We call it empowerment, but in many cases it is erasure.

So, what do we do?

You may not be able to completely opt out of the culture of beauty. We live in it. We can They begin to resist the most harmful messages and move towards the truth.

1. Give the system a name. They begin to call the standard of beauty. It is socially conditioned, culturally biased and designed to be variable. They are not true. They are trending.
2. It’s interrupted Inner Critic. Keep an eye out for voices criticizing your appearance. Ask yourself: Whose voice is this? Who taught me to look at myself like this? You start to wonder if that voice actually belongs to you.
3. Diversify your input. Curate what you can see online. Don’t follow influencers who fit your traditional ideals. Fill your food and your life with real people’s images, including fat bodies, aged bodies, obstacles, trans bodies, racialized skinned bodies, and more. Beauty was never one thing.⁴
4. Instead of body fixation, we practice body respect. You don’t need to love your body every day. But can you feed it? Would you like to rest? Do you speak carefully? Is it enough today?
5. I’m looking for support. If the pain of body image and the unhealthy relationship with food are hindering your life, you are not alone and you don’t have to do it alone. Treatment It’s helpful. Community is helpful. Healing does not occur in isolation.

Final thoughts

You don’t have to disappear to deserve love. You don’t need to smooth your skin to take it seriously. It doesn’t have to be small to be safe, sought or belong.

Stop stealing our lives to beauty standards. Stop treating our bodies like a trend. Let’s go back to ourselves.

Real life – the wild, incomplete, grounded, shining kind – occurs in the real body.

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