Category: Feminism

The Confidence Killer

MissMLeave a comment

Y’know, I’ve noticed that I don’t really spend much time thinking about my own appearance throughout the day. That is, until the mirror comes in to play.

You see, to me, the mirror is a microscope that zooms in on all of my flaws, and dissolves the features in me that I like. I use the mirror to spot imperfections and then try to cover them up. And once they’ve entered my awareness, they infect my confidence in even my favorite features, and I walk away liking myself less and less.

Now, I can’t be held fully accountable for the way I feel when I look in the mirror. I have been conditioned to define beauty the same way that the media portrays it, which is tall, thin, tan, big-boobed, with long blonde hair and a symmetrical, feminine face. And I will never measure up without the help of some serious cosmetic help. However, I am fully capable of changing the standard of beauty that I compare myself to.

There is beauty in confidence. Confidence is something you either have or your don’t, and once you have it, it shows. It shows in the way you carry yourself; your posture. It shows in your face and sparkling eyes. It shows in your genuine smile.

Confidence=Happiness=Beauty.

The day I learn to stop defining my self-worth on how closely I can conform my appearance to the beauty standards of society, I will finally be free of comparison and self-loathing.

After all, you get one body in this life, so why not love it for all the things it CAN do?

Attitude is everything.

Happy Saturday, lovelies, and go learn to love yourselves.

The Experiment

MissMLeave a comment

Hey, i’m Maddie, and I have a problem with today’s society. A big one. Society says that a truly beautiful woman is one with no flaws. A beautiful woman is thin, with big boobs, big hair, giant eyes, and wrinkle- and blemish-free, youthful face. Something like this:JLO

Now, clearly we aren’t all blessed with J-Lo’s perfect completion, olive skin-tone, and hourglass figure. Fortunately for the average women, like myself, there are products out there that promise to alter our appearances so that we, too, may be beautiful.

Maybelline-ad-1952

We are literally bombarded with advertisements promising that through the use of their products, we can look like that hot movie star, actress, or model that we idolize in the media.

It’s almost as if the less natural we are, the more beautiful we become. In my Women’s Studies class at Weber State University, we discussed how these advertisements display women’s bodies as a series of flaws in need of fixing, and then offer us a “solution” to these flaws.

The problem I have with this is that it doesn’t have to be this way. The media tells us what is beautiful, and we blindly obey and then conform ourselves so that society will accept us as beautiful. But enough is enough. I am sick and tired of being told that I should hate my body the way it is and that the only way for me to be beautiful is through the alteration and modification of my natural features by the use of cosmetics.

This is why I’ve decided to conduct my Anti-Makeup experiment. I am throwing down my mascara wand for one week. That’s right, NO MAKEUP for seven days. During this week, I am going to pay close attention to any changes in the way people interact with me- this includes number of “check-outs” (yes, boys, it is that obvious), comments such as “are you not feeling well?”, and also my own self-talk. I will be posting my findings here, so stay with me as we find out just how much value society places on “beauty.”