Women.
We do a lot of silly things, either to look pretty, or to feel good, or for some other reason (as if we even need one). In most cases, looking pretty equates to feeling good. This is not to say that women can't feel good about themselves without looking pretty, but I think we can all agree that if you look good, you probably feel good too.
After a day -- a very stereotypical one, I might add -- of shopping and riding around in a Volkswagen bug convertible with some girlfriends, I came home last night and I wanted to try out some new nail polish I bought called "Idaho Potato," which, to my surprise, wasn't very potato-ey at all; it was more of a dark rose. (For the record, I concluded that the color was similar to that of a red-skinned potato, so everything checked out.) I was painting my second coat of nail polish as my 12-year-old brother walked into the room and asked what I was doing. When I told him that I was painting another layer of lacquer on my nails on top of the first very precisely and delicately so as not to taint my cuticles, he burst into laughter, but not as much as he did when I told him I had to paint a clear coat on top of the previous two.
Last night I remembered how silly we females can be. Who even deemed nail polish a thing of beauty anyway? Colored varnish sitting on a bed of keratin, historically used as a substitute for gloves to cover up the dirt and grime underneath? And then there's fake eyelashes, tattooed eyeliner, shaven-off then drawn-on eyebrows, Oompa Loompa-like spray tans; the list goes on and on.
We women go such long lengths to inadvertently support the beauty industry. We may not realize it because we're so busy worrying about our own appearances to put down the eyelash curler and look around, but by putting so much time and money and effort into the makeup and the diet shakes, we are putting beauty on a pedestal far higher than it ever should be. Sure, we look beautiful, but at what cost? People laugh at the women who get outrageous H-cup boob jobs and see them as a joke, but this only dilutes the situation and makes it appear less serious than it really is. How many more little girls will unknowingly give up their childhood to strut a runway on TLC's show Toddlers and Tiaras? How many more meals will be skipped just for the sake of looking good in a mini skirt?
Women are ridiculous creatures. We're absolutely absurd. We let a bunch of people on television and in magazines tell us what's wrong with us. We let complete strangers dictate how we should look. Like I said, this stuff doesn't apply to all women, but no one can deny that it isn't happening. I applaud all of the campaigns that support "feeling good in your own skin," but to be frank, I don't see this problem getting better anytime soon -- just worse. But for all you ladies out there with H-cup breasts, I suggest you size down for your own good. It will be a good day on earth when one woman somewhere is content with a D-cup.
And don't even get me started on men.