If one day every woman woke up and was happy with her self, the cosmetic industry would go out of business.
Not just women, but men too. Why do we obsess over our looks so much to the extent that we put on a mask every day to project out to the world? Sometimes we put on a physical mask; sometimes we don our psychological mask. This is our ego, our self-image. Some people identify more as their bodies, usually, just the thin outer layer called the skin. Some people identify as a role, or their status or their position in society.
We walk around with this self-image, always struggling to uphold it, turning ourselves into a clapping Seal for everybody, making sure that we look and seem the best way we can – only to go home and take it all off, get in our trackies and finally relax. But in this regard, we are only ever relating to people on a very superficial level. We are relating to the level of appearances, of our body, of our status, of an idea. We have fallen prey to the conditioning that our culture has very successfully imposed on us.
Ever notice how “beauty” for a woman is tall, thin, big breasts and ass, skinny waist, flawless complexion, and all of that? Notice how maybe only 1% of females are actually like this, creating a world where everyone strives for something they will never be, only to spend more and more and more on cosmetics and even plastic surgery? Maybe the people a little less identified with their body will identify with fashion. Portraying their self-image through their choice of clothes.
But can we truly look at ourselves in the mirror without the conditioned mind telling us we need to look better, we need to be thinner, we need to color that bit, straighten that part out, apply this or that? Can we look at ourselves just as we are without culture and the brainwashing being perpetuated through our own minds?
See, our mind is not our own. It is a product of the environment and culture we live in. When our mind sees imperfections and desires for some perfect look, it is cultured voice doing this, not our own. All those years of advertising, watching television, seeing what the “perfect” look or body is has conditioned us to strive for something that is not.
If we truly look at ourselves as we really are, we can see that we are all beautiful beyond any true comprehension. We are human beings, representations of this wonderful planet Earth. We are not separate from it, we are it! Our body is a colony of trillions of cells all working in harmony; we have complex things called emotions, feelings, memories, we can experience love, anger, joy, and melancholy. Then there is this thing called consciousness, something truly amazing and beyond all description… and somehow, we have let ourselves identify as something so small and inferior to this, I think that it’s time we all stepped into our true identity. We don’t look at the stars or the trees and say “oohhhh, that star could be a little brighter, that moon should probably be a little over that way, that tree is too old and gnarled compared to that little sapling that should probably hurry up and grow.” No. We see the inherent beauty in things like this, so why not extend that to fellow humans and ourselves?
So I challenge you to free yourself from the way culture has defined you. I challenge you to remove your mask, your physical and psychological one. Let’s relate on a level much deeper than this. Lets relate together through our true identity.