Women’s Alluring, Pernicious Role Model
“Mirror Mirror on the wall, how do I conform to beauty standards of all?”
Should I be a Marilyn or a Jackie
A smile or a pouty lip
Comfortable in my own skin
Or the poster woman for Vogue?
Should I be me or someone else
A carbon copy, a product of a fad
Or the unique trendsetter of my generation?
How do I be me when I see only expectation
Societal constraints woven into my DNA
How I should:
Look,
Think,
Act,
Exist
In every stroke of my hair brush, in every selfie I take, in every purchase I make, in every beauty ritual I am engulfed by?
How do I meet this concept of being “beautiful” when beauty is supposedly this idea based in: Opinion,
Point of view,
Dissension?
Yet it's presented as:
A Standard,
Static,
Immobile
Femininity is disciplined.
Societal based beauty is incompatible.
It’s the suffocating force in her life that forces her to
wrap the scarf of expectation around her neck, push her feet into the soles of ideals, dress her body in a way that's calculated, sensible, conformed.
She’s beautiful.
She doesn’t recognize herself
Intimidated, oppressed by a force she feels is judging her
In every magazine she flips through, in every ad that pops up on her phone, she is coerced to abandon her sense of identity and loses ambition to discover what that means.
Suddenly she becomes close to feeling:
Comfortable
Acclimated
Fitting
The image changes.
The world is thrown into disarray.
“Mirror Mirror on the wall, how do I conform to beauty standards of all?”
Image obtained from Squarespace.
