Be Be.You. tiful

Have you ever had that moment when you start looking for something in the internet and end up watching workout videos in YouTube without even realizing it? How about those days when you’re just having an intimate moment with your computer while blankly staring and drooling over Victoria’s Secret’s model’s abs and thigh gap? Have you ever labeled yourself as someone who’s beautiful without comparing your own physical appearance to the girls that you see in the magazines?

According to Zoe Kravitz, “Beauty is when you can appreciate yourself. When you love yourself, that's when you're most beautiful.” The question is, how can we love ourselves? How can you say that you are beautiful if the prints, television, movies, and the internet has a different definition of beauty? Different from what we thought beauty was?

‘Beautiful’ is a term we use to refer to someone or something that pleases our eyes. It is a term we use to refer to something that looks good; to refer to something that appeals to our senses. ‘Beautiful’ is the term we use to refer to ourselves until the media had set its own bar of beauty standard.

We see it on TV, magazines, Facebook, and on Instagram: full lips, flawless skin, long legs, big bust, rounded behind, thigh gap, along with the word ‘Beauty’ – and we see it every single day. Every day, we are being bombarded by all of these stuffs. It may be in an indirect manner but media is gradually changing our perception of beauty and is now imposing that this is what beauty should look like.

Because of the influence that the media has, especially to teenagers and young adults like you, like us, it is not a surprise anymore if we want to imitate the things that we see in TV or other media platforms, and the more we try to copy and patronize it, the more we became obsessed with it – seeing those girls and guys with great body, makes us desperate to look like them.

Media is not just changing the way we see beauty, but it also adds burden to the people who are already sensitive with their physical appearance and at the same time have had an extreme exposure to the media’s beauty standards. Media puts a lot of pressure to our youngsters resulting in them to have very low self-esteem. It can also push young girls to follow strict and hardcore military diets that can be their ticket to an unhealthier way of losing weight. There are people who undergo one or sometimes multiple times of cosmetic surgery just because they believe that beauty is something that can only be achieved through that procedure. In worst cases, it can cause people who believe that they are not good enough because they don’t look pretty to eventually give up in life and just commit suicide.

There is nothing wrong if the media wants to sell beauty. What’s wrong is that it can be toxic to people. It can make us feel uncomfortable being in our own skin just because we look different compared to the models that we see on the internet. It can make us feel ashamed because we are 20 kilograms heavier than the celebrity that we are supporting. Worst of all is that it can make us feel disgusted about our body because we hate it every time we stand before a mirror because we only see our imperfections.

We always want to be good-looking. In this world full of good-looking people, let us not be just physically attractive anymore. Let’s be beautiful. Being beautiful is way beyond the physical; it is beyond just being pretty. Let’s be beautiful by being happy. If you are happy, then you can accept yourself no matter what kind of body you have, and when you accept yourself then you can be free. By the time that you are already free then you are ready to love yourself. Just like what Zoe Kravitz said, “When you love yourself, that's when you're most beautiful.”