What If...

 From a young age, I have always been told I have a vivid imagination. I will admit it, sometimes I get lost in the idea of certain scenarios or simply think about why things are the way they are. However, the one I get stuck on the most is this... What if there was no beauty standard at all? 

I, for one, have dealt with my own self image from the time I was a little girl. From the age of 7 years old, I have looked to older women in magazines, tv shows and movies to help guide me with what's cool, what's trending and most importantly, how I should look. 

Around the time I was nine, almost all of the famous women I saw in the media were very thin. They had a small figure and most couldn't have weighed more than 100 pounds. As a young girl, this quickly influenced me into wanting a similar figure because I knew it was the standard, what girls 'should' look like and what I deep down wanted to. 

However, soon after that, a new standard entered the media that showed the new 'it' girls were curvy, had large hips and a tiny waist. This was most notoriously introduced by the Kardashians as I am sure everyone remembers. But, all my hard work to be super skinny and fit felt like a waste because now I was being pressured into becoming curvy. 

This type of fluctuation continued well into my late teens and early twenties. Who am I kidding, it still happens today.  

So, my question remains what if there was never any beauty standards at all? What if we celebrated every single person's body type and figure without pushing a new trend? What if young girls could grow up in a world that didn't tell them they needed a 20 inch waist in order to look pretty? 

These questions float around in my head quite often and though I understand this is not a problem that can be tackled easily or overnight, I do think it is worth it to spend time encouraging young individuals to be confident in their own skin.