We are not perfect, no one is! So why do we portray flawlessness on social media?

Why use makeup or filters to cover our flaws and signs of ageing? Natural is always good. So why hide what was meant to be?

I don’t think we should hide our natural selves behind makeup or filters all the time. Its okay to use them occasionally but it’s clearly not right when we start to feel uncomfortable in our real faces.

I think there’s perfection in our flaws. These are what define us.

Today I’m talking about False beauty standards through the following video:

My debate

Why are girls considered only a sign of beauty? As if we’re nothing but an exhibition? As if our inside doesn’t matter.
I’m against the concept of makeup which tries to make a girl look perfect.
We should not be judged on our physical appearance.
Our intellectual level is who we are and our looks should never define us.
Let’s stop telling each other “you look fat, your nose is too big, you have dark circles.” If you have nothing better to say, say nothing at all.
Let’s look at each other deeper than just our appearance and exterior.
It’s better not to talk about our weakness. Chances are they wouldn’t have noticed it before you mentioned. And that day onward they will start noticing it. Never reveal your physical weakness to anyone.

How to change it

Create awareness that a girl isn’t just a decoration piece.
We should create awareness of no makeup days.
We should be conscious that we don’t judge anyone based on their looks.
If we put makeup too much, we can’t imagine ourselves without it.
We make our own lives difficult by applying too much makeup.
If we’re ageing, its nothing to be ashamed of, its something to be thankful for and something to be proud of.

Takeaways

The main takeaways from this post are:

Embrace who you are
Love your real self
Focus on authentic marketing
Accept your flaws
Stop portraying a perfect image
Let’s keep our perspective right
Let’s not be shallow & focus on real values
#makeupfreedays more often
Respect a woman for who she is, not her looks
Stop judging others based on their looks
Age gracefully
Stop using app filters all the time
Let’s show our real selves to ourselves and the world

#MakeUpFreeDays Campaign

After my video on False beauty standards on YouTube, I started talking about how we should have makeup-free days in our week when we’re comfortable in our real selves.

4 Reasons to have makeup-free days

To let our skin breathe
No chemicals on the skin
Unblock pores. Avoid pimples from the buildup of makeup
Feel comfortable in our own natural selves

Five ways to feel comfortable in a natural look

Scrub and clean face. Try washing face with natural Basin (gram flour).
Use face masks for proper cleansing. Try natural (sandalwood powder, ubtan, rosewater mask).
Use a good moisturizer. Natural is better. Try almond oil on face. Or apply Honey for 15 mins.
Work on your eyebrow shape and remove hair from upper lips for a groomed look.
Wear very light lipstick just to make yourself feel good if you want.

I’m really happy with the response to False Beauty Standards video and related #MAKEUPFREEDAYS campaign. Thrilled with your unfiltered pictures without makeup. I swear all of you are so beautiful that you really don’t need to cover yourself with makeup or filters all the time.

The point of this campaign isn’t so we stop using makeup. It is just so we are mindful of it and we start loving our natural selves and promote authenticity.

Our filters distorting our reality?

I just read Let’s get real on Gulf Times by Shehr Bano, a very talented writer from Diary of a PMP Mom which describes this issue perfectly. I love how she tacked this issue. It makes perfect sense to me. I quote her in the following paras:

“Being a woman and a photographer, I cringe when I see images of people on Instagram with filters that fade the lines and wrinkles so much that I often find them almost looking like ghosts. We put a filter on while taking a selfie and we hide the reality behind that filter. Why?

There are no marks, no lines and frankly NO SOUL in those pictures. But people not only think they look great in those ghastly pictures, they share it proudly on their social media! I question again…what is the criteria of beauty these days?

Makeup has been used for ages to enhance beauty and as long as it doesn’t make you look like someone else, I believe it adds to a women’s self-confidence and frankly, I don’t see anything wrong with that. This, in turn, makes them buy more products in the hope that they would look like the ‘perfect flawless’ images these companies portray in their advertisements. The more insecure you are, the more products you will buy to look like someone on the cover or an advertisement which is in fact, excessively photoshopped and unachievable in real life.

The fashion/beauty industry has been undermining our criteria of beauty and the perfect body image for a long time; however it used to be only in either print media or TV/movies. But now in the age of social media, the problem has aggravated exponentially! The new generation is growing up in this world of social media, where they end up seeing these altered images hundreds of times on their phones. And the fact that these images are not only of the fashion models anymore but of everyday people in their lives.

We need to realize that we are creating a fictitious world with these heavily manipulated images for our younger generation who will inevitably grow up with low self-esteem. They will never be happy with what they see in the mirror because they will be used to seeing themselves and others through these filters. How will they not grow up to be dissatisfied with their body and looks — of course, they will be — we are conditioning them to be!

How wonderful would it be that instead of pushing these false beauty standards to our younger generation, we would focus on passing down the value of being a beautiful person inside out. To be able to look into our own souls and be happy with what we see in the mirror! Wouldn’t it be nice to see the laugh lines on our face and cherish the memories of the times that we laughed? Having said that, how about instead of just working on the exteriors of how we look on social media, we take care of our body and soul — by eating healthy, drinking lots of water, exercising, being mindful and doing good.”