I wrote this almost 10 years ago, and now, in 2025, I think beauty standards definitely still have something to answer for when it comes to mental health.
Now we have Instagram and Tiktok When you add the power of AI to that list, it’s pretty scary how technology can make you look a certain way. In fact, the BBC even reported in 2023 that AI may even help you change your profile picture to get a job.
To think it used to be magazines and magazines only!
Beauty in the Western world
Beauty standards are a type of look that the Western world tells us. It’s a way of saying “this is what’s beautiful and healthy”. It can affect lots of people, but often young women and people of color. I know I’ve felt:
- too pale (not tanned enough)
- too tall (but my BMI is healthy)
- too freckly (I got from my mom, so out of my control – but I’ve learnt to love them)
- too skinny arms (so I started balancing strength training and running)
- too bushy eyebrows (so I started plucking them after being bullied in school)
- too knock-kneed (so I’d cover them up and often run in the early morning when there’s not many about!)
We get exposed to society’s beauty standards in all ways; social media, magazines, billboards, TV programmes, celebrities, and influencers too. It’s all become a way of life, and it can really affect mental health. For example, people subject to these beauty standards can feel insufficient, and it’s a wonder this affects mental health; issues like depression and anxiety going skyhigh.
How does beauty standards affect mental health?
Society paints a picture for us to live up to. Eat the right things, do your exercise and you’re the perfect citizen, health wise. That message, as we all know, is plastered across the billboards of social media in the form of Instagram pictures, tweets and Facebook posts.
I would love to ask society about the ‘healthy lifestyle message’ that is shoved down our throats. The term itself is so broad that it’s almost vague and we lose what it really means to be ‘healthy’.
Instagram and beauty standards
Being a keen Instagram user, it is on a daily basis that I find myself scrolling through endless posts of ‘how to be the best, fittest and healthiest you that you can’. My screen is filled with delicious looking smoothies full of fruit and coconut milk rammed into jars that you see on Pinterest, captioned “So much goodness, crazy to miss”.
Unavoidable and sometimes overused, hashtags are at the heart of most captions. They highlight what are ‘#bodygoals’ and even show us images of ‘#perfection’.
Lots of fitness lovers post screenshots of their ‘Summer Body Workout’.
But hang on..
As motivating as that can be and means to be, it is not uncommon for it to have the exact opposite result. How can we think positively about getting fit when what we are faced with is a photo-shopped picture of what we should look like.
I’m sure you saw the magazines of young models posing in their summer wear and will soon see the Christmas outfits advertised that will suck the life out of you but are the must-wear clothes.
Society’s concept of having a healthy lifestyle is an important message and yes, I do wholeheartedly agree with it. But please, note my word use here: ‘healthy’ and ‘lifestyle’. It is by these words I stand, and only these. Allow me to break down exactly what I mean.
What does ‘healthy’ mean?
If by ‘healthy’, you mean a skinny, rib-visible size 4 whose poor stomach rumbles, I dread to think what you label as ‘unhealthy’.
Why does food and exercise have to be seen in such a negative light?
‘Get your summer body now!’
‘How to lose weight fast!’
‘Get fit quick!’
On the surface, not one of those is positive. I acknowledge that they all have good intentions of encouraging us to be healthy but I would love to read a title that doesn’t infer that I need someone else’s body to look good. I want my own body.
The bottom line about healthy
I have my own body and that’s the bottom line. If you’re doing some exercise every day, whether it be walking to the train station or going to the gym, and you’re eating a well-balanced diet with the occasional treat, then you have my vote. I agree with you that we shouldn’t just eat, drink and exercise with the purpose of losing weight.
Let’s enjoy eating a diverse and wonderful range of foods that nourish our amazing human bodies and exercise because we love our bodies.
Influencers encourage visitors to ‘follow’ and ‘subscribe’ to their protein shake delivery service, or risk missing out on the latest way to ‘get fit fast’. It is to those people I ask:
Do I really need to take protein shakes on a regular basis to be ‘healthy’?
Or can I just eat a balanced diet that will feed me with the right-sized portions of the various food groups I need?
“This will make you think twice about your sugar intake” – A Facebook article I saw years ago.
I didn’t even read the rest of this Facebook article when I scanned my eyes over the title. “Why?” I hear you ask. Well, I am certainly not the healthiest person on the planet nor do I know anywhere near enough about health to lecture anyone. But I, like you, am a tired victim of our culture’s preaching.
If I had a penny for every time I came into contact with the ‘GET FIT’ shouts, be it on social media, through TV or magazines full of models, I would have more than enough money to buy one of the fitness companies myself, not just the £2.99 mag I can afford to splash out on.
I chose not to read the article because I felt content with my diet and I didn’t think I needed an article written by someone working for Facebook to tell me I need to re-consider what I eat.
Health is important, but it shouldn’t rammed down our throats
I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, saying we shouldn’t be thinking about our health because it is clearly pretty important to every one of us. The science behind the programmes we see is well-intentioned, giving us the most up to date facts about what foods are good or bad for us and what the recommended weekly exercise is.
TV programmes, magazines and so forth all form a massive part of an ongoing, never ending cycle that we, as citizens, are in with the rest of society. We, naturally and probably wisely, believe this new information that we are bombarded with and do try to think twice about our own diets.
If we are being told that we need to think again about our health, all I am asking is that surely it’s worth thinking twice about what exactly we are defining ‘healthy’ as.
As someone who walks to most places, runs a couple of times a week and tries to get in her five a day, I would go as far as to say that, yes, I think I am of acceptable health. Don’t get me wrong, I am wondering what smoothie I can make next, but here’s my point. Despite the little insight I have just provided of how I squeeze my exercise in, I don’t think that’s enough for society.
Am I really not ‘healthy’?
The question that runs through my mind is this. Just because I am not the perfect waist size, protein-shake-drinking, vitamin-pill-taking or kale-eating skeleton, does that really mean I’m not ‘healthy’? Can anyone ever be healthy enough? Will society ever be satisfied of our health and fitness levels?
Personally, I don’t think it will, regardless of how ever many vegetables we consume, there’ll always be a better, magic tablet you can take. Society is defining the ‘healthy’ that we live by, but it’s a blurry line.
