Our twisted beauty standards: it all begins with fairytales

So, I was just watching that ‘Snowwhite and the Hunstman’, you know, the one with Kristen Stewart and my god, my English Literature degree has ruined me because I started analysing it (kill me now). But anyway, I had a realisation on how twisted our ideas of beauty are. Ok, just hear me out.

So, beauty is seen as wonderful and desirable. If you are beautiful, you are (generally) a good person. Most fairy tale princesses embody beauty, because they are so good. In contrast, being ugly is a punishment for being bad people. Cinderella’s step sisters are ugly. Their ugliness is associated with their evilness. This is probably better explained by Roald Dahl, who, in his children’s book, ‘The Twits’, says that if you have ugly thoughts and are ugly on the inside your face will show it and you will become ugly on the outside but if you are beautiful on the inside, you will be beautiful on the inside. So good equals beautiful and evil equal ugly.

As well as this, if you’re beautiful you’re treated with adoration, respect and love and generally, good things happen to you in the end. However if you’re ugly, people treat you badly and usually you have a pretty bad outcome. How characters in these stories react to the superficialness of beauty is seen at the beginning of the Beauty and the Beast when the the prince turns the witch away because she is ugly and old but then begs forgiveness and offers her anything when she transforms herself into a beautiful woman. And, ironically, his punishment for being so superficial is to be turned into an ugly beast…

Ok, BUT If you want to be beautiful and are not already its seeing as bad. Which is super twisted. In the fairy tale setting women are punished for trying to achieve the same standards of beauty that others are celebrated for. The fact that the queen in Snow White wants to be the most beautiful woman in the land, is seen as horrifying, (even before she starts being all evil). So its bad that she wants to be as beautiful as Snow White, BUT its good that Snow White is already beautiful. In ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’, she says how shes only got where she has done because of her youth and beauty, so can she really be blamed for wanting to keep that? Also, when the queen in Snow White is defeated, she is shown in rather shocking graphic imagery turning old and ugly. That is her punishment.

So children, the moral of the story…

Its good to be beautiful, and beautiful people are well loved. It’s bad to be ugly and ugly people are shunned. But it’s bad if you try to be beautiful and are born ugly. Ugliness is used as a punishment for people being superficial so they will be treated badly. But it is bad to judge those who are born ugly. But those people who are ugly already are not allowed to try and be beautiful, coz that would be superficial and selfish of them.

I know I’ve barely scraped the surface here but seriously, what the fuck. Rant over.

Mask-up, Make-up

 
I started writing this after the first week of travelling. It’s just a rant about makeup and beauty standards and stuff. Enjoy xx
 
‘I have always worn a lot of make up, even when I don't leave the house, or just pop to the shops. I don't really have a lot of confidence in my natural complexion and never have done. But I thought to myself that travelling the world on my own, out of the everyday experiences and people would be the perfect time to go barefaced and see if I could handle it and see if it would help my skin at all.
 
The first week I was with my project group in Thailand. I only brought foundation and mascara out of all my thousands of makeup products. I still wore it though. I didn't and still don't really have the confidence not to wear it. I suppose I wanted to make a good first impression, I don't really know why, because there was no one there that I wanted to impress. After the first few days though I did stop. No one else there was wearing make up and they still seemed to be getting on fine…
 
So since then I haven't worn any, not at all, even when I was going to new towns and meeting new people. And I haven't been treated any differently. I thought that my difference in complexion would make a difference to how people treated me. But can you blame me? We are brought up in a world where we are taught how important first impressions and appearances are. Is it really that surprising that I feel I would be judged for revealing my natural complexion which I feel is so much worse to look at than the skin that the world sees when I cover up every day. I feel that people will judge me, think worse of me, if I have a bad complexion. Also I feel that the longer that that person has known me with the full face of make up, how badly will they judge me if they see my ‘true skin’.
I know this all sounds dramatic and making me sound like my complexion is absolutely horrendous but its how I have been made to think. And is it really surprising as I’m currently sitting in this airport looking at the rolling adverts promising perfect skin, beauty and acceptance and sexual desirability if you buy x y and z.
 
I would like to get to a place in my life where I feel like I could feel confident to go out without all my make up, where I feel like I would not be judged for not having perfect skin, but I'm not there yet, maybe one day but we'll see.’
 
Soo back from travelling…and back to wearing a full face of make-up. It was weird. I feel like I’m taking better care of my skin now and wanting to use more natural products on my skin and stuff. Just to clarify, my skin isn’t like something out of a horror film, like I said it’s just how I’d been made to think it was and get upset thinking about it. I just felt like I needed to get off my chest how unfair I think it is that our society makes us feel this way and is so hypocritical that it promotes ‘naturalness’ but the standard of ‘natural beauty’ is literally unattainable if you’re not going to wear makeup. Like, wtf. So after many ramblings, just do whatever makes you happy and fuck what everyone else says and thinks. If you’re happy with no makeup, don’t feel like others will judge you for not wearing it. If you’re not happy without make up, then wear it, no biggie.