You’re insecure. Everybody is. Everybody is exposed to dozens of faces every day and we see our own faces way more than we probably should. We’ve all tried overcoming our insecurities through various methods: looking at them with a “better mindset,” writing positive affirmations, searching out celebrities with the same features, but it never really… works, does it? Well, for some people it probably does, but it doesn’t for a lot of people. I’ve tried accepting my belly rolls by comparing them to Greek goddesses or Marilyn Monroe, but at the end of the day, I still feel uneasy in tight shirts.
But why? Why does “body positivity” fail? And why are we so insecure about our looks in the first place?
The failures of body positivity
The body positivity movement was a cultural trend a few years back where people started pushing hard for self love and accepting every body as beautiful. This was huge for the plus sized community. There were more plus sized options in stores, there was more representation of larger body types in the media, and people stopped being as fatphobic. As a cultural shift, it was great, but on the individual scale, it’s not extremely sustainable.
(Note: When I say “body positivity” I mean the modern, colloquial definition of the term: thinking of your body as beautiful, no matter if it fits the beauty standard or not. People argue that the original intent of the body positivity movement was closer to body neutrality, but that’s not how I’ll be using it.
Also from now on I am going to use the term “looks positivity” because this mindset also applies to other parts of your appearance that you may be insecure about like your face and hair.)
Adopting a looks positive mindset means, like I said above, thinking of yourself as beautiful, no matter if you fit the beauty standard or not. There are a couple main problems with this.
Some people just aren’t going to find their body or face beautiful. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it’s different for everybody.
This mindset still frames beauty as the main goal. Thinking that you look good is still what we’re aiming for, so that will still be the center of your self worth, even when you DO think you look good.
These are fundamental issues. To truly overcome insecurity, you need to decenter beauty from your self worth, but why is it centered there in the first place?
Our beauty oriented society
Our society is hugely beauty oriented. The vast majority of people, especially women, care about their looks. They take care of their looks, they categorize their looks between “pretty” and “ugly.” This is because of a number of reasons. Evolutionarily, we want to look desirable so we can procreate; beauty is a status symbol because the richer you are, the more you can afford to spend on beauty products and procedures; people automatically assume that beautiful people are better, smarter, kinder. But all of these reasons are ultimately kind of null. People procreate with ugly people all the time and lots of people don’t want to have kids anyway, you can be poor and pretty, ugly and rich, and obviously, being pretty doesn’t make you a better person. But we still care because we’re conditioned to care, and breaking this conditioning involves actually inspecting it.
Being ugly is morally neutral
I see a lot of people talk about “inner beauty.” They parrot the idea that beauty is subjective, but if you’re nice it will somehow make you objectively prettier and if you’re mean it will somehow make you objectively uglier. They say this like it’s a woke take, like it’s body positive and helpful. If you feel insecure, don’t worry! Just be kind and you won’t be like those evil ugly people who are so ugly because they’re so evil! You see the problem? We like to believe that we’ve stopped equating looks to character because we started pointing out how Disney villains are ugly, but that’s superficial. Nobody really examined their ideas past “Ursula is fat.”
There are many forms of this evil. “This is how you age when you’re unproblematic” is a big one, acting like aging is a sign of moral corruption. Ex. the viral “She’s aged 20 years since becoming evil” tweet about Sydney Sweeney (I would insert the post but for some reason it’s impossible to find on Google Images.) You might say “Why can’t we call bad people ugly? Why are you defending Sydney Sweeney?” and to that I say: I’m not. I’m defending anybody that may look like Sydney Sweeney. It is not okay to bully anybody’s looks, even if you don’t like them. If you see somebody say something bad and you immediately jump to calling them ugly, you may need to examine yourself.
So the first thing you have to do if you want to decenter beauty from your self worth is to finally let go of the idea that beauty is in any way connected to morality. You don’t age better when you’re unproblematic, and this beloved Roald Dahl page is bullshit.
Propaganda.
You might not be pretty
The next and last step in decentering beauty is to accept that you literally just might be ugly. If you’ve tried and tried and tried to think that you’re beautiful and it never works, it’s probably time to just stop and instead, think about what the alternative even is.
I think my belly fat is ugly, but dieting makes me feel like shit, so I just deal with having an ugly feature. I think my armpit hair is ugly, but shaving makes me chafe, so I deal with it. I think my lips are ugly, but lip filler is expensive and scary, so I deal with it. You need to learn to just be able to deal with the things that you can’t change, and you need to be okay with being ugly.
I am deeply disturbed by our society’s obsession with beauty and how it seeps into everybody’s brain. Every time I look at my reflection and hate it, I’m filled with an almost political rage. There’s nothing wrong with having ugly features, and the fact that we all believe there is is kind of terrifying. Maybe I’m ugly…
who fucking cares?
The fact that capitalism is always there to promote these insecurities and that it's not okay to have them just so they can earn more money from us is disheartening.