I gazed into the mirror, satisfied: luscious lashes that reached beyond my eyebrows replaced my natural ones. They were sensitive: requiring constant washing, ceaseless drying, continuous brushing, and extra trips to the salon. Sweating and showering had to be rationed to preserve their integrity and if I suffered a momentary lapse, they would tangle up in an impossible Gordian knot of polyester and synthetic hair. But if feeling confident was the outcome of the $150 I spent and the countless hours I employed in maintaining them, then it was all worth it. They made me feminine: when I meditated on that ‘fact’, then the inconveniences of those lashes would fall way with the wind and I would feel confident that it had all been worth it. However, after two weeks with them, suffering the indignities that they brought me, I had an epiphany! I realized in horror that I had replaced my natural eyelashes with grotesque strips of hair. My eyelashes were beautiful as they were. I promised myself never to allow society to impact my decisions again. I felt that I had committed a crime in destroying them in pursuit of some distorted sense of beauty: literally bruising my body to please somebody else’s soul. And I felt his gaze then like an oppressive cage.

It started as an uneasy feeling and grew into a conviction: society puts pressure on women to conform to a specific standard of round eyes, long lashes, full lips, thin waist. But what if I don’t possess those qualities? Am I not feminine?

A week after I rid myself of that plague, I sat in a New York City subway. Both men and women of different races and genders surrounded me. New York has always been the most diverse place to me; but now I was overwhelmed, almost to tears, by its wonderful diversity, a kaleidoscope of beauty. I witnessed many people dressed in a multitude of ornate and eccentric styles. A transwoman was wearing a knee length, gold dress with gleaming diamond earrings and a mother, clearly straight out of bed with her school-bound children, was beautiful in her makeup-less dignity carrying out the duties of the day. I felt at peace with this kind of environment where everyone was simply as he, she, o??, o?, il, elle, zie, or sie is. However that reverie was banished in a second: that New York milieu that always provided for me was annihilated by a small ad pasted at the corner. On the advertisement, a slim, blonde, model was holding a shake. The advertisement violently inquired, “Are you bikini body ready?” That question would reduce all that beauty that saw to the vanity of the bikini body.


I was brought again to the reality that society, with its fashion statements and tailored ads, reduced the beauty of diversity to the monotony of sex appeal. Replacing meals with shakes, injecting hyaluronic acid into lips, and squeezing intestines together are prime examples of society’s beauty.

Since then, I have told others about my discovery. Most of my peers have proved skeptical, but I found a ready audience. In my senior year, I wrote an article about body shaming in order to spread awareness. While some insisted that the issue that I bought up was trivial compared to other problems, I argued that the increasing prevalence of people with eating disorders makes this issue pressing. Therefore, I am driven to become an advocate.

Although my experience helped me acknowledge my own beauty, the advertisement I saw served as an even deeper lesson. It helped me realize my responsibility to acknowledge the beauty of others and the monstrosity of social expectations. Society no longer had power over my mind and body. I let go of all the norms and standards set up for me. In turn I was able to have a deeper sense of self.