The Price To Be Beautiful

With natural beauty trends sweeping the internet, how much are you willing to give up to achieve it?

By Phoenix Simpson

The secret to natural beauty has been revealed: all it takes is a ten step skincare routine, dewy makeup, a slicked back bun, and an abundance of time. At least that is what countless influencers claim every day by creating content on how to put your time and money into being ‘effortlessly beautiful’. They digitally hawk products and services by subtly incorporating them into their videos while never forgetting to mention that the link is in their bio.

Facials, hair appointments, nail appointments, lash extensions and fitness classes are all a crucial part of the starter pack to look glamorous. All of these services have to be penciled into a woman’s schedule if she wants to reach a baseline level of beauty. The right to walk out the door without wearing a full face of makeup and still adhere to the rigid beauty standard must be earned.

All levels of beauty require effort and maintenance. If one doesn’t maintain themselves at all, they fail to even reach the socially acceptable minimum. When people ask questions about how celebrities can so easily appear beautiful with seemingly no makeup or effort, they lack an understanding of the true scope of maintenance the beauty standard requires.

A person with the means for beauty will be able to wake up looking beautiful, as the abundance of work has already been put in. No matter what some try to pass off as natural beauty, it is not possible to reach the beauty standard without an extremely high level of maintenance. This charade of low maintenance beauty culminates into an aesthetic popularly dubbed, ‘clean girl’.

The ‘clean girl lifestyle’ is sold to consumers by pitching the idea that one can constantly appear put together and effortlessly beautiful. The ‘clean girl’ has become so fleshed out that just the name itself can evoke an image of a girl getting ready in her bright marble bathroom with her Amazon bubble headband. She smells like vanilla and takes her sweet time using hundreds of dollars worth of beauty products all to appear natural before she puts on her Skims dupe and tackles the day.

Yet, the ‘clean girl aesthetic’ has been appropriated and commodified from its initial roots. The staple features of this look, specifically the slicked back hair and gold hoops, were pioneered by black and brown women decades ago. While they were mocked and ridiculed relentlessly for this style, the moment white creators decided to adopt it and sell it off as a new trend, they were praised and amplified. These creators are making a ton of money after stealing the look while the true originators are still unable to reap the rewards.

While the idea of a less aggressive beauty look resonates with many, the hidden cost of this full glam alternative is less palatable. The goal post has been moved further to a beauty standard that is harder to obtain for the general public. Women are being sold a solution that only makes the problem increasingly worse.

Liberty Phoenix Ackerman, a licensed cosmetologist, grapples with her love for natural beauty and the problems it can create. Ackerman states,“The problem occurs when social media deceives viewers, for example, showing a make-up look as natural when in fact, it’s the same amount of make up as a full beat just applied a different way with different techniques. That sets an unrealistic beauty standard—because it’s not realistic.”

When the beauty standard required a full face of makeup, one could achieve it through technical makeup skills. Contouring the nose out of existence, overlining the lips, and creating elaborate eyeshadow looks were all measures that one could take to reach the beauty standard of the time if the powers that be did not grant them with those features at birth.

Now the armor has been stripped away and women are left with trends that only focus on their natural features. In an ideal world, emphasis would be placed on loving one’s god given face but that isn’t very profitable for the multi-billion dollar beauty industry. It requires consumers to never be fully satisfied with how they look naturally as they sell an, in many cases, unachievable goal.

Boobs and butts go in and out of style, heroin chic and slim-thick wax and wane, makeup becomes harsher and lighter but change is the only consistent factor.

The beauty standard needs to constantly reinvent itself to leave women stuck in a cycle of playing catch up to fix their flaws. Conveniently, the solution always seems to be only a purchase away.

This has led many women to seek out cosmetic surgery to enhance their features so that the skin tint and creme blush will suffice. When it’s taboo to look like you tried, a sneakier method is the only acceptable option. Cosmetic enhancements are sold as the magic answer to this dilemma, allowing customers to pick out what they or others deem their biggest insecurities and utilize syringes and scalpels to correct them. It finally sells the ability to manufacture natural beauty.

Hoards of people online claim that plastic surgery can be an empowering tool to increase your status in the world and gain access to privilege only beauty can provide. The industry feeds the masses propaganda that women are doing it for themselves or that it is an empowering act as defenses against criticism about their marketing. If women weren’t bombarded by messaging stating what is wrong with them every single day, how many would risk their lives for a BBL?

The constant demand to change oneself, which requires never-ending effort, has led to some women escaping the rat race for beauty all together. Actress Julia Fox loudly proclaims to Perfect Magazine,“I want to be ugly at this point. Would that be the ultimate rebellion? For a woman not to be pleasant on the eye?” This unapologetic embrace of ugliness represents an exhaustion with the impossible demands and a lack of care for what corporations and influencers deem beautiful one minute to the next.

This approach is not accessible to everyone, especially marginalized groups, who are forced to conform to Eurocentric beauty standards to be treated with a basic level of respect. It is important though for those who are in a privileged position, to use it to reject Eurocentric beauty standards and trends that play into it.

There is no easy way to be beautiful as it requires sacrifice. Through pain, money, time or a mixture of all three, one can start the journey to finally reach beauty though the success rate is slim. It thrives on exclusivity and ensuring that only a select few are worthy of being deemed the crowning achievement.

Ideally, the beauty industry would revolutionize the way they operate and place emphasis on self-love—self-love doesn’t pay the beauty industry’s bills though so there will always be new ideals and aesthetics churned out at an alarming rate. Beauty will always come at a cost and everyone has to decide for themselves if it's worth it.