Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Ellen Degeneres, once when guest-starring on So You Think You Can Dance, said she found beauty hard to find because everyone in the city had the same doctor.
Though a subtle mockery of cosmetic surgery, there was a deep-seated truth in her witty remark.
Isn't it ironic that everyone wants to be unique, different and yet look the same as everybody else?
It's an unwritten recipe - small, straight noses, long eyelashes, heart-shaped faces - everybody wants the same so-called 'perfect' features.
We have become victims of society, trying to live up to irrational expectations.
Have you ever found clothes in a department store that perfectly fit you? My point exactly. Hardly anyone fits perfectly into the contours of those mass-marketed garments. It's because they're modelled to represent what society wants us to look like - a mould, a corset no less.
Their impossibly narrow waistlines and small shoulder lengths make us feel guilty, perhaps 'responsible' in some way - we hate our bodies, trying to conform to the chalked outline before us. We change, to try and fit within the restricting lines that seem to define 'beauty'.
Everything around us, magazines, photoshoots, billboards, advertisements and even mannequins reflect these ideals, remind us every waking minute of our lives, that we're not 'good enough'.
Interestingly, some time back, when we were browsing through Moda Mall and their exquisite, tres chic collection of the world's finest luxuries, I noticed that their mannequins seemed slightly different from the ones I'd seen in other front-windowed shops.
On closer inspection, I realised that the mannequins were in fact visibly thinner than their store counterparts. Yes. Fancier the clothes, higher the price, higher the expectations, higher bars are set.
The whole 'size zero' craze stemmed from such thinking and took advantage of women's insecurities. Nicky and Paris Hilton, Victoria Beckham, Lindsay Lohan - all disappearing and vanishing before the eyes of the paparazzi and the public, wilting away like yesterday's salad lettuce leaves. There are female beings out there with limbs that seem to be sticking out of them like oddly bent straws with their skin stretched faintly over the pile of rickety bones, they call their skeletal structure. Needless to say such an unhealthy body image ruined the lives of many anorexic females worldwide.
So what's the solution to this problem? Don't listen to them.
Shut your ears to the poisonous voice that tells you that you're not 'up-to-the-mark'. Because, that is not true.
Eat your cake and enjoy it. A little moderation and a healthy perspective of life go a long way.
Does it matter what size you are? Isn't it more rewarding to be a better person rather than a starved, malnourished, underweight product of society?
Famous adage though it is, it is fitting to bring it up once more - don't let the world change you, you change the world instead.
