The phrases “beauty” and “unattainability” have always felt excruciatingly synonymous to me. As a teenager, my own expectations of feminine beauty were shaped in large part by supermodel-heavy media that thrived on exploiting insecurities, convincing me I had many flaws and then selling me solutions.
That tempting possibility of reinvention was, and still is, encouraged by the blemish-free, poreless faces and the thin, bronzed, plucked bodies plastered across social media. However unrealistic and contrived the imagery might be, it implies that the products being promoted yield “perfection” worth striving for.
