Eye of the Beholder

Before diving into the nitty-gritty of this blog post… Hi! I’m Manda. I’m twenty-six years old and love all categories of the arts, beauty, self-care, and mental health; today’s post just so happens to be a combination of some of those things. I also happen to be a Psychology major, so it plays even more into why I love the topic of mental health and inner healing. Today, I want to talk specifically about healing your self-image.

Something we’ve always heard when it comes to talking about beauty is:

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”

But, I feel like we never get around to talking about the actual eye of the beholder… Ourselves.

Beauty is very subjective, and we now live in a world where we are looking to find our own beauty in other people. It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? We sometimes don’t realize that by doing this, we are seeking validation from others to still feel like we aren’t living up to the standards of today. This doesn’t only happen to women, but men too!

We might find ourselves scrolling down our social media and looking at ourselves in mirrors saying, “I could take off a few pounds around my stomach”, “Maybe if I save up enough money, I can get fillers”, or “I need to gain a few pounds”. Now, this is no way of knocking people who choose to get fillers, gain weight, lose weight, or even opt to switch their style to fit in with a certain group. This does, however, make me wonder… When will we simply be enough for ourselves?

I would also like to say, I’m not on the “high and mighty” team, and won’t say that I never questioned my own beauty standard. I’ve definitely had internal battles about if I should get under eye fillers to hide my insomniac-influenced bags, I had a phase where I hated how my cheeks looked hollow due to having high-cheekbones, and so many more complaints (that I will get to in a way later post… let’s keep things simple for now haha). But what helped me? I learned to appreciate what I see in the mirror.

Life has influenced so many new beauty standards that we even hear how they take a toll on women in songs:

Although the antagonist in SZA’s song was a man, it’s easy to see what we all deem as being beautiful. We can find ourselves being willing to put ourselves down, just to say how another woman is beautiful in a way that might be different from our own.

We (women) will find ourselves comparing ourselves to other women very frequently, and we don’t really take the time to understand how this can really affect us mentally. So when we use the phrase, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”,

Who do we believe the beholder is?

It could be Instagram, it could be a man, our own beauty standards we push on ourselves, an aesthetic we are trying to live up to… it could even stem from childhood trauma. Hearing certain things as a child can play an effect on how we view our bodies, skin, and features. If you were ‘skinnier’ as a child or teenager and grew up hearing that, gaining weight when you grow older can sometimes be a scary thought. We are often conditioned to view ourselves a certain way.

We may even hold our beauty standards to that of the women we look up to.

A big take-away for me that I would love for women to remember, is that beauty standards are subjective. Beauty standards change every year and they will fade. Allow yourself to love what you see and look up to women who encourage you to genuinely love what you see, not just because it can be seen as a social-gimmick.

When you hear “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” please always remember that you are the beholder. Your beauty is in the eyes of you, not social media, a man, or anyone else.

And if it’s anything, take the time to speak to and visit your younger self, and know that she would be in awe of the woman she’s grown up to be. She would look at you and feel like she grew up to be a beautiful woman, and the one she’s always seen herself being.

If you take anything away from this post, please let it be that you define your own beauty. And I know it’s easier said than done when we talk about loving ourselves, but please try to see the beauty in it everyday.

Will it be easy every day to acknowledge beauty where we might see imperfections? Absolutely not. But, trying is always better than denying.

- Manda