Increased inferiority complexes among women cause for concern

Alina Alam

Columnist

In a world where all of our flaws can be erased easily through Photoshop, it is no wonder that women are overly conscious of their so-called imperfections and feel less than beautiful.

Recently, Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty completed a Body Confidence Census in the UK with women between the ages of 18 and 64 as participants. The women were asked about their opinions on beauty and confidence, and only 2 percent of the women claimed to feel beautiful, while only 1 in 10 said they considered themselves attractive. Overall, women referred to themselves as ‘average’ on the scale of beauty.

Is it really all that surprising that so many women feel as if they don’t meet the standards of what is considered beautiful today? The bar for beauty is set so high in the eyes of women that many of them spend their lifetime futilely trying to measure up to it.

It isn’t being beautiful itself that is the issue; it is the idea that is associated with beauty. Beauty has a set of glamorous expectations that come with it. Many women may associate beauty as a key to achieving certain goals, such as finding themselves a man to marry or having a successful career.

Beauty is also seen as a source of power. Women think that reaching their ideal of beautiful will result in positive things, and they associate it with a glamorous life or overall happiness.

While more than one factor can contribute to women stating that they don’t find themselves attractive, the overall findings of this study are a cause for concern. Certain women may have a standard for themselves that they believe will make them beautiful, but most of these ‘standards’ are influenced by society. The overall idea is the same, and it is focused on both a woman’s body and face.

The expectations of beauty, though, are often unreasonable.

One example is that many women feel pressured to be skinny and curvy at the same time; they should have decently sized boobs, the mark of femininity, while having minimum to no fat shaping their frame. This is a highly unreal expectation and is probably contributing to the rising percentage of women receiving breast-augmentation surgery.

These standards are highly influenced by Hollywood. Many people don’t realize how the images that they frequently are exposed to do not actually touch base with reality. Celebrities, who sometimes seem god-like due to their physical appearance, do not usually look the way that they often portrayed in pictures. Their exterior is the result of a lifestyle that consists of round the clock focus on their image, because their looks play a central role in their career. Even when some celebrities reach the highest brink of self-perfection, magazines will still find a flaw to Photoshop out.

At the end of the day, everyone is beautiful. A view that may be a little naïve but really beauty is not about a cookie-cutter image that we all must fit into. It’s about all the unique traits that make us who we are.

For this reason, I am going to accept my somewhat crooked nose, a mark of my ethnicity, and my not-so perfect body. No one can tell you whether you are beautiful or not; it is a matter of owning and believing it yourself.

And really, what is more beautiful than a woman who finds herself to be such? Because, apparently, this in itself is a rarity. CT