One topic we discussed in WGSST 2230 was hegemonic beauty standards. If you notice the models in the media, all you see is thin White women, with perfect skin, hair, and body shapes. Then we look in the mirror and constantly compare ourselves to those unrealistic beauty standards society holds us, women, to.

We discussed how men won’t take us serious if we aren’t pretty enough, and even then, men will only give us the time of day because they are lusting over our bodies and not our minds and the actual work we put out into this world. Women leaders are few and very far between. Female leaders have to deal with twice the amount of harassment as male leaders because they are judged off of their looks. It is time that we judged based on our minds and abilities, not our appearances.

In the summer of 2018, American Eagle launched a lingerie campaign which featured female models with disabilities and chronic illnesses. This is the type of push the media needs to show younger generations that you are beautiful just the way you are and those hegemonic beauty standards are just unrealistic and truly unreachable. I mean seriously, none of those runway models take a picture without a little Photoshop or even surgery. The American Eagle campaign showed the public that every individual is beautiful, despite our differences, every girl should feel beautiful and we must work to fight against beauty standards.