This is a public discussion thread for anyone on The Unpublishable mailing list.
We tend to blame beauty culture on, like, celebrities. The media. Big Beauty — brands, marketing, advertising. But really, most of us encountered beauty culture long before we could say “Baywatch-inspired breast implants.” I think my earliest memory is watching my mother apply makeup (or as I called it back then, “muck-a-muck”). I asked her if I could participate in local beauty pageants at five years old. I already knew “beautiful” was the best compliment a girl could get.
I started thinking about this more seriously a few weeks ago, after Allure posted this Instagram, which is supposed to be cute but sort of just made me sad:
The more I think about it, the more I think I learned my stickiest lessons about beauty — why it’s important, what it takes, the prizes you get for having it, the punishment you get for not having it — from the people around me. Family, friends, classmates, community, encounters on the street.
I was mercilessly teased in middle school for my stick-out ears.
Classmates started wearing full-coverage foundation at 12.
They all made fun of Kimberly L. for not shaving her underarm hair.
I stole my mom’s Slim Fast for lunch.
My high school best friend wouldn’t be seen without a fake tan (she convinced me to go tanning with her twice).
Every woman in Jersey applied mascara behind the wheel, risking their lives for longer lashes.
Every hairstylist wanted to “thin out” my thick curls and blow dry them straight.
A random man in Dunkin’ Donuts noticed my acne and asked if I’d ever heard of Proactiv.
A coworker noticed my dermatitis and asked if I was contagious.
A boss referred to acne scars — which I have in spades — as “unsightly”.
My colleagues at a fashion start-up slowly revealed they’d all had aesthetic procedures: two boob jobs, a nose job, neuromodulators and lip filler for all.
My best friend started getting Botox in her early twenties. (Shit. She’s younger than me. Should I start too?)
My ex-husband asked me to consider taking medication to get rid of my hormonal acne.
My ex-husband asked me to wear more makeup, please.
And so, in the interest of expanding our idea of “beauty culture” beyond the seemingly untouchable and unchangeable — celebrities, media, brand marketing — I want to know:
How have friends, family, and acquaintances informed your idea of beauty over the years?
Let it all out in the thread below! This is a public discussion area where we can all comment and respond to each other. Like a big, virtual vent sesh.
I’ve never done this on The Unpublishable before, so I don’t know if any of you are open to sharing — but please don’t be shy! Getting honest with ourselves and each other about beauty culture is how we start changing beauty culture. Aaaand… GO!
Hi there! I am new to the newsletter and I joined hoping I can get help fixing some old damage on my skin. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease 4 years ago and since then I have been on a health quest (improving diet, exercise, sleep, stress, balancing hormones) and I finally cleared my acne! However, there is a lot of scarring, hyperpigmentation and texture issues despite no longer having active acne. My dermatologist suggested tretinoin and azelaic acid but there has to be a more natural way to deal with this. Thanks!
Y'allllll, I know I'm so late on this, I'm going through the back catalogue, but I can't not add to it.
Being told 'you would be so pretty if you straightened your hair' by classmates from the age of 12.
Being told many many times that I looked like Hermione from Harry Potter and knowing it was an insult (HUGE curly hair and big front teeth).
Having other girls ask if they could pluck my eyebrows.
At age 13 having the dentist ask if I wanted braces to close the gap after I explicitly asked him if there were any health benefits and he said no.
Being the only one in a bra at age eleven and feeling both the power and the vulnerability in the changing room.
All the girls at the lunch table silently competing to see who could eat the least and the slowest but make it appear natural, but still visible.
The distance that cars would allow to go around me when I was on my bike changing depending on how femme I was dressed (more femme, more room). This one really shook me. Literally more care was taken for my life and my body by strangers if I adhered more to beauty standards.
In 8th grade I came into class wearing a real bra for the first time (I've always had big boobs and puberty hit me early), and I've never gotten that much attention in my life. All of the sudden every guy had a crush on me, I started getting attention from the whole grade. I was on cloud nine. I live in Brooklyn, so the cat calling was endless. I felt such a need to wear tight tops from that point on to show off as much cleavage as possible. Without it I amounted to nothing. I remember going to sleepaway camp the follow year and only wearing the same top every single day because it was the only one that showed off my cleavage. I found out later on from my counselor that the staff at the camp had a meeting and when I was brought up (for some unknown reason) I was referred to as the "girl with her boobs always out". This was a full room of grown men by the way. The following year I worked at that camp and they tried to fire me for not wearing a bra (insane conservative camp director) So of course I wore a push up bra and a v cut shirt the next day as a big fuck you, because if parents "wouldn't wanna see a counselor with no bra around their kids" I'm sure they'd love the skanky top and push up around their kids. Anyways, happened to get an eating disorder, lost most of my boobs, and now am traumatized for getting more attention at 13 than now (I'm 19).
I’m biracial and Jewish and that has always always played into beauty stuff (olive skin bad! you can’t be the princess! But also tanning good somehow?) My nose being mocked. All the body hair stuff/people calling you dirty. Thick eyebrows. Also I have never had more compliments on my body that when I was severely anorexic :(.
(I know this is a very late comment but I saw this and went !!!!)
My mom was never big on makeup, beauty regimens, or trying to appear younger. She DID harp on not eating too much, and things going straight to her thighs (she has since gotten better about this and overall was a pretty positive influence when it comes to "beauty standards"). I worried about my fat intake as a teen (this was before carbs were "bad" and fat was the culprit for all bodily evils), and due to some mental health challenges as I grew older, I developed some pretty disordered eating in college as a means of coping, which became entangled in my self-worth. I remember hating how thin my body had become (a manifestation of all of my pain and of things I knew were hurting me, and yet I couldn't stop doing them), and yet I was praised for it. My lack of cellulite was "enviable." My over-exercised body "tight" and "toned." That stuck with me as I recovered and went through therapy for PTSD--"but remember what people used to say about your waist/calves/etc??" Ultimately, I became a dietitian because I wanted to help people utilize food in a health-promoting way that doesn't require addressing weight (especially if it promotes health through ENJOYMENT). I've undone a lot of fatphobic conditioning, but now age/gravity/time is the topic de jour amongst friends. As a hospital worker, gray hairs, deeper fine lines, and dark circles all became a part of my features in the past two years, and somewhat abruptly. For the first time in my life I have a skincare regimen (serums, oils, toners, creams, and cleansers!) to address my mask-induced acne (or am I just addressing the fact that I've been over-worked and don't have time to actually take care of myself, so I spend money on "self care" products to "fix" my "problems"???). Friends are asking me if I'm going to dye my hair... "Why wouldn't you??? Without it, you'll just look so OLD." I couldn't have found your writing at a better time!! Just as the work of undoing fatphobia is never done, my self-worth faces constant onslaught as I grow older, and from all sides. I want my beauty to come from how much I love to share a meal with people I care about, how often I laugh, and the love that I can communicate to those around me. Not from a bottle, treatment, or a "routine." I want to jiggle joyfully into subsequent decades, gray hair streaming behind me and with my self-worth firmly rooted in who I AM...
"or am I just addressing the fact that I've been over-worked and don't have time to actually take care of myself, so I spend money on "self care" products to "fix" my "problems"???" — THIS is it. Thank you so much for sharing!
When my body at 11yo started to change towards a more "womanly figure" (I hate that, what does even supposed to mean) I began to hide my body, using more "masculine clothing" so one day my aunt told me, I was barely 13yo "why don't you use skirts, you have beautiful legs, you must show them!" and I was like, in my own mind "why do I have to? To whom!?" And then I was around 15yo, pretty skinny I was anemic (abused and neglected as a kid) same aunt "do you eat well? You're beautiful but too skinny... And then I was 25, I finally got out from my house, I began to eat well and obviously I began to be healthy so weight came in. Now my aunts were telling me "you were so beautiful before, now you're fat, why don't you go on a diet, why don't you go to the gym?" I was very conflicted, because when I was skinny was a result from child abuse (psychological and physical abuse) and I was eating healthy. I began to have serious issues with food. Today at my 30's I'm still told that I was beautiful before, when I was a neglected child... My family thought I had diabetes because I'm overweight, so I got some clinical tests. I've began to question again my eating habits, not eating properly, fasting, etc. And this week I got the results, I'm physically healthy, I don't have diabetes, I don't have blood pressure issues, I'm not sick, I'm fine. But, the damage is done. Nobody believe I was eating healthy, nobody even the doctors, they forcefully tried to get me on a diet, those things have never worked on my, exercise does. And the damage is done, I have many many issues and one of them is body dysmorphia. I'm in a healing process now.
Thank you so much for sharing that. Seeing how we've collectively (and mistakenly) conflated health & beauty, both in our personal lives and in the medical field, never fails to blow me away. I'm so glad to hear you're in the healing process <3
i experienced some overwhelming body euphoria recently when i saw my mom wear a bikini for the first time i think ever in her life – or at least in the 30 years that i’ve been her daughter. she worked so hard to shield me from the body dysmorphia she clearly felt, but it’s not easy to hide. to see her wearing this bathing suit gave me so much more joy than i ever could’ve imagined – maybe even more than i felt when i stopped hiding inside a one-piece.
It starts so early... I have a strong memory from grade 2 or 3, when the most popular boy decided to line us girls up in the order of who he thought was the prettiest. Devastating.
1) My granmother, mother, and sister all despised their weight. Being heavier set they described themselves as gross. My grandmother is no longer alive, but my mom and sister still struggle with your weight. Lesson taught: Skinny is good, fat is bad.
2) People in general prefer blondes. When I was 16, my Mom decided that I needed to highlight my hair in order to brighten up my face. I didn't want to dye my hair, and we had a huge fight to the point where my Dad stepped in and told my mom to leave me alone. My mom was so pissed that I was fighting dying my hair. She eventually did it, and it looked awful. My olive skin and blonde don't mix. As an adult, I now realize my mom was trying to help me have an easier time through my teenage years in a way that society deemed appropriate: Make me conform to the beauty standards of society so I feel better about myself.
3) I remember at a choir concert one of the girls walked by me and said she would die if she had hair as frizzy as my curly hair.
4) My ex-boyfriend told me that the stretch marks on my knees were unattractive and I should do something about them. I did. I broke up with him.
5) A couple of my friends in college thought it would be a fun idea to name our boobs while bored one day hanging out. The one girl turned to me and said I couldn't participate because I was small chested.
I'm 1/2 Ecuadorian and this reminds me of the quote that circulated a ton in the past year: "When did you realize you weren't ugly and that you were just a POC around too many white people?"
As a fiery, confident 5th grader with a big smile, freckles galore, and wild and free curly hair, I introduced myself to the popular boy whose assigned seat was next to mine. He responded, without a beat, that he knew who I was - I was "the ugly girl!" who was friends with another girl he already knew. Absolutely broke my 10 yr old heart to be associated as the ugly friend in our duo.
What hits me here is that you'd already gotten a very clear message by age 10 that being "beautiful" was important — so much so that one 10-year-old boy's offhand comment has stuck with you for years and years. Thanks for sharing <3
Thanks for holding space. I am continually astonished at his audacity to take away my power in that moment. Still holding that little 10 yr old close; she is/was so much more than her looks.
My sister reminds me to remove the peach fuzz above my lip and pluck the random little black hairs that grow out of my cheeks (I have like five and they're thick). My boyfriend doesn't say anything, but he stares when the sun catches my peach fuzz juuuust right.
I feel you on this one! I'm torn between wanting my mom to let me know when I have a particularly dark/long chin hair happening and wanting to be left alone.
I was born with a figure that meets patriarchal beauty standards. White, thin, long legs, big boobs. I have long wavy dirty blonde hair. But I've always been a tomboy, I would shop in the boys section of old navy in elementary school (hello, they had ZIP OFF PANTS!). When I got to high school (in a different town from where I went to middle school) I was the new girl and got a lot of attention. I started to believe that 'who I was' was outgoing, gregarious, magnanimous, athletic, hot, and funny because when I was that person I got attention. When I went to college and started thinking about what I wanted to be, I was obsessed with the tall blonde surfer and ski girls that were free spirited, non chalant, always moving and traveling, etc. I wanted to be them so bad I thought that was who I was supposed to be. I told myself that I look like them, therefore I am them! Duh. After college, I moved to a ski town to become that. I was cocky, full of myself, looking to get laid and conquer mountains. Long story short, after a lot of therapy and self-work, I realized I am not that. I am a introverted, highly sensitive person who isn't that social, outgoing, or fearless. Im a homebody and a huge nerd! Changing times have empowered me to dress more like how I actually want to dress (comfort over style am I right???). In sum, I often wonder if my life would have been more fulfilling if I was treated differently -- if I hadn't looked the way I did if I would have spent more time figuring out who I actually was and what brought me true joy. What would have happened if instead of getting in with the popular girls in high school, I got in with a different crowd and actually cultivated my passions of comic books, fantasy, acting etc? I feel as though I would have figured out my needs and desires so much earlier in life instead of wasting time chasing after something that didnt fit me at all. Two things: pretty privilege is 100% a thing and its really interesting how society perceives you because of how you look can become SO INTERNALIZED.
It's so true! Beyond broad gender roles, beauty ideals also influence more specific community roles, and it's wild and heartbreaking to think about how our lives could be different if our looks didn't determine so much right up front. There's a line from a book I read recently, I can't remember which one, that basically said "rebellion is just as much of a cage as the cage itself" — that's what this reminds me of! Going hard in the opposite direction of what's expected of you isn't necessarily liberation, it's just a different sort of limitation.
I grew up with sisters, and the beauty onslaught was constant in my house full of women. I think my mom really thought she was doing well by us—we never had a scale because she didn’t want us worrying about our weight—but my mom and sisters all seemed perfectly happy to internalize and play along with traditional standards of feminine beauty in a way I wasn’t. We were all tall, thin, blonde, we wore dresses to church, we got perms and cap highlights (it was the ‘80s). We shaved everything and started wearing full faces of makeup in middle school. I’m fair-skinned, with lots of moles and “beauty marks” (isn’t it strange how people called them that, yet I couldn’t shake that they were actually blemishes?), and I remember sitting in school trying to cross my arms in a way that I could hide as many of them as possible. I remember trying to hide my toes so my sister wouldn’t make fun of the hairs that grew on them. I was afraid to walk anywhere alone because I would get catcalled constantly (I was a CHILD). I started rejecting it all in high school: I discovered punk rock and said fuck it. The more I didn’t care the worse I got it from my family. My sister threatened to call Sally Jesse Raphael to get me a makeover. She pressured me to go to the tanning salon because I was too pale. I cut my hair short and my dad lost his mind and accused me of trying to ruin my graduation pictures (I just wanted a haircut). My mom (again, thinking she was helping), took me aside for a quiet conversation about how men wouldn’t be attracted to me with short hair and she just wanted me to find love and be happy. Though funny enough, I got tons of compliments from guys on my short hair, and strange backhanded comments from women (“you can get away with that, but I can’t…”).
Anyway, I could keep going… I somehow ended up a hairstylist. I never thought the beauty industry could be somewhere I found my niche, but it turns out there is really a market for someone who doesn’t shame people for what they look like and what their hair is naturally. Now I specialize in embracing natural textures, simplifying styling routines, and transitioning away from hair color. Ha. I know I fall short at times, but I’m trying really hard to be a positive counterpoint to all this bullshit.
Thank you for sharing all of this! I relate to so much of it. Especially your dad's reaction to your haircut... my dad and his whole side of the family were OBSESSED with long hair as a symbol of femininity. My grandmother threatened to disown me when I cut mine lol.
Grown men whistling at me when I walked down the street at 10 years old was the first time I really wanted to hide and cover myself up.
We didn't grow up with a scale in my house when I was growing up so I had no idea what I was "supposed" to weigh but one time my aunt and cousin thought it would be fun to weigh ourselves (???) and they were SHOCKED that I was 132lbs in the 8th grade. Since then, I've been on every fad diet ever and that was in the eighties. The only time I was happy with my weight was when I was dealing with health and stress issues and lost over 20lbs. Of course, everyone told me how good I looked and then I felt like I was disappointing everyone by gaining it back.
A few years ago, I decided I was done coloring my hair and when I asked my hairdresser to cut it all off he advised against it because it would "age" me. I did it anyway.
My mom hates to be photographed because she doesn't like the way she looks and even though I allow myself to be photographed, I also have difficulties looking at pictures of myself! It's awful!
How could I forget cat-calling?! Sadly, a classic... And you make such a good point about compliments on weight loss from sickness. That's a big one for so many of us. Thanks for sharing <3
Just here to say that the black and white topless photos in the Abercrombie and Fitch dressing rooms were the worst. The way they stared at you while you stared at yourself in the mirror. It was impossible not to compare yourself and feel ashamed that you weren't a sexy model. While you were a growing pre-teen.
Also shout out to my middle school friends who didn't even know the word for unibrow but loved to ridicule the "island" of hair between my brows in public. God forbid I allow 2 stray hairs grow until this day.
Sometimes i’m really thankful I wasn’t the pretty girl with the good body. I would have done terrible things to my soul with the decisions I would have made, of the scantily clad drive up barista kind. Instead I was the average slightly over weight not to concerned about my looks type girl. Reality was I was never going to be a cheerleader why try ( in my high school thinking). I went to college, was to afraid to put myself out there for a-lot of things because I was overweight and avg. I make a good living and I can take care of myself, my genetics saved me from soul crushing things, but somewhere in the back of my mind (and in ever diet I try, every pair of pants I put on, and all the times I don’t cut my beautiful flowing hair because it’s *my best feature) I still want to be the cheerleading IT girl. Beauty has faded for most of those people now we are in our 40s. I know it’s a marketing campaign, I know beauty can be soul-less in so many ways, but boy does it seem like that elixir is real.
Ooof, this hits. There are so many things in life that I didn't try, so many parties I didn't go to, so many opportunities I didn't pursue, simply because I didn't think I was pretty enough to being seen.
My grandma used to straight up chase me with blush as a child. I’m really pale and my grandma was very committed to her makeup. My papa never saw her without it; she slept with it on and then washed it off in the morning and re-applied. I do enjoy makeup but I’ve always found it sad when people can’t go out into the world bare faced. It’s a completely other level when you can’t let your partner see your naked face.
This reminds me of the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel! I don't know if you've seen it, but the main character does that same thing. I think the makeup artist Charlotte Tilbury does it too — sleeps in makeup/doesn't let her partner see her without it. It's so, so sad to me.
When I was in sixth grade, a girl in my class told me my (dark, thick) arm hair made me look like a monkey. I shaved it all off that night. And I kept shaving my arms (and my legs and my butt and used nair on my whole body despite the rash it gave it FOR YEARS). I gave up the nair thing in my 20s. I’m 37 now and just started growing my arm hair back a few months ago. And you know what? It looks FINE.
Reading below about other body hair experiences and hair removal is still a non-negotiable performative beauty routine for me. I can denounce products, work toward embracing aging and go makeup free but not shaving my legs still feels impossible.
I can relate. I was told nearly the same thing in the 6th grade and have been shaving my arms and more ever since. My grooming schedule (shaving, threading, waxing) most of my life was intense...much of my life and perspective revolved around this schedule and being hairless. I've since let this go, but that was after countless laser hair removal sessions - the hair just doesn't exist the way it used to. I can let go of a lot of beauty standards, but the hair on the body has always poked me like nothing else.
I’ve been trying to lose weight since I was four years old so I wouldn’t have to play the “mom” in our games of make believe on the playground. Because the biggest girl is always the mom.
Thank you for sharing this — it's such a powerful example of how something that seems small (playground games) can snowball into deeper personal trauma. Beauty culture is complicit in all of it.
I was so much taller than my mom, and so much bigger and hairier than everyone else in my class, and my hair was so much bigger, and I feel like I've spent years wondering if I had just... not been -- what could I have been? Would I be straight had I been pretty as a child? Would I be less successful professionally? I have these questions constantly.
I shiver to think about all the times I gave out "beauty advice" throughout middle school and high school to other girls my age. Our culture and our mothers and the beauty industry really does teach us so young about the illusion of power beauty holds (especially as a white girl/teen) and the feeling of superiority you get from it when you properly conform. For me, beauty was a way to escape my mother's critical eye, which mostly focused on weight and food. I saw for myself firsthand what happened when one failed to conform to that standard of prettiness and thinness, since my sister was poked and prodded at mercilessly by my mom for not sufficiently appearing feminine, thin, pretty, as young as 7 or 8 years old. (!) Or being rebuked for asking for a snack at the wrong time or place, my mom snapping, "do you REALLY need that? You JUST ate!" Receiving a positive response from my mother when I straightened my hair, had a tan, wore dresses, fit into a size 6, then 4, then 2, really fed into the "beauty" items I was sold as a young girl. I begged my mom to let me start wearing makeup when I was 12 years old, and I didn't stop until the pandemic, 14 years later. I remember the smell of flipping through glossy pages of Seventeen and Glamour in my teen bedroom, the satisfying clickety-clacking of Essie nail polish bottles in a shopping basket, and the feeling of ringing my eyes with gold and brown eyeshadow and smudgy black eyeliner at 6:45 am before wolfing down breakfast and rushing off too school. Trying to find anything that would allow me to continue to grasp that sense of power and control that the world kept trying to take from me. Of course, it was just an illusion of power and control, but I felt I didn't have many other avenues for "liberation" as a young girl, being catcalled on the street, followed in the mall, having men trying to take pictures up my skirt at the grocery store. In a twisted way, being pretty and polite would mean I could depend on people to come to my aid because I was a "normal" girl, who could never be at fault if she was harassed or attacked because she'd done all the right things. Obviously, this was not true, but the world suggested it and I desperately shaped my thinking into that pattern for a long time.
Thank you for sharing and thank you for bringing up positive reinforcement! It can be just as damaging as negative comments. Also, I feel you re: the bad beauty advice I doled out as a kid, a teen, and later, an adult beauty editor. That's definitely a topic I want to cover in the future. It's also the flip side of this whole post, I guess — acknowledging how our loved ones have inadvertently pushed beauty culture onto us opens us up to the possibility that we have inadvertently pushed beauty culture on our own loved ones, too.
I quit my job at The Fashion Institute of Technology because my colleagues couldn’t stop commenting on my changing appearance while I was going through the beginning stages of an autoimmune issue. Everything from my weight to my skin was a discussion. I literally chose to forfeit health insurance over my appearance being constantly commented on during one of the most uncertain times in my life. In that case, beauty standards definitely won lol. 😩
Wow, wow, wow. Thank you for sharing and I'm so sorry to hear that. I can only imagine your position, but it just goes to show how psychologically damaging our culture's intense focus on appearance truly is. It's like you were forced to choose between treating two health issues: the physical health issue of your autoimmune disorder or the psychological issue of constant beauty culture comments.
My grandmother was obsessed with my weight and I was not overweight at all. Also couldn’t figure out which side of the family I got my bad acne from (it was hormonal at 35). Same grandmother would have me stand and critic my figure. God rest her black heart!
I have someone close to me throughout my life who had what I believe were the best of intentions, trying to give me what she didn't have by giving me opportunities to "take away" anything on or about my body that made me uncomfortable. The effect was to confirm those things needed to be, and could be, changed. We're talking body hair, pimples, weight, the usual. At the same time, this was combined with stark moments of tears and embarrassment at hair salons when my thick hair wouldn't "cooperate" and she said I looked like a "hippie" (hilarious now, but it was not meant as anything other than a major blow). Reflecting on the combination of negative comments and best intentions helps remind me that being damaged within yourself and strictly policing your own body will likely, eventually, cause you to inflict that internal pain onto someone else. You may feel like you're just trying to help them, but all you're doing is passing the damage and the negative messaging along.
That's such a great insight, and it's so beautiful that you're able to give this person in your life so much grace and understanding. And it's so true! What we don't address in ourselves, we pass onto others... I guess that's the point I was hoping to make in this thread at the end of the day. Also, this person is a pretty interesting parallel to the beauty industry at large — when beauty culture tells us our normal human features are "flaws", the beauty industry comes in to save the day with products and procedures to "erase" them, then calls it "empowering" and "self-love". As your story shows, this dynamic often plays out on the personal level too! Thank you for sharing <3
I don't where to begin on coming of age during the peak-Britney Spears where women were constantly derided for dressing like trashy sluts and yet that was somehow the height of fashion?? Everything sold to me as a minor was too tight and too revealing. Remember the FCUK babydoll t-shirts? How bleached and straightened to a crisp every white girl had her hair?
I literally went goth to avoid all the strings attached to enjoying clothes and makeup. It was...not effective, but at least other girls stopped openly pitying me for not visibly trying to figure out my appearance.
As an adult I met slightly older women who had permanently removed most of their eyebrows to keep up with the times. And of course the pendulum has swung right back, rendering their efforts pointless.
To me it felt like if you dress HAWT then girls will stop bullying you and you'll attract relentless male attention and that's just how it is! No other options!
I very much feel this. And all the low-rise pants! Clothes that were actively uncomfortable. I had a middle school administrator who went after my best friend because she would wear the latest cami shirts but her breasts were bigger than many of the other girls -- literally punished for her body when everyone else was wearing the exact same thing but just had different body types (or had major eating disorders at 13...) Talk about mixed messaging and punishment that's very tied to a specific fashion trend
A woman I was ringing up asked if I’d ever thought of taking zinc supplements because they’d helped her and became OFFENDED AT ME when I blandly smiled and said I don’t discuss my face with customers. Luckily my coworkers were 95% women who take no shit (some with their own visible health issues) and the customer got swarmed by managers right away. Do these people offering comments and advice think we don’t have access to mirrors and google? Either I’m doing my best for my own reasons or I just don’t care, either was it’s no one else’s business.
Gosh, where to even start... I definitely saw beauty as a way out of being bullied. My mom was obsessed with weight. She was 98 lbs when she became pregnant with me, and her body never "snapped back". I remember sitting with her in fitting rooms while she frowned at herself in the mirror, called herself ugly for wearing size 8 (I'm a size 10 now!!!) jeans. She would say "fat looks better tan" as she slid L'Oreal Bronzer over her body, and I hated the smell. By 5th grade, I would spend summers frying my skin without sunscreen trying to get a tan. But my fair skin would only ever burn. I said I was going "dairy-free" as a way to mask how I was limiting what I was eating. In middle school, I read Seventeen at the library, and I really believed that having a cabinet full of the "right" products would finally make me beautiful. I was poor, so this was never a reality until I got older and had money of my own to blow. But I would make list after list of all of these products, asking for them at Christmas, stealing, however I could get it. A year ago I started working for a salon distributor and filled by cabinets to the brim with samples and products for every beauty woe you could think of. But I'm still me.
YES YES YES. I truly feel like the beauty ideal today is simply effort — as long as you look like you're trying to adhere to the norm, like you're playing by the rules, like you're denying your own features in favor of the "acceptable" ones, you pass.
Thank you so much for sharing that. I really resonate with the "fat looks better tan" thing — I think somehow we all learn that there are acceptable "parameters" to beauty... my best friend and I used to say stuff like, "I could accept being fat if only I didn't have acne!" or "if God has to give me acne why couldn't I at least have a good body??" We were joking, but only sort of. It's like there's always a running tally of "flaws" in our head, and we're not allowed to rack up too many. But wow, what a beautiful line: "But I'm still me." Realizing that IS the work!!
Let me count the ways! The stand-out experience I recall comes from realizing in seventh grade that many of my classmates were mocking me because I was a hairy girl who didn't shave. I honestly hadn't even considered shaving up until that point, but the sting of shame from having a girl in PE mockingly say, "Nice legs," was enough to make me do it—even though I didn't get the hang of it for years (none of the other women in my family shaved). The humiliation around being hairy has been constant, and as Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez writes in her book, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts, it feels like an undermining of femininity for a woman of color, as the judgment is both gendered and racialized (I'm South Asian, so I was already contending with ugly racist perceptions of being a dirty, stinky foreigner, which I think was also tied to people noticing my hairiness, which contributed to my overall "otherness"). Admittedly, I still shave regularly and have had laser hair removal, so I know I've internalized those judgments in such a way that would make them difficult to refute altogether.
Thank you for sharing! Hair removal is SUCH a big one, and so deeply ingrained, too. Although my own experience in this area as a white woman is very different from yours, shaving my legs and underarms also feels like one of the few beauty standards I just can't personally kick. I would love to, but I don't know if I'll ever get there...
Same here! I don't shave regularly anymore, because whatever I do, i get bad irritation and lots of ingrown hairs and because my boyfriend always encourages me, that i don't need to do any of the beauty-procedures (he always says "that's your body.") But still, everytime I look down on my legs I'm a little disgusted and think that the hair is super ugly. I just hope that will get more and more used to the sight until one day, hopefully, it will just seem normal to me.
Yes! I think the "slowly get used to it" approach is actually very effective and gentle... I sort of did that with makeup. I used to wear a full face everyday: foundation, concealer, powder, eyeshadow, eyeliner, eyebrows, mascara, blush, bronzer, highlighter lipstick. I slowly took away one product at a time and got used to how my face looked without it. It's been ~4 years and I'm down to just concealer, highlighter, and blush. Now when I wear a full face, it feels weird — I genuinely feel better without it.
I'm with you there, Jessica. I can scrap the makeup and skincare and even haircare products if I need to, but there's something about hair removal (even in the absence of external judgment, which I honestly haven't received in years) that makes it feel like a non-negotiable! There's a way in which minimal hair has been braided into my ideal of feminine beauty, and while I'm not happy about it, I do think it comes down to how early experiences in our lives (especially tender ones) dictate our desires and purchasing choices.
Ugh that's so true. All of this gets tangled up with our identity during our formative years, and so rejecting beauty standards often feels like rejecting ourselves...
I was just thinking about how my picking compulsion probably came from my mom insisting I lean over so she could squeeze my skin even when I begged her not to. So I wanted to take care of things before she could. I have actual acne and large pores today but it's fine. I would like to heal the compulsion.
I am very tall and have a large frame and have always felt too *big* no matter what. Misogyny and patriarchy literally want to erase you until you don't take up room. When in doubt, I like to ask whom these feelings benefit. It benefits people who want to destroy you.
I have found more healing in the mindset of "how can my own existence be its own form of rebellion?" The patriarchy and beauty culture and misogyny love when we hate ourselves and spend all our money and brain space on self-hatred. It's not our fault we were made to feel this way, but being angry is more empowered than how I've felt for so long
Thank you for sharing all of this! You're so right... so many of these "little things" get locked away in our subconscious, but once something triggers those memories again, you realize like, wow. Those weren't little things. Those were hugely formative and transformational moments that have affected me for the rest of my life!
I had a similar experience re: cellulite, but about stretch marks. I was sitting on the living room floor and my dad, horrified, said "oh my gosh what is that?!?!" looking at my thighs. It was stretch marks. I don't think he intended to be cruel, he just didn't realize what they were. They were fresh and bright red. Maybe because my mom never had them he didn't realize, but it was incredibly painful and a moment I'll never forget. Hugs to you.
Thank you for sharing that — it's such powerful example of how traditional gender roles are perhaps *the* most harmful tenets of beauty culture, and how something "small" and universal (like being teased at school) can trigger deeper personal trauma. Beauty standards are complicit in all of it.
Hi there! I am new to the newsletter and I joined hoping I can get help fixing some old damage on my skin. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease 4 years ago and since then I have been on a health quest (improving diet, exercise, sleep, stress, balancing hormones) and I finally cleared my acne! However, there is a lot of scarring, hyperpigmentation and texture issues despite no longer having active acne. My dermatologist suggested tretinoin and azelaic acid but there has to be a more natural way to deal with this. Thanks!
Y'allllll, I know I'm so late on this, I'm going through the back catalogue, but I can't not add to it.
Being told 'you would be so pretty if you straightened your hair' by classmates from the age of 12.
Being told many many times that I looked like Hermione from Harry Potter and knowing it was an insult (HUGE curly hair and big front teeth).
Having other girls ask if they could pluck my eyebrows.
At age 13 having the dentist ask if I wanted braces to close the gap after I explicitly asked him if there were any health benefits and he said no.
Being the only one in a bra at age eleven and feeling both the power and the vulnerability in the changing room.
All the girls at the lunch table silently competing to see who could eat the least and the slowest but make it appear natural, but still visible.
The distance that cars would allow to go around me when I was on my bike changing depending on how femme I was dressed (more femme, more room). This one really shook me. Literally more care was taken for my life and my body by strangers if I adhered more to beauty standards.
In 8th grade I came into class wearing a real bra for the first time (I've always had big boobs and puberty hit me early), and I've never gotten that much attention in my life. All of the sudden every guy had a crush on me, I started getting attention from the whole grade. I was on cloud nine. I live in Brooklyn, so the cat calling was endless. I felt such a need to wear tight tops from that point on to show off as much cleavage as possible. Without it I amounted to nothing. I remember going to sleepaway camp the follow year and only wearing the same top every single day because it was the only one that showed off my cleavage. I found out later on from my counselor that the staff at the camp had a meeting and when I was brought up (for some unknown reason) I was referred to as the "girl with her boobs always out". This was a full room of grown men by the way. The following year I worked at that camp and they tried to fire me for not wearing a bra (insane conservative camp director) So of course I wore a push up bra and a v cut shirt the next day as a big fuck you, because if parents "wouldn't wanna see a counselor with no bra around their kids" I'm sure they'd love the skanky top and push up around their kids. Anyways, happened to get an eating disorder, lost most of my boobs, and now am traumatized for getting more attention at 13 than now (I'm 19).
I’m biracial and Jewish and that has always always played into beauty stuff (olive skin bad! you can’t be the princess! But also tanning good somehow?) My nose being mocked. All the body hair stuff/people calling you dirty. Thick eyebrows. Also I have never had more compliments on my body that when I was severely anorexic :(.
(I know this is a very late comment but I saw this and went !!!!)
I empathize with beauty standards for women.
If women would at least acknowledge the beauty standard of height for men, more of us would care.
Instead we hear some pretty vicious comments and stereotypes about something that is genetic.
My mom was never big on makeup, beauty regimens, or trying to appear younger. She DID harp on not eating too much, and things going straight to her thighs (she has since gotten better about this and overall was a pretty positive influence when it comes to "beauty standards"). I worried about my fat intake as a teen (this was before carbs were "bad" and fat was the culprit for all bodily evils), and due to some mental health challenges as I grew older, I developed some pretty disordered eating in college as a means of coping, which became entangled in my self-worth. I remember hating how thin my body had become (a manifestation of all of my pain and of things I knew were hurting me, and yet I couldn't stop doing them), and yet I was praised for it. My lack of cellulite was "enviable." My over-exercised body "tight" and "toned." That stuck with me as I recovered and went through therapy for PTSD--"but remember what people used to say about your waist/calves/etc??" Ultimately, I became a dietitian because I wanted to help people utilize food in a health-promoting way that doesn't require addressing weight (especially if it promotes health through ENJOYMENT). I've undone a lot of fatphobic conditioning, but now age/gravity/time is the topic de jour amongst friends. As a hospital worker, gray hairs, deeper fine lines, and dark circles all became a part of my features in the past two years, and somewhat abruptly. For the first time in my life I have a skincare regimen (serums, oils, toners, creams, and cleansers!) to address my mask-induced acne (or am I just addressing the fact that I've been over-worked and don't have time to actually take care of myself, so I spend money on "self care" products to "fix" my "problems"???). Friends are asking me if I'm going to dye my hair... "Why wouldn't you??? Without it, you'll just look so OLD." I couldn't have found your writing at a better time!! Just as the work of undoing fatphobia is never done, my self-worth faces constant onslaught as I grow older, and from all sides. I want my beauty to come from how much I love to share a meal with people I care about, how often I laugh, and the love that I can communicate to those around me. Not from a bottle, treatment, or a "routine." I want to jiggle joyfully into subsequent decades, gray hair streaming behind me and with my self-worth firmly rooted in who I AM...
"or am I just addressing the fact that I've been over-worked and don't have time to actually take care of myself, so I spend money on "self care" products to "fix" my "problems"???" — THIS is it. Thank you so much for sharing!
When my body at 11yo started to change towards a more "womanly figure" (I hate that, what does even supposed to mean) I began to hide my body, using more "masculine clothing" so one day my aunt told me, I was barely 13yo "why don't you use skirts, you have beautiful legs, you must show them!" and I was like, in my own mind "why do I have to? To whom!?" And then I was around 15yo, pretty skinny I was anemic (abused and neglected as a kid) same aunt "do you eat well? You're beautiful but too skinny... And then I was 25, I finally got out from my house, I began to eat well and obviously I began to be healthy so weight came in. Now my aunts were telling me "you were so beautiful before, now you're fat, why don't you go on a diet, why don't you go to the gym?" I was very conflicted, because when I was skinny was a result from child abuse (psychological and physical abuse) and I was eating healthy. I began to have serious issues with food. Today at my 30's I'm still told that I was beautiful before, when I was a neglected child... My family thought I had diabetes because I'm overweight, so I got some clinical tests. I've began to question again my eating habits, not eating properly, fasting, etc. And this week I got the results, I'm physically healthy, I don't have diabetes, I don't have blood pressure issues, I'm not sick, I'm fine. But, the damage is done. Nobody believe I was eating healthy, nobody even the doctors, they forcefully tried to get me on a diet, those things have never worked on my, exercise does. And the damage is done, I have many many issues and one of them is body dysmorphia. I'm in a healing process now.
Thank you so much for sharing that. Seeing how we've collectively (and mistakenly) conflated health & beauty, both in our personal lives and in the medical field, never fails to blow me away. I'm so glad to hear you're in the healing process <3
i experienced some overwhelming body euphoria recently when i saw my mom wear a bikini for the first time i think ever in her life – or at least in the 30 years that i’ve been her daughter. she worked so hard to shield me from the body dysmorphia she clearly felt, but it’s not easy to hide. to see her wearing this bathing suit gave me so much more joy than i ever could’ve imagined – maybe even more than i felt when i stopped hiding inside a one-piece.
This is so beautiful!!! What an experience. Thank you for sharing.
My mom to my teen self: Wow! My friends and I are so jealous of your flat tummy. What do you do to keep it so flat?
The answer from me now: Oh I don’t know, it’s probably that I’m 15 and no one taught me to properly feed myself.
I know this old at this pint but thank you for your articles.
Thank you so much for reading!!
It starts so early... I have a strong memory from grade 2 or 3, when the most popular boy decided to line us girls up in the order of who he thought was the prettiest. Devastating.
There are so many examples.
1) My granmother, mother, and sister all despised their weight. Being heavier set they described themselves as gross. My grandmother is no longer alive, but my mom and sister still struggle with your weight. Lesson taught: Skinny is good, fat is bad.
2) People in general prefer blondes. When I was 16, my Mom decided that I needed to highlight my hair in order to brighten up my face. I didn't want to dye my hair, and we had a huge fight to the point where my Dad stepped in and told my mom to leave me alone. My mom was so pissed that I was fighting dying my hair. She eventually did it, and it looked awful. My olive skin and blonde don't mix. As an adult, I now realize my mom was trying to help me have an easier time through my teenage years in a way that society deemed appropriate: Make me conform to the beauty standards of society so I feel better about myself.
3) I remember at a choir concert one of the girls walked by me and said she would die if she had hair as frizzy as my curly hair.
4) My ex-boyfriend told me that the stretch marks on my knees were unattractive and I should do something about them. I did. I broke up with him.
5) A couple of my friends in college thought it would be a fun idea to name our boobs while bored one day hanging out. The one girl turned to me and said I couldn't participate because I was small chested.
I'm 1/2 Ecuadorian and this reminds me of the quote that circulated a ton in the past year: "When did you realize you weren't ugly and that you were just a POC around too many white people?"
As a fiery, confident 5th grader with a big smile, freckles galore, and wild and free curly hair, I introduced myself to the popular boy whose assigned seat was next to mine. He responded, without a beat, that he knew who I was - I was "the ugly girl!" who was friends with another girl he already knew. Absolutely broke my 10 yr old heart to be associated as the ugly friend in our duo.
What hits me here is that you'd already gotten a very clear message by age 10 that being "beautiful" was important — so much so that one 10-year-old boy's offhand comment has stuck with you for years and years. Thanks for sharing <3
Thanks for holding space. I am continually astonished at his audacity to take away my power in that moment. Still holding that little 10 yr old close; she is/was so much more than her looks.
My sister reminds me to remove the peach fuzz above my lip and pluck the random little black hairs that grow out of my cheeks (I have like five and they're thick). My boyfriend doesn't say anything, but he stares when the sun catches my peach fuzz juuuust right.
I feel you on this one! I'm torn between wanting my mom to let me know when I have a particularly dark/long chin hair happening and wanting to be left alone.
I was born with a figure that meets patriarchal beauty standards. White, thin, long legs, big boobs. I have long wavy dirty blonde hair. But I've always been a tomboy, I would shop in the boys section of old navy in elementary school (hello, they had ZIP OFF PANTS!). When I got to high school (in a different town from where I went to middle school) I was the new girl and got a lot of attention. I started to believe that 'who I was' was outgoing, gregarious, magnanimous, athletic, hot, and funny because when I was that person I got attention. When I went to college and started thinking about what I wanted to be, I was obsessed with the tall blonde surfer and ski girls that were free spirited, non chalant, always moving and traveling, etc. I wanted to be them so bad I thought that was who I was supposed to be. I told myself that I look like them, therefore I am them! Duh. After college, I moved to a ski town to become that. I was cocky, full of myself, looking to get laid and conquer mountains. Long story short, after a lot of therapy and self-work, I realized I am not that. I am a introverted, highly sensitive person who isn't that social, outgoing, or fearless. Im a homebody and a huge nerd! Changing times have empowered me to dress more like how I actually want to dress (comfort over style am I right???). In sum, I often wonder if my life would have been more fulfilling if I was treated differently -- if I hadn't looked the way I did if I would have spent more time figuring out who I actually was and what brought me true joy. What would have happened if instead of getting in with the popular girls in high school, I got in with a different crowd and actually cultivated my passions of comic books, fantasy, acting etc? I feel as though I would have figured out my needs and desires so much earlier in life instead of wasting time chasing after something that didnt fit me at all. Two things: pretty privilege is 100% a thing and its really interesting how society perceives you because of how you look can become SO INTERNALIZED.
I’m going through this right now and wish I could find you to talk more about it!
It's so true! Beyond broad gender roles, beauty ideals also influence more specific community roles, and it's wild and heartbreaking to think about how our lives could be different if our looks didn't determine so much right up front. There's a line from a book I read recently, I can't remember which one, that basically said "rebellion is just as much of a cage as the cage itself" — that's what this reminds me of! Going hard in the opposite direction of what's expected of you isn't necessarily liberation, it's just a different sort of limitation.
I grew up with sisters, and the beauty onslaught was constant in my house full of women. I think my mom really thought she was doing well by us—we never had a scale because she didn’t want us worrying about our weight—but my mom and sisters all seemed perfectly happy to internalize and play along with traditional standards of feminine beauty in a way I wasn’t. We were all tall, thin, blonde, we wore dresses to church, we got perms and cap highlights (it was the ‘80s). We shaved everything and started wearing full faces of makeup in middle school. I’m fair-skinned, with lots of moles and “beauty marks” (isn’t it strange how people called them that, yet I couldn’t shake that they were actually blemishes?), and I remember sitting in school trying to cross my arms in a way that I could hide as many of them as possible. I remember trying to hide my toes so my sister wouldn’t make fun of the hairs that grew on them. I was afraid to walk anywhere alone because I would get catcalled constantly (I was a CHILD). I started rejecting it all in high school: I discovered punk rock and said fuck it. The more I didn’t care the worse I got it from my family. My sister threatened to call Sally Jesse Raphael to get me a makeover. She pressured me to go to the tanning salon because I was too pale. I cut my hair short and my dad lost his mind and accused me of trying to ruin my graduation pictures (I just wanted a haircut). My mom (again, thinking she was helping), took me aside for a quiet conversation about how men wouldn’t be attracted to me with short hair and she just wanted me to find love and be happy. Though funny enough, I got tons of compliments from guys on my short hair, and strange backhanded comments from women (“you can get away with that, but I can’t…”).
Anyway, I could keep going… I somehow ended up a hairstylist. I never thought the beauty industry could be somewhere I found my niche, but it turns out there is really a market for someone who doesn’t shame people for what they look like and what their hair is naturally. Now I specialize in embracing natural textures, simplifying styling routines, and transitioning away from hair color. Ha. I know I fall short at times, but I’m trying really hard to be a positive counterpoint to all this bullshit.
Thank you for sharing all of this! I relate to so much of it. Especially your dad's reaction to your haircut... my dad and his whole side of the family were OBSESSED with long hair as a symbol of femininity. My grandmother threatened to disown me when I cut mine lol.
Let's see ...
Grown men whistling at me when I walked down the street at 10 years old was the first time I really wanted to hide and cover myself up.
We didn't grow up with a scale in my house when I was growing up so I had no idea what I was "supposed" to weigh but one time my aunt and cousin thought it would be fun to weigh ourselves (???) and they were SHOCKED that I was 132lbs in the 8th grade. Since then, I've been on every fad diet ever and that was in the eighties. The only time I was happy with my weight was when I was dealing with health and stress issues and lost over 20lbs. Of course, everyone told me how good I looked and then I felt like I was disappointing everyone by gaining it back.
A few years ago, I decided I was done coloring my hair and when I asked my hairdresser to cut it all off he advised against it because it would "age" me. I did it anyway.
My mom hates to be photographed because she doesn't like the way she looks and even though I allow myself to be photographed, I also have difficulties looking at pictures of myself! It's awful!
How could I forget cat-calling?! Sadly, a classic... And you make such a good point about compliments on weight loss from sickness. That's a big one for so many of us. Thanks for sharing <3
Cringing from some typos but thanks for offering this very powerful and vulnerable space to share these stories!
Just here to say that the black and white topless photos in the Abercrombie and Fitch dressing rooms were the worst. The way they stared at you while you stared at yourself in the mirror. It was impossible not to compare yourself and feel ashamed that you weren't a sexy model. While you were a growing pre-teen.
Also shout out to my middle school friends who didn't even know the word for unibrow but loved to ridicule the "island" of hair between my brows in public. God forbid I allow 2 stray hairs grow until this day.
Those A&F shopping bags will haunt me for life...
Sometimes i’m really thankful I wasn’t the pretty girl with the good body. I would have done terrible things to my soul with the decisions I would have made, of the scantily clad drive up barista kind. Instead I was the average slightly over weight not to concerned about my looks type girl. Reality was I was never going to be a cheerleader why try ( in my high school thinking). I went to college, was to afraid to put myself out there for a-lot of things because I was overweight and avg. I make a good living and I can take care of myself, my genetics saved me from soul crushing things, but somewhere in the back of my mind (and in ever diet I try, every pair of pants I put on, and all the times I don’t cut my beautiful flowing hair because it’s *my best feature) I still want to be the cheerleading IT girl. Beauty has faded for most of those people now we are in our 40s. I know it’s a marketing campaign, I know beauty can be soul-less in so many ways, but boy does it seem like that elixir is real.
Ooof, this hits. There are so many things in life that I didn't try, so many parties I didn't go to, so many opportunities I didn't pursue, simply because I didn't think I was pretty enough to being seen.
My grandma used to straight up chase me with blush as a child. I’m really pale and my grandma was very committed to her makeup. My papa never saw her without it; she slept with it on and then washed it off in the morning and re-applied. I do enjoy makeup but I’ve always found it sad when people can’t go out into the world bare faced. It’s a completely other level when you can’t let your partner see your naked face.
This reminds me of the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel! I don't know if you've seen it, but the main character does that same thing. I think the makeup artist Charlotte Tilbury does it too — sleeps in makeup/doesn't let her partner see her without it. It's so, so sad to me.
When I was in sixth grade, a girl in my class told me my (dark, thick) arm hair made me look like a monkey. I shaved it all off that night. And I kept shaving my arms (and my legs and my butt and used nair on my whole body despite the rash it gave it FOR YEARS). I gave up the nair thing in my 20s. I’m 37 now and just started growing my arm hair back a few months ago. And you know what? It looks FINE.
FUCK YES TO GROWING IT BACK.
Reading below about other body hair experiences and hair removal is still a non-negotiable performative beauty routine for me. I can denounce products, work toward embracing aging and go makeup free but not shaving my legs still feels impossible.
I can relate. I was told nearly the same thing in the 6th grade and have been shaving my arms and more ever since. My grooming schedule (shaving, threading, waxing) most of my life was intense...much of my life and perspective revolved around this schedule and being hairless. I've since let this go, but that was after countless laser hair removal sessions - the hair just doesn't exist the way it used to. I can let go of a lot of beauty standards, but the hair on the body has always poked me like nothing else.
Laser hair removal here too—my entire pubic area. Worst decision I ever made. Ugh. How I could forget public hair in my initial comment?!
Also, I love how my iPhone autocorrected pubic to public. Clearly, I didn't want to make it so or I wouldn't have lasered my entire vulva.
I’ve been trying to lose weight since I was four years old so I wouldn’t have to play the “mom” in our games of make believe on the playground. Because the biggest girl is always the mom.
Thank you for sharing this — it's such a powerful example of how something that seems small (playground games) can snowball into deeper personal trauma. Beauty culture is complicit in all of it.
I was so much taller than my mom, and so much bigger and hairier than everyone else in my class, and my hair was so much bigger, and I feel like I've spent years wondering if I had just... not been -- what could I have been? Would I be straight had I been pretty as a child? Would I be less successful professionally? I have these questions constantly.
I shiver to think about all the times I gave out "beauty advice" throughout middle school and high school to other girls my age. Our culture and our mothers and the beauty industry really does teach us so young about the illusion of power beauty holds (especially as a white girl/teen) and the feeling of superiority you get from it when you properly conform. For me, beauty was a way to escape my mother's critical eye, which mostly focused on weight and food. I saw for myself firsthand what happened when one failed to conform to that standard of prettiness and thinness, since my sister was poked and prodded at mercilessly by my mom for not sufficiently appearing feminine, thin, pretty, as young as 7 or 8 years old. (!) Or being rebuked for asking for a snack at the wrong time or place, my mom snapping, "do you REALLY need that? You JUST ate!" Receiving a positive response from my mother when I straightened my hair, had a tan, wore dresses, fit into a size 6, then 4, then 2, really fed into the "beauty" items I was sold as a young girl. I begged my mom to let me start wearing makeup when I was 12 years old, and I didn't stop until the pandemic, 14 years later. I remember the smell of flipping through glossy pages of Seventeen and Glamour in my teen bedroom, the satisfying clickety-clacking of Essie nail polish bottles in a shopping basket, and the feeling of ringing my eyes with gold and brown eyeshadow and smudgy black eyeliner at 6:45 am before wolfing down breakfast and rushing off too school. Trying to find anything that would allow me to continue to grasp that sense of power and control that the world kept trying to take from me. Of course, it was just an illusion of power and control, but I felt I didn't have many other avenues for "liberation" as a young girl, being catcalled on the street, followed in the mall, having men trying to take pictures up my skirt at the grocery store. In a twisted way, being pretty and polite would mean I could depend on people to come to my aid because I was a "normal" girl, who could never be at fault if she was harassed or attacked because she'd done all the right things. Obviously, this was not true, but the world suggested it and I desperately shaped my thinking into that pattern for a long time.
Thank you for sharing and thank you for bringing up positive reinforcement! It can be just as damaging as negative comments. Also, I feel you re: the bad beauty advice I doled out as a kid, a teen, and later, an adult beauty editor. That's definitely a topic I want to cover in the future. It's also the flip side of this whole post, I guess — acknowledging how our loved ones have inadvertently pushed beauty culture onto us opens us up to the possibility that we have inadvertently pushed beauty culture on our own loved ones, too.
I quit my job at The Fashion Institute of Technology because my colleagues couldn’t stop commenting on my changing appearance while I was going through the beginning stages of an autoimmune issue. Everything from my weight to my skin was a discussion. I literally chose to forfeit health insurance over my appearance being constantly commented on during one of the most uncertain times in my life. In that case, beauty standards definitely won lol. 😩
Wow, wow, wow. Thank you for sharing and I'm so sorry to hear that. I can only imagine your position, but it just goes to show how psychologically damaging our culture's intense focus on appearance truly is. It's like you were forced to choose between treating two health issues: the physical health issue of your autoimmune disorder or the psychological issue of constant beauty culture comments.
My grandmother was obsessed with my weight and I was not overweight at all. Also couldn’t figure out which side of the family I got my bad acne from (it was hormonal at 35). Same grandmother would have me stand and critic my figure. God rest her black heart!
And may her impossible beauty standards rest with her <3
I have someone close to me throughout my life who had what I believe were the best of intentions, trying to give me what she didn't have by giving me opportunities to "take away" anything on or about my body that made me uncomfortable. The effect was to confirm those things needed to be, and could be, changed. We're talking body hair, pimples, weight, the usual. At the same time, this was combined with stark moments of tears and embarrassment at hair salons when my thick hair wouldn't "cooperate" and she said I looked like a "hippie" (hilarious now, but it was not meant as anything other than a major blow). Reflecting on the combination of negative comments and best intentions helps remind me that being damaged within yourself and strictly policing your own body will likely, eventually, cause you to inflict that internal pain onto someone else. You may feel like you're just trying to help them, but all you're doing is passing the damage and the negative messaging along.
That's such a great insight, and it's so beautiful that you're able to give this person in your life so much grace and understanding. And it's so true! What we don't address in ourselves, we pass onto others... I guess that's the point I was hoping to make in this thread at the end of the day. Also, this person is a pretty interesting parallel to the beauty industry at large — when beauty culture tells us our normal human features are "flaws", the beauty industry comes in to save the day with products and procedures to "erase" them, then calls it "empowering" and "self-love". As your story shows, this dynamic often plays out on the personal level too! Thank you for sharing <3
I don't where to begin on coming of age during the peak-Britney Spears where women were constantly derided for dressing like trashy sluts and yet that was somehow the height of fashion?? Everything sold to me as a minor was too tight and too revealing. Remember the FCUK babydoll t-shirts? How bleached and straightened to a crisp every white girl had her hair?
I literally went goth to avoid all the strings attached to enjoying clothes and makeup. It was...not effective, but at least other girls stopped openly pitying me for not visibly trying to figure out my appearance.
As an adult I met slightly older women who had permanently removed most of their eyebrows to keep up with the times. And of course the pendulum has swung right back, rendering their efforts pointless.
Omg. I had one of those shirts. I haven’t thought about those in years.
Mhmm, it's definitely interesting to look back on how sexual exploitation of minors was repackaged and sold to us as "empowerment"...
To me it felt like if you dress HAWT then girls will stop bullying you and you'll attract relentless male attention and that's just how it is! No other options!
I very much feel this. And all the low-rise pants! Clothes that were actively uncomfortable. I had a middle school administrator who went after my best friend because she would wear the latest cami shirts but her breasts were bigger than many of the other girls -- literally punished for her body when everyone else was wearing the exact same thing but just had different body types (or had major eating disorders at 13...) Talk about mixed messaging and punishment that's very tied to a specific fashion trend
This is such a good example! Reminds me of the "does she have style or is she just thin?" meme.
A woman I was ringing up asked if I’d ever thought of taking zinc supplements because they’d helped her and became OFFENDED AT ME when I blandly smiled and said I don’t discuss my face with customers. Luckily my coworkers were 95% women who take no shit (some with their own visible health issues) and the customer got swarmed by managers right away. Do these people offering comments and advice think we don’t have access to mirrors and google? Either I’m doing my best for my own reasons or I just don’t care, either was it’s no one else’s business.
I love your bland response <3
I had the response ready because it was not the first time. I was just stating a personal policy I’d had to develop lol
Ugh I will never understand the people who give unsolicited advice and truly believe they're helping. That coworker support system is amazing though!!
Gosh, where to even start... I definitely saw beauty as a way out of being bullied. My mom was obsessed with weight. She was 98 lbs when she became pregnant with me, and her body never "snapped back". I remember sitting with her in fitting rooms while she frowned at herself in the mirror, called herself ugly for wearing size 8 (I'm a size 10 now!!!) jeans. She would say "fat looks better tan" as she slid L'Oreal Bronzer over her body, and I hated the smell. By 5th grade, I would spend summers frying my skin without sunscreen trying to get a tan. But my fair skin would only ever burn. I said I was going "dairy-free" as a way to mask how I was limiting what I was eating. In middle school, I read Seventeen at the library, and I really believed that having a cabinet full of the "right" products would finally make me beautiful. I was poor, so this was never a reality until I got older and had money of my own to blow. But I would make list after list of all of these products, asking for them at Christmas, stealing, however I could get it. A year ago I started working for a salon distributor and filled by cabinets to the brim with samples and products for every beauty woe you could think of. But I'm still me.
There's such an ingrained capitalist idea that there is a right way to perform "woman" and it is an unceasing black hole.
I'm increasingly convinced that the true feminine ideal being sold to us is not "thin" so much as "looking like you lost a few pounds recently."
YES YES YES. I truly feel like the beauty ideal today is simply effort — as long as you look like you're trying to adhere to the norm, like you're playing by the rules, like you're denying your own features in favor of the "acceptable" ones, you pass.
Thank you so much for sharing that. I really resonate with the "fat looks better tan" thing — I think somehow we all learn that there are acceptable "parameters" to beauty... my best friend and I used to say stuff like, "I could accept being fat if only I didn't have acne!" or "if God has to give me acne why couldn't I at least have a good body??" We were joking, but only sort of. It's like there's always a running tally of "flaws" in our head, and we're not allowed to rack up too many. But wow, what a beautiful line: "But I'm still me." Realizing that IS the work!!
Let me count the ways! The stand-out experience I recall comes from realizing in seventh grade that many of my classmates were mocking me because I was a hairy girl who didn't shave. I honestly hadn't even considered shaving up until that point, but the sting of shame from having a girl in PE mockingly say, "Nice legs," was enough to make me do it—even though I didn't get the hang of it for years (none of the other women in my family shaved). The humiliation around being hairy has been constant, and as Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez writes in her book, For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts, it feels like an undermining of femininity for a woman of color, as the judgment is both gendered and racialized (I'm South Asian, so I was already contending with ugly racist perceptions of being a dirty, stinky foreigner, which I think was also tied to people noticing my hairiness, which contributed to my overall "otherness"). Admittedly, I still shave regularly and have had laser hair removal, so I know I've internalized those judgments in such a way that would make them difficult to refute altogether.
Thank you for sharing! Hair removal is SUCH a big one, and so deeply ingrained, too. Although my own experience in this area as a white woman is very different from yours, shaving my legs and underarms also feels like one of the few beauty standards I just can't personally kick. I would love to, but I don't know if I'll ever get there...
Same here! I don't shave regularly anymore, because whatever I do, i get bad irritation and lots of ingrown hairs and because my boyfriend always encourages me, that i don't need to do any of the beauty-procedures (he always says "that's your body.") But still, everytime I look down on my legs I'm a little disgusted and think that the hair is super ugly. I just hope that will get more and more used to the sight until one day, hopefully, it will just seem normal to me.
Yes! I think the "slowly get used to it" approach is actually very effective and gentle... I sort of did that with makeup. I used to wear a full face everyday: foundation, concealer, powder, eyeshadow, eyeliner, eyebrows, mascara, blush, bronzer, highlighter lipstick. I slowly took away one product at a time and got used to how my face looked without it. It's been ~4 years and I'm down to just concealer, highlighter, and blush. Now when I wear a full face, it feels weird — I genuinely feel better without it.
I'm with you there, Jessica. I can scrap the makeup and skincare and even haircare products if I need to, but there's something about hair removal (even in the absence of external judgment, which I honestly haven't received in years) that makes it feel like a non-negotiable! There's a way in which minimal hair has been braided into my ideal of feminine beauty, and while I'm not happy about it, I do think it comes down to how early experiences in our lives (especially tender ones) dictate our desires and purchasing choices.
Ugh that's so true. All of this gets tangled up with our identity during our formative years, and so rejecting beauty standards often feels like rejecting ourselves...
I was just thinking about how my picking compulsion probably came from my mom insisting I lean over so she could squeeze my skin even when I begged her not to. So I wanted to take care of things before she could. I have actual acne and large pores today but it's fine. I would like to heal the compulsion.
I am very tall and have a large frame and have always felt too *big* no matter what. Misogyny and patriarchy literally want to erase you until you don't take up room. When in doubt, I like to ask whom these feelings benefit. It benefits people who want to destroy you.
I have found more healing in the mindset of "how can my own existence be its own form of rebellion?" The patriarchy and beauty culture and misogyny love when we hate ourselves and spend all our money and brain space on self-hatred. It's not our fault we were made to feel this way, but being angry is more empowered than how I've felt for so long
I can relate. I always got told that I was "too short" which I also have no control over
I've never seen a guy on this substack, makes me happy :)
Thank you for sharing all of this! You're so right... so many of these "little things" get locked away in our subconscious, but once something triggers those memories again, you realize like, wow. Those weren't little things. Those were hugely formative and transformational moments that have affected me for the rest of my life!
Thank YOU for being here <3
I had a similar experience re: cellulite, but about stretch marks. I was sitting on the living room floor and my dad, horrified, said "oh my gosh what is that?!?!" looking at my thighs. It was stretch marks. I don't think he intended to be cruel, he just didn't realize what they were. They were fresh and bright red. Maybe because my mom never had them he didn't realize, but it was incredibly painful and a moment I'll never forget. Hugs to you.
Thank you for sharing that — it's such powerful example of how traditional gender roles are perhaps *the* most harmful tenets of beauty culture, and how something "small" and universal (like being teased at school) can trigger deeper personal trauma. Beauty standards are complicit in all of it.