#StopTheBeautyMadness

I was contacted recently by Marie Southard Ospina about a campaign called Stop The Beauty Madness. As quoted from the campaign website itself,

Today, there is more than a choir singing out the truths of true beauty. There is a great groundswell and the numbers are rising daily. We are a new tribe, and we know it is time to take back the streets-OUR streets. We know that begins with lifting our self-esteem, our self-imposed standards of worth, and honoring our deepest truths about what it means to be "enough." 

We are not only working towards this change. We are witnessing this change. We women KNOW we are done with competing, done with comparing, and done with playing the ugly/beauty game. We are waking up from the crazy beauty hypnoses we have been under. 

We are determined to Stop The Beauty Madness in our ourselves, our mothers, our sisters and our daughters.

A lot of things in seem to enter the realm of popular culture, such as a specific music type or a TV series, but the thing that stands out to me the most is projected images of what is and/or should be beautiful. Beauty is subjective, but there is an undeniable influence of the popular culture's idea of beauty as well.

This is an issue that I have had a personal struggle with, as well as many people I know, no matter what the gender or appearance. Self-acceptance in both the physical and mental realms can be a difficult path, but the more that we are able to call out on ideals of what should be beautiful, the closer we can get to escaping the desire to fit any one particular view of beauty.

With over seven billion people on the planet (and holy smokes, that's a BIG number), and imaginations that are like endless wells to peer into, it is my hope that people affected by this issue can help turn it around and promote acceptance of the self.

A few examples from popular culture that I think are inspiring...

Melissa McCarthy

Laverne Cox