In every second of every minute of our lives, we are faced with the dilemma of appearance. Every magazine, advertisement, commercial and billboard reminds us how to look, how much to weigh, how to dress and what we should strive to be. We walk down the streets and flick through pictures on people’s Facebook to judge them, based solely on appearance. We spark entire conversations on how atrocious someone’s outfit is or how awful their hairstyle is. As girls, we are conditioned to believe that being tall and thin with all the right assets is the only way to be beautiful. As a society, we make fun of and shun the “ugly” and the “fat.” What people fail to realize majority of the time is that many of the things that we make fun of are things that people can’t help. Being heavy or being physically “unattractive” may not be a biological disorder but simply something that we dislike, as Virginia Postrel states in her article, “Going to Great Lengths.”

Almost everything about our society screams “superficiality.” There are countless television shows based on makeovers and weight loss along with products and cosmetic procedures to make us who we want to be. There are millions of self conscious girls in the world due to these standards that we are supposed to meet. It is true, to an extent, that it’s more pleasurable to be serviced by a good-looking employee but to not allow someone to even have the job is simply misguided. People are giving in to the idea that it is okay to be put down simply because of our biological physical appearance.

“Biological fate doesn’t just give us disabilities and disorders. To a large degree, it gives us who we are. Our bodies are us.”

I think many girls will agree with me when I say that being a girl is hard in today’s world. So many things are expected from us. We are supposed to be smart, beautiful, well dressed, well coifed, graceful, and for the most part, perfect. If we aren’t, we’re looked down upon. Girls dress up everyday, not only because we feel the need to, but because other girls are our worst critics and we experience it first-hand everyday. I bet that all of us are guilty of being overly critical of other females too.

There are so many arguments and immoral behaviors that we practice everyday. There aren’t even any signs of this discrimination coming to a halt.

What is our world coming to when this is what we are supposed to be?

http://www.dynamist.com/articles-speeches/opeds/greatlengths.html