Author: Amy Nicole
We have all heard the common phrases, “embrace your own beauty” or “love the skin you’re in,” but with mainstream society’s close minded standard of beauty you might find yourself second guessing your individual and unique beauty.
Social media went crazy last week when Lil Kim posted a selfie on Instagram with an obvious altered facial appearance and a lighter skin tone. Some of the comments from people were very harsh. She was accused of wanting to be white and many people expressed that they felt she looked better before her surgery.
In a 2000 interview with Newsweek Lil Kim admitted to having low-self esteem and had the following to say about her poor self-image:
“Guys always cheated on me with women who were European-looking. You know, the long-hair type. Really beautiful women that left me thinking, ‘How I can I compete with that?’ Being a regular black girl wasn’t good enough.”
I sympathize with Lil Kim because I thought she was an attractive woman before the surgery and I hate that she let other people’s opinion influence her. The whole “beauty is within” statement is hard to swallow when we live in a society that caters to physical appearance and youth. I feel like it’s especially harder in society for women. A lot of rappers contradict themselves when they refer to women as queens in some songs and in other songs will refer to them as basic if they don’t resemble picture perfect women like on television. It’s hard to feel beautiful when the definition of what constitutes beauty looks nothing like you.
No one knows this about me except for my twin sister but 4 years ago when I was on a trip in Dallas I got fillers under my eyes. If you’re not familiar with a filler, it is a liquid substance that is injected into the skin with a needle to help add volume to a specific area of your body. Most people who get fillers are women who are 40 plus but I was in my 20s! Crazy right?! Well the reason I got them in the first place is because I have small natural bags under my eyes. The crazy thing is that my bags are really only noticeable to me. I didn’t really have a problem with the way that I looked but I guess I was looking to have this flawless appearance like the women I saw daily on television.
Well to make a long story short my experience was horrible. My face reacted badly to the fillers and it swelled up. The area under my eyes ended up turning white and I looked like a geisha doll literally! The scary thing about fillers is that it can sometimes take months or years for the substance to completely dissolve from your body. I was horrified because I thought my face would be frozen like that forever. Lucky for me I was working at a college at that time and the school was closed for a week for spring break. By the time the break was over my face was back to normal. After that experience I said I would never try any type of facial altering again. It’s just too risky because sometimes some changes can become permanent.
I think what a lot of people including myself struggle with the most is getting too stuck in the physical. Dwelling on physical appearance is very materialistic especially since your looks can easily change. You could get in a bad accident which could permanently alter your appearance; not to mention as we get older what we look like is going to change so we shouldn’t base our self-worth solely on our appearance. In essence we are all spiritual beings so we should start to look more at internal beauty as opposed to external.
Photo Credit: The Blacker The Berry