“Will I ever be pretty enough?” I ask myself for the 40th time today, while looking in the mirror, looking at all my “flaws”, my large forehead, awkward nose, small lips, I start to wonder if I will ever be “enough”. Growing up, I never thought I would be. Always comparing myself to everyone else. I was too tall, too awkward, my hair was too curly, my legs too big. I almost don’t remember if there ever was a time I didn’t feel this way. Where did it all come from? It feels like, since birth, every girl I meet is my competition, and I am always losing. Everyone seems skinnier, prettier, better, and more perfect than I am. Am I insane for thinking this way?

It's almost as if I was taught to do this, and in a way I was. Every show, every film I watched, every magazine I picked up, pitted women against each other. The print sells you white, skinny, blonde, tall models, photographed, unattainable qualities. Protagonists presented ‘pretty’; shiny long straight hair, fair complexion, small and dainty features. Characters that look more ‘realistic' are subjected to being the evil ones, the mean, the ‘ugly’. They are given dark curly hair, a bigger nose,or a bigger figure. Seeing myself in these ‘ugly’ characters made me believe that it is what I lack compared to my family and friends. We get conditioned to not like certain features because we learn to associate them with the negative traits, conditioned taste aversion. Others never fully understood what I meant; they told me, “But you’re so pretty”, “I wish I had hair like yours”. Was it all in my head? Was I delusional?

I used to dream of a nose job, I told myself that the second I turn 18 “I am getting a rhinoplasty”, that dream never became a reality, I got over my insecurity of my awkward shaped nose (also realised how expensive they are). When I mentioned this to people, I got a rather funny reaction, everyone was shocked “what are you talking about, there is nothing wrong with your nose”. Hearing people say that drove me insane. My nose looks nothing like the ones in the magazines; it's not small or pointy, or a ski slope or whatever. Therefore, there must be something wrong with it, right? 

It doesn’t help that there is a new insecurity trend on social media every other day. Either your thighs are too big or too small, your face is too pointy or too flat, you have smile lines, or crinkles near your eyes. Any normal feature or a sign of human emotion has room for it to be made into an insecurity. This isn’t anything new, with almost everyone having access to the internet. Olivia Rodrigo talks about this concept in her song, ‘Pretty isn’t Pretty’: “And I try to ignore it, but it's everything I see. It's on the poster on the wall, it's in the shitty magazines. It's in my phone, it's in my head, it's in the boys I bring to bed. It's all around, it's all the time. I don't know why I even try.” highlighting that these standards and expectations are not something we can just escape, even if we shut our phones off and throw them away.

Many brands aim to profit from these made-up insecurities, telling us, “YOU want to look like this!” “YOU hate your smile lines, and YOU want to get rid of them, so use our new cream today to look ten times younger.” They try to tell us it's us, it's us that think there is something wrong, and it's true. Even if we don’t think there is anything wrong with the way we look, we get convinced that we do; they are saying it, so it must be true, right?

The worst part is that it works. Excessive skincare has become a major trend; there are ten-year-olds on TikTok sharing their skincare routines that help them ‘stay younger’, furthermore adding makeup to hide their features at such a young age. Instead of helping them by telling them there is nothing wrong with the way they look, we laugh at them, make memes out of them, and we laugh about the '14-year-olds in Sephora’ wave last year. Failing to address the insecurities that may appear while our bodies are rapidly changing. 

The pretty girls we often compare ourselves to, ones we set as the standard, are saying they feel ugly as well. Madison Beer, Megan Fox, Olivia Rodrigo, Margot Robbie, Beyonce, Winona Ryder, and Adriana Lima are all famous celebrities deemed to be perfect, applauded for their looks, yet there are countless interviews where they talk about how they don’t feel pretty, that they don’t feel like they are enough. It seems like no one is winning this battle, the battle we force ourselves to fight. 

Laufey, a famous Chinese-Icelandic singer, once sang, “A woman's best currency is her body, not her brain,” in her song “Snow White,” and she’s completely right in saying so. On countless occasions, women are only valued for their looks, by men as well as women. Women have to be pretty enough to be considered valuable enough to date, to be heard, to get a job, but not too pretty. Too pretty means we put much effort into our looks, and that means we are dumb, spoiled, and selfish. No matter how women actually are as people, all of it gets discarded because they look a certain way. Somehow, whether it's positive or negative, our bodies and our appearances are valued the most. It almost makes it seem like a woman's only purpose in life is to appeal to others.

In the song “What Was I Made For?” by popular American singer Billie Eilish, she sings, “I’m sad again, don’t tell my boyfriend, it's not what he's made for,”  highlighting that feeling of getting lost in the struggle for chasing pretty, while also acknowledging that her “boyfriend” wouldn’t entirely understand that feeling. It would be unfair to say that men are entirely off the hook; of course, there are beauty standards for men, to be tall, to be fit, but it seems like their appearance matters less. It’s not as important as everything else, such as their humour, strengths, and weaknesses. Men’s beauty standards are fairly flexible. Being tall was once the standard for men, but now ‘short kings’ are very much glorified. The recent ‘rat boyfriend epidemic’ shows high demand for men who resemble rodent creatures. Bigger men (plus size) are now idolised, thanks to SZA’s ‘Big Boy’. It feels like for men, there are multiple moulds they can fit into to be deemed attractive, while for women, there is just one, and it's very malleable, considering it changes almost weekly if not daily. 

With all this being said, we must understand that beauty is subjective; what one might deem the prettiest ever, others might see as average. We are all pretty, not that it matters anyway. 

Gabriela Miziniak is a second-year student studying Psychological Sciences, majoring in Neuroscience. A journaling enthusiast who enjoys trinket collecting and binge-watching films (especially Coraline or Fear Street). Also enjoys talking about literally anything and walking literally everywhere, while listening to SZA or Clairo.