5 "disadvantages" of appearance, which do not have to be hidden

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

These are not flaws, but features that do not harm others.

1. Features of the skin

The standard of beauty is considered to be clean, smooth, uniform skin - as if after filters in a photo editor. But for ordinary people, it is most often far from ideal. On the face and body, they may have:

• acne;
• freckles;
• moles;
• vitiligo;
• birthmarks and age spots;
• rosacea;
• scars.

Society has learned to treat some of these features more or less calmly - for example, moles, vitiligo or freckles (the latter are in trend almost every year). But some people still consider people with acne to be almost lepers. And it is this problem that skin-positive bloggers and influencers most often pay attention to.

People with acne can be poisoned, and women are also required to hide their faces behind a thick layer of makeup - after all, inflammation on the skin looks unusual and causes rejection. Even in advertisements for acne products, it is very rare to see real rashes.

A few years ago, beauty blogger Em Ford, who was bombarded with offensive comments because of acne, made a video about it, which later went viral.

Why you shouldn't be ashamed of it

Skin-positive activists insist: wearing makeup that hides rashes, or not doing it, is everyone's personal choice. Acne does not mean that a person is not hygienic. It is not contagious, and decorative cosmetics in some cases can cause inflammation or aggravate it. At the moment, a person just has such a skin, no other.

The same, by the way, applies to other "problems" with the skin. They don't make you or anyone else ugly. And they are not obliged to hide behind sunglasses, makeup and closed clothes.

2. Gray hair and wrinkles

Advertising, media and cinema actively support the idea that looking at your age is bad, that only youth can be beautiful, and any signs of aging must be masked. As a result, people (mostly women) who already have gray hair and wrinkles do not feel attractive.

Among them are actresses and celebrities: Meryl Streep, Salma Hayek, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jamie Lee Curtis, Diane Keaton, Mayim Bialik and others. The idea of accepting your wrinkles and gray hair turns into something of a movement: photo projects, blogs and books are devoted to it, social videos are shot on this topic. Thousands of women around the world share stories of how they stopped painting gray hair.

In Russia and in the post-Soviet space, this idea is still rather wary: among media personalities, only rare "age" models refuse to paint gray hair, and bloggers who do this are bombarded with indignant comments.

But this is not a reason to suffer with staining or spend money on injections: there is no objective need to do this.

3. Completeness

Fat people are poisoned, shamed, accused of laziness, reproached with every piece they eat and urged to wrap themselves up in a large nondescript rag. This phenomenon is called fat shaming, and even successful and universally attractive people suffer from it - for example, Rihanna, who always gets hurt because of her fluctuations in weight.

And no, fat shaming has nothing to do with health care. Even those whose weight from the point of view of doctors is within the normal range can be subjected to it, and numerous cases of bullying of celebrities are an excellent confirmation of this.

Why you shouldn't be ashamed of it

Even if a person is really overweight or obese, insults, ridicule, hatred of their body and refusal of their favorite clothes will not help them lose weight. Shame and guilt only exacerbate the situation, leading to breakdowns and compulsive overeating. Expressed obesity is not a sign of laziness, but the result of endocrine disorders, genetic predisposition and eating disorders.

A fat person is not obliged to hide, to pack himself in shake underwear, black overalls and clothes with vertical stripes.

If he wants to, he can show his body and wear everything that everyone else, including open swimsuits, short shorts, leopard leggings and revealing tops, for which fat shamers are ready to tear to pieces body-positive bloggers.

4. Cellulite

Lumpy skin on the thighs and buttocks is considered something ugly and encouraged to fight this phenomenon with all our might. Women who have "orange peel" are embarrassed to wear swimsuits or open their legs, do painful massage, spend money on ointments and cellulite remedies.

Why you shouldn't be ashamed of it

Cellulite, like gray hair, has become a problem thanks to marketing. Until the 70s of the XX century, it was not considered something bad at all: it can be seen on the canvases of Rubens and Courbet, in photographs of actresses and models of the 50s.

But in 1973, the American Nicole Ronchard, the owner of a beauty salon, published a book on how to deal with the "orange peel". In the first weeks alone, it was purchased by more than 200,000 readers, and later the book went through several editions.

Since then, the idea that cellulite is a terrible flaw that must be eliminated by any means, has brought the beauty industry billions of dollars.

At the same time, studies say that 85-98% of women have bumpy skin on the thighs, and the fat in this area is exactly the same as on any other part of the body. But cosmetic and surgical procedures such as liposuction and mesotherapy can make the skin even more uneven.

It turns out that the "orange peel" is just a feature of the female body. It is associated with the fact that the skin in women is thin, adipocytes are larger than in men, and the percentage of body fat is generally higher. So you can feel free to wear short skirts and not run beach photos through a dozen filters.

5. Tall or short stature

Men are complex because they have not grown to the size of a two-meter closet - after all, a "real man" must be powerful. And, of course, he must be taller than his partner - at least a little.

Women also have complexes, and both because of too small, unmodel stature, and because of too large (a big dilda, a watchtower, high-heeled shoes cannot be worn, otherwise you will be taller than most men). And it is quite difficult to choose clothes with non-standard parameters, because it does not look as good as on “typical” people.

Why you shouldn't be ashamed

In 95% of women, the height is in the range of 150-179 cm. In 95% of men, it is between 163 and 193 cm. Moreover, these values are constantly changing: in some periods of human history they were more, in others - less. The lower limit of the norm is about 147 cm: shorter stature is usually characteristic of people with dwarfism.

But there may be exceptions, especially for women. If growth fits into these rather vague frameworks - well, hundreds of thousands of people with the same parameters walk around the planet.

And if not, it still does not make you worse - perhaps, on the contrary, it makes you stand out from the crowd.

Height is simply body length, which is determined by genetics and hormonal status. These figures do not characterize a person in any way. Yes, non-standard sizes can cause objective problems (no suitable clothes, it is inconvenient to sit on the plane). But there is no reason to be ashamed, stoop or, conversely, wear high heels - which, by the way, provoke serious problems with the musculoskeletal system.