I was reading How To Be a F*cking Lady on my Kindle today and it had a journal prompt I wanted to test out.
It brought up the question “What thoughts do you currently think about your beauty? Weight? Size?” So I journaled. At first, I tried to pour into my answers a little bit of self-love, but then I realized that in order to truly have self-love, I needed to first be truthful.
And the truth is that I don’t think I’ve ever found myself to be beautiful.
I’m not stating this to make you feel bad about me. I’m saying this because this is my reality. I wouldn’t say that I’m particularly ugly either, but just average.
Ultimately, it made me think of my mother who at 61 years of age continues to worry about what she eats. When we called me yesterday to great her a happy birthday, she said that she hasn’t ate yet, because she was “starving herself.” She tried to play it off as a joke. A playful remark.
But the reality of the situation is that my mother has watched her weight her entire life. Imposing on me a sense that my weight and my color is directly indicative of my worth and value as a human being.
But it’s not even her fault. No truly, it isn’t. She is merely a product of her environment. Filipina generational beauty standards have dictated for decades what is acceptable and what you should probably work on.
The Philippines is a country that was colonized several times. By Spain, the United States, Japan.
As a result, the hierarchy of beauty has shifted within the colonized nation, years after its independence.
There continues to be a need to achieve Euro-features, in terms of skin, setting a driving force for how beauty is defined. My mother grew up in an idea that the lighter your skin, the better. That nothing feels as beautiful as skinny does, or however that backwards saying goes.
I see it not only in her, but also in her sisters, her brothers. Whenever anyone gains weight, it is always a concern. Whenever one gets darker, it was always something to tease you about.
Which is a concern for me now because no one should have to starve themselves for purely vanity purposes for an idea that dictated the Philippines years ago. And I can see how this can potentially trickle down to my kids.
I will not let them be defined by outdated generational beauty standards.
Instead of focusing my energy on changing my mother (Trust me, I’ve tried multiple times) I’m going to focus on me. On shifting my own perception of beauty.
For years I’ve celebrated how beautiful differences are in people, but have never celebrated it in myself. It is so much easier to see the beauty in others, but be so critical with yourself.
I found that I’ve been preaching self-love for so long without actually loving myself.
As I look into my daughter’s eyes, I want her to know that she is beautiful regardless of her skin color, her weight, her size. She is beautiful because of her differences.
Unlearning how we were raised is important in breaking generational curses.
Small ways I will be working on breaking generational beauty standards:
- Journaling. In order to truly understand where I am on this journey, I’m going to have to be honest with myself without sugar coating anything.
- Taking therapy seriously. I have been in therapy for years, but between bouncing around therapists, I’ve found it hard to actually work on the real issues. The hardest part about this is actually laying my truth out there since I really don’t even like talking.
- Finding my healthy medium. I want to eat healthy for myself. I want to workout for myself. I want to do my multi-step skincare routine for myself.
- Affirmations. I believe that affirmations can work if you work on the other aspects of your beliefs that are holding you back. I want to start doing affirmations with my daughter to in hopes that she doesn’t have to unlearn anything, but instead know that her beauty is given from the beginning.
Breaking generational beauty standards is not easy, but continuing the curse for further generations is unacceptable especially with society moving towards such a global conversation of acceptance.
