Beauty standards have been on my mind quite a lot recently, especially with the emerging prevalance of social media influencers all over the internet, and the whole notion that "instagram modeling" is a job. Or, even, that looking pretty in general is considered a job at all.

This post will be nothing new: to be honest, I'm just another typical insecure teenager angered by the standards that society shoves into my mind. I don't know why, but it's been really eating at me recently - we all have so much to worry about already in our lives, and social media has blown the value of appearance truly out of proportion since a while ago. I was talking to my friend about this yesterday - comparing ourselves to girls online has become embedded in our subconsciouses, and looking through our instagrams we realized that we had taken on the same poses and the same lighting/angle tricks to make ourselves look like the girls that pop up on our explore page. Nobody snaps a picture and posts it anymore; instead it's all about trying to make yourself look like someone else.

First and foremost, I'll just say it: Not everyone is beautiful by the standards of society. Some people are ugly, and that's just a fact. It bothers me so much that everyone tries to shove this concept of "everyone is beautiful" down our throats when it is so clearly untrue.

It especially bothers me that this idea of how "everyone is beautiful" is so highly esteemed over other attributes. Think of it this way: Your teachers will never open a class saying, "Each of you is a mathematic genuis, even if you fail all the tests." Your gym teacher won't look at your class and say, "Each of you is naturally an olympic-level athlete, whether you believe it or not." So, why do we use those same phrases when it comes to beauty? Why is beauty placed on a pedestal above natural mathematic comprehension, or athletic ability, or anything else for that matter?

It's because this is the monster of a culture that we have created for all of the poor young children to get swallowed up into. It's because, in our society, being beautiful is so important that it is considered a job (think about that, it's literally considered a job) of it's own, even a foundational layer that determines how far you will get in other areas. It seeps into our minds and drips into our futures - it can determine who you marry, how successful you are, or even whether or not you succeed in activities that have no inherent connection to beauty (singers, for example, typically only become famous if they are beautiful).

And the worst thing is our refusal to acknowledge it - that's exactly what this claim that "everyone is beautiful" is, a refusal to acknowledge any of this. If we were to say that everyone is not beautiful, then we would have to acknowledge too how messed up the world really is, and it would be much more obvious how skewed towards success the naturally beautiful are. Because if we claim that everyone is beautiful, then we are essentially saying that all of the pressure we're putting on these young girls through social media and propaganda isn't real or important; or, even worse, that it's okay.

And it gets worse too, because companies are now worshipped when they put out a picture that isn't photoshopped, like the 'realness' of the Victoria's secret fashion show or the whole #aeriereal movement. They aren'ts photoshopping anymore and instead choosing girls who are naturally photogenic as models, as though it makes a groundbreaking difference. It's still enforcing the beauty standards regardless, and nothing to be applauded over, in my opinion. Yes, it's good that the photos aren't digitally altered unrealistically, but it really doesn't change anything. (Not to mention that photoshopping shouldn't even be so common in the first place!)

I guess I want to say that, being ugly is not a bad thing. Or, at least, it shouldn't be regarded as such.

Why? Because being born beautiful is not an accomplishment. It's just not. It's not something to be congratulated on, it's not something to be worshipped over, and it's not something to be applauded for.

Then, there is, of course, the whole Pixar family-friendly retort that "True beauty is on the inside." It's simply not. Don't get me wrong, I know what that phrase means: that there are more attributes to people other than their physical appearance. It's trying to account that people are redeemable in other ways - that they may be brilliant at a certain instrument, or good at cooking, or write poems that seem to jump off the page with life, but why can't we just say it like that? Why can't we just tell them that they're good at the flute, or that their spaghetti is to die for, or that the ending of that poem left us in tears? Saying that "true beauty is on the inside" is completely contradictory, because we are still putting all of the power into the concept of "being beautiful."

And oh my god, the standards themselves? Even worse.

Take someone like Madison Beer, for example. A singer who, like the Kardashians or any other instagram model, has fallen victim to the standards surrounding her quite obviously.

This is what she looks like online:

This is what she looks like in real life:

She is beautiful and I'm not trying to say that she's not, just that she looks absolutely nothing like all of her photos on social media. It's quite sad because this is the case for many others. I don't want to say I think she's being deceptive, or that she's not pretty, but because she - like all the others - is changing herself through these crazy angles and lighting to fit inside of this box of "beauty" and losing her true features in the process.

This is increasingly the case, and I am not and cannot criticize anyone for doing it because it's true for me as well!

This is what I look like online (i don't photoshop or facetune btw, but do wear makeup):

This is what I look like in real life (+ without makeup):

I could say that there's no giant solution for something like this. I could say that I'll continue to be insecure, as will the other unattractive girls of the world, and magazines and makeup companies will continue to loudly boast that everyone is beautiful even though they will continue to capitalize on the fact of it not being true. I could say that we will all feed into it endlessly.

But, I've realized something recently, and that is that it really doesn't matter. I don't care that I'm ugly - actually, there's something extremely empowering about admitting my ugliness and refusing to let it bother me - because beauty is currently very low on my scale of importance. When I'm sitting in my math exam at 1:30pm tomorrow, I promise you I won't care how I look. I didn't get into my dream university through caring about how I looked every day, and although I am worried that I won't be able to achieve certain positions later on in life because of my appearance or race, my immediate concerns are studying for exams and staying healthy mentally because that has been a hard enough struggle this year alone.

I have found ways to seek comfort in my other redeemable qualities when I'm feeling down, and I think that's one of the important foundational levels of living successfully.

I just hope that the person reading this can take away these facts, if they themselves are not beautiful like me:

- You are probably subjectively funny.

- You are interesting in some way.

- You are smart in some subject (even if it's not a conventionally useful one)

- You probably know a couple words in Korean, which is cool.

- You are good at ____ (fill in this blank on your own)

All of those attributes should be considered just as important as your physical beauty and although it that they aren't because of the people who keep spurting out that "everyone is beautiful" ignorantly, you need to teach yourself your own system of what is important.