As a Life Coach and Clinical Hypnotherapist for over 35 years, I have worked with a countless number of both male and female patients. One common thing that I have found with many female clients is that many women’s self-esteem is directly influenced by society’s standards and expectations for female beauty.
From Marilyn Monroe, to Kim Kardashian, Twiggy to Kate Moss, Barbie to Beyoncé, each culture has imposed this socially accepted projection of female beauty, criticizing the majority of women who do not fulfill these impossible standards and pressuring them to endure time consuming and sometimes painful grooming rituals in order to come as close to this idealistic mold as possible.
Back in the day, it was all about corsets made of whalebones, foot binding, and lye based hair relaxers that burned the scalp. Today it’s 8 inch high heels, poison based facial injections, plastic surgery, even body binding, spandex based, undergarments intended to suck the body in or pad and enhance certain curves.
Though the trends change, the sentiment that “pain is beauty” still resonates in the mind of every adult female. The pressure to fulfill the impossible expectations of female physical attractiveness, to live up to these standards of beauty, is society’s obsession, and this social obsession has driven many beautiful individuals to developing a multitude of physical and mental disorders.
Anorexia, Bulimia, Depression- all of these conditions manifest themselves as ‘low self esteem’, when in the earliest stages. While being conventionally attractive isn’t a crime, the problem is that somehow society has created a bad habit of linking attractiveness to not only being likeable, but also being completely flawless in every single way. The prettier one is, the more positive attention one gets, and the more attention one is getting, the more probable it is their entire lives are perfect, right? Wrong.
