What Is Beauty?

517 Words3 Pages
What is Beauty? Slim-fit. Long legs. Flawless skin. Those are the words that come to mind when people think of beauty, or more like what the media and society push on them. Webster’s Dictionary defines beauty as the quality of being physically attractive. Growing up, this was the only definition of beauty I understood. I thought that beauty was all about your outward appearance and nothing else. Then one day, I realized that beauty was more than lipstick and powder, but to be confident in being ourselves. In today’s society, there is this whole controversy on how a person should and should not look like to be beautiful. Why do we let society’s image of what they think is beautiful haunt us? Women, for example, get plastic surgery for the reasons of pleasing others and to feel accepted, but mostly to boost their self-esteem. It is amazing how society can plant a certain image in our head of what “perfect” is, up to the point it pushes people to risk their lives to not be themselves. The saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me,” may be true for some people, but for others it slowly eats them up inside. For instance, in all of middle school and beginning of high school, I was struggling so hard to fit in that I tried to change everything I could about myself. For years, I spent so long trying to be a “perfect” image of what beauty looks like to fit in with the “in crowd” at school. When I started to wear makeup, it led to a point where I could not leave the house without even the slightest bit on. I even changed the way I dressed to look like the popular girls, with Hollister this and Abercrombie that. The role of trying to be perfect, brought down my self- esteem that it took a huge toll on my health. I became depressed and I lost a lot weight from not eating to be skinny. Then, one day I took a good look at myself in the
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