Lately there seems to be a lot of buzz in media about body image and beauty standards, specifically targeted towards women.

Most of the time when flipping through magazines or scrolling through profiles of Instagram-famous people, women are shown unrealistic expectations of how they should appear.

For a while, the big trend was the thigh gap. For those who are unaware of the thigh gap, this is something that determined if a girl was fat or not. Many girls were striving to have a gap between their thighs because it would classify them as skinny.

Women in magazines are always photoshopped and given the “perfect” bodies. However, some viewers believe that this is how they should be. Many women feel that being skinny makes them beautiful.

Plus-size model Tess Holliday, is an inspiration to many women both plus size and not. She embraces being big and proves to people that you can be beautiful no matter your shape or size. She promotes this by using #EffYourBeautyStandards.

Eff Your Beauty Standards is also a brand by Tess Holliday. According to the brands Facebook page, it’s all about embracing your body.

Besides weight, another beauty standard issue has been about makeup. Many girls on social media sometimes post pictures showing them with and without makeup.

Some of these makeup transformations include the covering of acne which most girls are very self conscious about. Some argue that covering up your acne with makeup is deceitful.

Women with acne who wear coverup makeup become judged for that. They are looked at as being “fake”.

On the opposite side, when people with acne post their pictures of bare faces they are still judged. They are judged for not having clear and perfect skin. Why is this? It seems to be that media has put out images of people with perfect skin. Which then leads them to thinking that having flawless skin makes an individual beautiful.

Beauty Youtuber, Em Ford had posted pictures of herself on her Instagram without makeup. Ford later shared a video on Youtube sharing all the mean comments that she had received in response to her photos. Her video, “You Look Disgusting,” displayed the hateful comments she received.

This goes to show that people are going to be judgmental based off of looks no matter what. When people wear “too much” makeup they are judged for not being natural. Yet when they post natural pictures they are bashed for being “ugly”.

What it comes down to is that media has manipulated our views of what beauty is, and has set high standards that are only possible with photoshop and filters.

It’s important for people to know that beauty shouldn’t be defined by weight or clear skin. Often, time’s society finds themselves trying to meet such high expectations. People fill their minds with images of what they need to look like, but in reality we are only comparing ourselves to altered photos.