Throughout life I've had female acquaintances who have struggled with eating disorders, done those crazy fad diets, or had issues with their self image. I'd try to comfort them, but it would always come back to the beauty standards forced on them by men. Now I'm not saying they should be disregarded, because no human that is struggling deserves to do so on their own, and it's not about getting back at them, it's about being a model of good character regardless of circumstance. I guess I don't really question the origins of the belief that men are at the helm of this pressure, because I'll admit that at one point *some* men alone were definitely calling all the shots, and the majority of them were disgusting people.

In recent years, why is it still attributed to men? None of seemingly big and circulating standards fit into my own definition of attractive, or any of my male friends definition. I, and I think most men, or at least just all of my friends, find beauty to be synonymous with good health. There isn't specific body type or size that we like, we just thought women who ate a healthy amount of generally healthy foods were beautiful. Yeah ultra fit is hot, but we saw more beauty in women who just worked out for the sake of staying active, because being active was healthy. These were the same standards we held for our own attractiveness as well. Just eating reasonably well and staying reasonably active.

I will never prefer a face with make up over a face without makeup. It's not because I inherently think makeup looks bad. If you're female partner puts special effort into putting makeup on for something, then sometimes its just a subtle way for them to let you know that they see how much effort you put in, and they want to show appreciation. Definitely gas them up and celebrate them for that. That said, I do inherently know that putting a bunch of chemicals on your face everyday is not good for your overall health. And so since no makeup is more healthy, I see it as more beautiful. Because I want my partner to feel beautiful and healthy as they are.

So that kind of covers why the "beauty standards forced by men" confuses me. Because if it was forced by men then why is it the opposite of what we find beautiful? Thinking on it personally led me to think that women are now at the helm of the pressure, I arrived at this belief without any statistical evidence and just inferred on what I was seeing in my own social sphere. So I'm not saying that its an end all be all fact. Also is why I'd like to read more input on it.

The kardashians convinced women to go get insane plastic surgery procedures, they make millions off of women feeling insecure through their various lines of products. So the body image crisis works out great for them. There's a dermatology place in my town that has some billboards up. These billboards are literally a stockimage of a random model with dermo place's name, there's no address, there's no phone number, it's just an image of a (honestly kinda unattractive) "model". I saw that as a pretty blatant case of women being objectified and said so to my girlfriend kinda expecting her to agree. But she actually defended it, and called it "genius marketing", because she is dependent on skin creams. Her female friends keep recommending botox and other procedures to her, and then I have to reassure her that her friends are idiots and any procedure would be a waste of money, because she does actually start to believe them. They're going around telling each other to go get on ozempic, to get these procedures, to buy these lotions. They're supporting, defending, and promoting the very industry that's taking advantage of them.

I'm probably wrong, but it would be nice to read the input of others, and to discuss hypothetical ways to clean up the mess and help both men and women with body image issues moving forward.