Body image trends, standards create stress; Males, females need to find balance in beauty

Body image. The mental image of how we see our own bodies. We always hear people saying, “Oh, you’ll find someone who will love you for who you are,” when that’s just not true. 

     The trends of body image have been different from generation to generation. We as teenagers sit on social media looking at everything people post and observing how everyone else looks. That’s how we figure out what’s trending. 

     I understand clothing, accessories, shoes, jewelry, etc., but having different body types trending will forever be a terrible thing to me. 

     This is a generation of teenagers and even literal children who care so much about how they look physically. We have trained ourselves to try and fit every trend there is. We think that if we don’t look these certain ways, we won’t attract anyone. 

     We sit here and think we’re not good enough because we see people like Kendall Jenner with the “hourglass” body, and we think we’re not good enough, when we are. Even if you don’t think that, you are. 

     Every guy now wants a girl with the “hourglass” body. While girls usually want athletic guys with abs and big arms. We as a society hold each other to these expectations that we shouldn’t even be worrying about. 

     In the 2000s everyone wanted a flat toned stomach with thin eyebrows, wearing low waisted jeans. Now we have people on social media saying they want “thicker” girls with hips and a waist that’s small. Everyone is trying to fit all these ever-changing trends.

     We need to end all the body image trends. While the body positivity movement helps us learn to love our bodies for how they are, we must collectively get rid of the overbearing trends telling us how we ‘need’ to look.

     Now we have teenagers who try to fit all these trends that come around every other year on how we should look. It degrades us as people and especially teenagers who are just trying to figure out who they are. 

     The body image trends also apply to how our faces look, hair color, eye color, noses, lips, eyebrows, etc. Everyone wants the girl with blond hair and blue eyes. That’s the stereotypical girl that everyone finds attractive. While girls look for a guy with brown fluffy hair and “pretty” eyes. 

     The trends manipulate our minds to think we need to fit these trends to be “attractive.” It’s taught us that we need to follow what all these celebrities look like to be pretty and for people to love us. 

     People follow celebrities and see how much fame and support they get, we see how much people will fangirl over certain celebrities and we start to want to feel that love. I’m not blaming celebrities for our problems, they’re in the spotlight because they’re people we always hear about and see.