Self-Serving Beauty Standards

Women very often try to improve their own position within the beauty hierarchy by changing the narrative around what beauty actually is.

And this is one of the most transparent psychological mechanisms that exists, except it has become so normalized that people barely even notice it anymore.

If a woman has very fair skin, suddenly the "most beautiful" women are exclusively extremely fair. If she is tall, shorter women begin to look "childish." If she is heavier, thinness becomes "unhealthy." If she is extremely thin, curves become "vulgar." If she does not have a conventionally attractive face, then "charisma" suddenly becomes more important than beauty. If she does not look youthful, then youthfulness becomes "boring" or "without character."

And it is very important to understand that people often do not do this consciously. Many women genuinely manage to convince themselves that whatever resembles them is objectively the most beautiful. Not because they carefully analyzed aesthetics, biology, culture, and human perception, but because it is psychologically almost impossible to live every day with the feeling that the ideal exists very far away from you. So the brain does what the brain does best: it adjusts reality in a way that allows the ego to function more comfortably.

And that is exactly why women constantly try to redefine beauty standards in ways that emotionally protect them. This becomes especially obvious once you notice how obsessed people are with finding "evidence" that the dominant standard is not actually dominant. If society overwhelmingly reacts to a certain type of beauty, a group of women will very quickly appear trying to find some niche, article, campaign, trend, or a few men online in order to prove that reality is supposedly completely different.

And then it begins: "Men actually prefer more natural women." "Real women have curves." "Nobody actually likes very tall women." "Women who are too beautiful are intimidating." "Men prefer women who look cute, not perfect." "Nobody is actually attracted to that Instagram look."

And of course, sometimes parts of this are true. Beauty is not completely mathematical. Cultural differences exist. Individual preferences exist. There are periods in history where certain features become more or less desirable. Of course not every man is attracted to exactly the same type of woman. But this is exactly where people become intellectually dishonest on purpose.

The existence of individual preference does not mean hierarchies do not exist. And people actually feel this very clearly. Women may not rationally admit who has the highest social capital in a given environment, but they feel how the world reacts. They feel what kind of face, body, or energy media has been pushing for decades. They feel the difference between a woman people merely "support" and a woman who produces genuine fascination.

And then they begin negotiating with that reality. Not necessarily by becoming more attractive, but by trying to change the definition of attractiveness itself.

And that is the part that becomes especially ridiculous. Women often imagine that publicly declaring a certain type of beauty superior somehow changes their own position within the hierarchy. As if the world will suddenly react differently because they decided that their particular features are actually "underrated," "natural," "elegant," "sophisticated," or "authentic."

But declaring someone who looks like you the most beautiful will not make you more beautiful. It will only reveal how desperately you are trying to emotionally reduce the distance between yourself and the ideal.

And that is exactly why women who feel genuinely secure in their attractiveness are much less likely to wage ideological wars around beauty standards. A woman who knows she objectively performs very well inside the social hierarchy rarely becomes obsessed with explaining why her exact features are "actually the best." That obsession appears much more often in women who are psychologically negotiating with their own position.

And that is why a huge portion of modern conversations about beauty have almost nothing to do with truth, freedom, or dismantling standards. They have far more to do with collective ego regulation. People want to live in a world where their own position feels safer. That is why they constantly try to stretch the definition of beauty just enough so they themselves can fit inside it more comfortably.

But the body often reacts more honestly than ideology does. That is why there is such a massive difference between what people publicly claim is beautiful and what actually fascinates, impresses, or destabilizes them when they encounter it.

And that is exactly why conversations about beauty become so emotional. Not because people are defending truth, but because they are defending themselves. And when someone aggressively tries to explain why the type of woman that most resembles them is supposedly superior, more sophisticated, or more "real," you are very often not looking at confidence. You are looking at psychological self-defense.

LuLu