“Makes Me Physically Cringe”: 30 People List Beauty Standards That Need To Retire
Interview With Expert
If an alien from another planet took a scroll through Instagram, they might assume that nearly all humans have the same facial features and body type. Tiny noses, slim waists, large lips and hollow cheeks seem to be on trend at the moment. But we all know that there are billions of us on this planet, representing billions of different ways to be beautiful.
Reddit users have recently been calling out current beauty standards that they can’t seem to wrap their minds around, so we’ve gathered some of their thoughts below. Enjoy scrolling through this list that will remind you just how arbitrary these standards are, and keep reading to find an interview with Valerie Monroe of How Not to F*ck Up Your Face!
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Those long fake nails.
I dont know a single dude that thinks its attractive.
I understand painting your nails, or leaving them to be a little longer, but those talons that people walk around with just make me feel yucky.
Spoiler alert: not everything women do is to attract "a single dude."
Giant eyelashes that will make you take flight if you flutter them fast enough.
Striving_Hermit:
My husband hates the long fake eyelash look, and he asked me why women wear them when men don't particularly like them.
I thought it would be funny, so I told him it's not about impressing men but about asserting one's dominance on another woman.
He believed me and now tells all his friends that it's an 'alpha-female' thing, hahaha.
ANY fake eyelashes! I do not like them at all! Gives me a sort of "plastic doll" vibe...
What people do to their lips is wild to me.
Εspecially because it's not customized and everyone looks exactly the same as the next person
To gain more insight on this topic, we reached out to Valerie Monroe. Valerie was formerly a beauty director at O, The Oprah Magazine, for nearly 16 years, and has since created the newsletter How Not to F*ck Up Your Face, which provides "philosophical and practical advice for anyone who’s ever looked into a mirror." She was also kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda about beauty standards and where they came from in the first place.
"Actually, there are lots of kinds of beauty standards, which vary depending on the culture that produced them," Valerie noted. "What we see in the West is mostly a Eurocentric beauty standard, which, for women prizes light, clear skin, long hair, light, wide-set eyes, a small nose and chin and a small, full mouth. It's biased against variations of that standard and presents an impossible ideal for most women. Interestingly, it also mimics the features of a baby."
Excessive makeup. When people put so much c**p on they look like they are wearing a mask, not a face.
My wife always said the best makeup job is one where men cannot tell you have on any makeup.
Stupid eyebrows that look like perfectly angled stencils is a shade way too dark for their complexion. Like blond girls with 2 black geometric boomerangs on her forehead.
RelevantLie-2297:
Thick eyebrows, like caterpillars crawling across your forehead.
I told my friend she’d drawn her eyebrows on too high - she look surprised 😁
We were also curious about how beauty standards change over time. "There are variations in the Eurocentric beauty standards mentioned above, but they're minor," Valerie noted. "For example, Coco Chanel introduced the acceptability of tanning the skin, as opposed to maintaining a pale complexion, which had been a sign of wealth and privilege."
"After she accidentally became tanned on the Riviera, tanning became a sign of wealth and privilege," she went on to explain. "Around the same time, women began cutting off their long hair into boyish bobs, which became standard for a certain class. But I believe the impossible Eurocentric ideal has persisted in spite of recent efforts to include more cultural variation."
The fact that a huge portion of the world's population has successfully brainwashed itself into thinking that the Kardashians/Jenners are the epitome of beauty to the point that many are willing to imitate whatever moronic thing they do to their bodies is just wild to me.
InsomniacYogi:
It’s called the 'Instagram face' and it’s a legit phenomenon that is being studied by psychologists. It’s doing so much harm to people’s self-esteem and self-concept. We aren’t all supposed to look the same.
I saw a YouTube vid by a plastic surgeon who showed examples of what happens to young girls getting fillers. (AT SIXTEEN?! WTF FOR?!) I was shocked to see how OLD every single one of ‘em looks! There was a point when Kylie Jenner was traffic-stoppingly beautiful (albeit waaay old), but she’s apparently zoomed past that and straight into “desperate divorce trying to look young.” And she’s just 26! She looked 46 in the photos. I wish these poor things could get a grip. 😞
Any plastic surgery that makes random women look like they're all related. At one point we'll all start to think thin lips and big noses are hot solely because they'll stand out in a sea of copy/paste people.
Men that have soo much muscle. Obviously it’s very attractive to be in shape but I’m just not attracted to men that have arms the size of two watermelons with the fattest veins ever popping out of their arm. And I also feel like men with a lot of muscle tend to look shorter.
I think men that still have like some abs and some muscle but aren’t looking like the Incredible Hulk are the most attractive.
As far as the best way to fight these arbitrary beauty standards, Valerie says "not complying with or falling for the beauty marketing that preys on our yearning and our desire to compete for an ideal that's unattainable for most of us anyway—in other words, ignoring the constant messaging we get that we're not pretty enough, thin enough, young enough, etc." can help. "The best way to combat limiting beauty standards is to ignore them," she added.
My wife works at a tanning salon. She has a few customers that literally get a tan every day. One of them has already gone through cancer treatment, that didn't stop her from continuing. I'm convinced a few of them are dealing with mental health issues.
I’m from Stockholm. A lot of girls, particularly from rich areas, like to use so much fake tan that they are orange, and bleach their hair from what was usually dark blonde to platinum blonde. Then they style it to make it voluminous (which is easy to do because their hair is dead from all the dyeing) and apply lots of make-up, which typically includes black mascara or fake lashes. So, a lot of girls here bear a striking resemblance to Miss Piggy. There’s nothing wrong with looking like this, I just don’t understand it.
Overlined lips. Stop. We can see where you're lip really is. It just looks really unfortunate.
Valerie also urges readers to resist becoming consumed with trying to meet these unattainable standards. "Beauty standards are especially pernicious because they're inextricably tied to the images we see on social media, WHICH AREN'T REAL," she told Bored Panda.
"That means that meeting today's standards of beauty is impossible. It's much more productive and healthier to learn how to see yourself without objectification, which will allow you to see yourself the way you see other people, without constantly scanning your face for flaws," Valerie says. "Then beauty standards will lose their meaning for you... And life will take on more."
If you'd like to hear more wise words from Valerie on this topic, as well as many others, be sure to check out her newsletter How Not to F*ck Up Your Face!
Dentist: So what shade of veneer would you like?
Veneer patient: I'd like refrigerator white please.
Those grossly buff guys on all dating shows. They all look like Gaston from beauty and the beast and I hate it so much I don’t even watch those shows but the lack of variety is appalling.
I like my guys squishier, for cuddles! Like it is good to take of your body, but there's a balance.
Contouring noses until they look like a line and a dot. Will never make sense to me.
The overly sculpted beard trend. You known when the beard is trimmed and looks like it was outlined in concealer? Neatening up is nice but a sudden pale line as a border around your stubble... looks like it was airbrushed on and not touched up.
And the hair on their head is done the same way, so they end up looking like a Ken doll...
Ski slope/button nose. they are cute but not everyone’s face is meant to have that type of nose and it doesn’t look good on everyone and it sucks seeing so many young girls on tiktok get nose jobs and all have the exact same nose.
Here’s another one. I had the tip of my nose modified when I was 29, and I dearly wish the surgeon had warned me that as my nose continues to grow, it’ll not look good at some point. Nowadays, when you look straight at me, you can see up my nostrils. Argh. I hate it. 😰 I’m gonna leave it, though, as I don’t wanna be one of those having multiple surgeries trying to fix the horror created by the previous surgery. Anyway, back to the topic: they’re gonna regret their nose work at some point.
Super skinny My favourite part of my wife, (besides the obvious) is the small push out of baby fat on her waistline just under her belly button. She’s had two kids and that little piece there to me is absolutely dynamite.
Idk if I’d call this a standard but the hair style of “shaved all around with like six inches in a small patch on top” has never looked good to me on men or women. It’s not a hair style I really understand.
Next to my work we have a barber who does all that kind of hair. Believe most people who go there are a dumb as they look. Some go twice a week. I (m55) have long hair, way past my shoulders normally in a pony tail I love the looks of disgust I get from the guys queuing up.
Moustaches on men are popular now, I think they're ugly especially on young men.
People in India will choose an unattractive fair skinned girl over a darker skinned girl who’s objective beautiful. This is why they get better treatment in Hollywood than Bollywood. Fair skin is a MASSIVELY inflated beauty standard and people ruin their perfectly good skin over it.
There are some things that are objectively beautiful based on studies: Teeth, Specific Facial Features, Leanness, etc. There isn’t much evidence to support that fairer skin is more beautiful.
Back in my parents’ time, people didn’t drink tea because it would make them dark skinned. We have an entire market dedicated to whitening the skin with cream
And there's also an entire market dedicated to make your skin tanned. People just yearn to look different and stand out from what is common in their society as a sign of beauty.
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I noticed that visiting India with my girlfriend. Blue eyes, fair skin, freckles. During a bus ride, a stunning 8 YO girl coming back from school spent 30mn trip backwards her eyes wide opened gaping at her repeating "You... so beautiful !" Made my girlfriend a bit uncomfortable and sad because the kid was genuinely a very pretty little girl but very self conscious about her skin (for no reason in our opinions) Just to clear the doubts, she never had that kind of attention in Europe
Next time compliment too. On my last trip in China, I just met a random little girland her mother just chilling out in a city park. The little girl was in awe with my blue eyes, white skin anddark-blond hair.Her mother told me, she thought, I was some princess from her fairy-books. I thanked, and told her mother to tell her, that her bright brown eyes, gorgeous hair make her the most perfect princess I ever met. I'll never forget that huge joyful smile on her littl, cute face.
Load More Replies... Well, no, of course there’s no ‘evidence’. Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder. Besides, standards constantly change across time and culture. It strikes me as odd that OP should think ‘facial features’ can be measured objectively in terms of beauty.
Because there are studies across cultures that show that. Even babies notice more conventionally attractive faces as shown in numerous studies.
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Meanwhile, pale skinned people go to tanning salons. Beauty standarts are weird.
True. Like people with curls wanting straight hair and people with straight hair often want curls..
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You should come to Nigeria and see the lengths women go through to get lighter skin. Its disturbing to say the least.
Do they use the face creams that contain mercury? Tremors, headaches, impaired cognition, kidney failure, but looking a bit paler as they slowly die and/or go insane.
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African women (including my ex) spend a ton of money on skin lightener, despite them being incredibly bad for their skin. Because even in Africa, people will lighter skin have higher status than people with darker skin. It used to be that darker skin signified people that worked outside in the hot sun, i.e. peasants. That might be a holdover in many cultures.
It's true for other cultures, too. I'm Scandinavian/Slovakian, and I inherited olive skin from my Slovakian mom. My very fair cousins in Denmark had thought I got my skin colour from 'working outside'—no, it just looks like that!
Load More Replies... We always think that only white people discriminate others with darker skin, but thats not at all true. In India and other darker skinned countrys, discrimination on darker skinned people is maybe even harder. The fairer, the better
You do know white skin is not a race? Many races have white skin, Asians for example. Caucasians who come in a wide range of colors.
Load More Replies... When I was young everyone wanted to be tan. I'm naturally really fair. They would throw rocks at me on my way home to "scare the ghost" so maybe just let us have our time to be beautiful. Someone will tell us we are all wrong again soon enough.
When I was 4yo I thought that if I got enough freckles I could have the same beautiful caramel colored skin that my friends had. I didn't understand that they had African heritage and I just looked like a bad connect the dots picture! 😳
Fair skin is not an advantage. It burns so easily! I can't imagine wanting to be people if I had some decent melanin. I also want curly hair instead of straight, so go figure.
The country that - depending on who you ask - either doesn't have a caste system because it was outlawed many years ago - or - absolutely has a thriving caste system. And real life stuff I hear and read suggests the latter, though hopefully it is marginally better than decades ago.
Funny, the lighter skinned always want darker skin - hence fake tanning and tanning lotions. I think really dark skin is absolutely gorgeous!
Nyakim Gatwick is arguably one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.
Had to google cause the name was familiar. I agree with you, very beautiful indeed. :)
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Fair skin has nothing to do with color, Very dark skinned women can still have an airiness or a softness of the skin that gives it the "fair" quality. ever see Gabrielle Union, she has darker skin but still has a fairness to it. But yes other than that little knit pick you are right it's racist and not right that lighter skinned girls get more attention.
Geez man, it's about how an entire culture sees beauty. Like it or not, the lighter the skin color is, the more beautiful is percieved in indian culture. No need for you to go in a racist rant against white people, because they have nothing to do with it. And if overnight, all the white people, let's say-disappear, who is your next target? The light brown taned people?
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Colourist unfortunately is a poison and a cancer in ethnic communities
Buccal fat removal.
loxagos_snake:
Ugh, this one makes me physically cringe.
Like, you are literally removing a baseline later of fat that is supposed to be there, and AFAIK it's f**king permanent.
I understand being overweight and wanting to get rid of excess fat, but a little roundness around the cheeks is generally considered attractive and makes you look youthful.
I’ve always had VERY sharp cheekbones. A b****y hairdresser, hearing someone compliment them, said “You’ll look like a skeleton when you’re old.” He didn’t get a tip, but he was right: I look like a Biafra victim. I’d LOVE to have some fat injected into my buccal area now. Wait til these girls start to age and random strangers offer ‘em money and say “Here; get yourself a sandwich.” It’s not glamorous when you’re old (though granted, you can’t tell young people anything. I know, because I was one of those who wouldn’t listen to someone who’d been through it.) (If any of us ever listened to old folks, we’d never have sunbathed or started smoking.)
People who wear clothes that are too small. Just wear clothes that fit. You'll look a lot better.
I'm not so hard on this because it can be people gaining weight without the means to renew their wardrobe.
Liked in my case, but foot binding in china. Insane amounts of lifelong pain inflicted on children from a young age, just to have the hope of marrying into a better family.
this is from long ago, the Chinese version of corsets. we don't do that now. its abuse and illegal if you try doing that to your daughter. and actually, we all think its pretty gross, like ew wtf
Laminated, combed-up, thick a*s eyebrows. Why.
KrustyKohn:
Yes! This is the one I was going to say. It is such a strange beauty trend to me that I've noticed in the past couple years. Granted, I do come from a time where eyebrows were plucked into a high arch. I think people should just leave their eyebrows be for the most part. I can understand plucking, waxing, or trimming very bushy eyebrows or a uni-brow, but combing the hairs straight up and plastering them to your forehead just doesn't look good.
Why are so many women obsessed with eyebrows and lashes right now!? It’ll be nice when that trend goes away. They all have the same Groucho Marx brows and Vegas showgirls lashes…yuck!
Overly perfect veneers.
HeathenHumanist:
One of my Facebook friends already has good teeth but then she went and got veneers. Now her teeth are just...too big and too BRIGHT.
The entire face filled drastically to eliminate all wrinkles, making a person's face look like it belongs to a body that weighs 50 pounds more.
Ohhh. For medical reason i've been there. Botox in the forehead and neck etc. works against migraines... SH!!T it hurts- i don't miss the 31 neddles...
Circumcision…….a gross and unethical thing that needs so stop
And this should count because in the U.S. most are done purely for cosmetic and not religious reasons….. not that either excuse should be considered reasonable
Don’t forget, back in the day most women were told that it was healthier for their children to them circumcised and easier for them to clean themselves when they get older. That there were germs and other things under the hood that would be difficult to get to. We now know that it’s not true. It’s not that difficult to clean, it’s not healthier to be circumcised. There’s no health benefit. And there are men who wish they had not been circumcised and are now using a technique to make it look like they have a hood now.
Note: this post originally had 46 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
This list is appalling and the comments under the pictures aren't any better.
BoredPanda has sadly become a pretty really mean and toxic place anymore. If you can believe it, this site actually started as a "family-friendly" website that posted artwork from new artists and posted fun articles about uplifting news. It truly frustrates me that BoredPanda staff have writer and editor in their titles when they just copy-and-paste nasty stuff like this.
Load More Replies... Wow, what a disgusting article BoredPanda. What the hell is up with this site anymore? How about we stop objectifying people's bodies?
I thought the premise of this article was noting objectifying trends that are otherwise pointless?
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it's kinda weird how comments against women are a lot higher ranked than comments against men. the first comment I saw about men in this post genuinely surprised me because I wasn't expecting to see any directly against men, only things like "silly women and their silly makeup" and gender neutral things
I always thought bored panda was a safe space because people were mostly kind to each other and non judgemental. Until I read that article. It's vile.
BoredPanda hasn't been a safe spot for over three years. Ever since the pandemic this site has turned into a really toxic place. BoredPanda used to pride itself on being a family-friend site, now they censor all of their users yet still have some of the worst trolls I've ever seen on a site. They also no longer write their own content and copy-and-paste listicles (without editing) from Reddit. It's pretty sad. What's even sadder as articles like this bring in the trolls.
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This was really toxic. Those person's fake lips hurting me? No? None of my business. That person bulked up beyond understanding; Is that hurting me, or hindering me from living my own best life? No? Then I have zero say. I can silently judge and make all the assumptions I want on why they made those choices, but at the end if the day? I still won't know what to make for supper, and the laundry keeps piling up.
Well I think that the issue is that if nobody speaks up, you can get these kinds of selfsustaining feed back loops, where a lot of people do some horrible things to their body, because they think that other people will then find it more attractive, when in fact it not like that at all. If you want to modify your body because it makes you feel better that is one thing, but if a girl get some big fake boobs, and gets all the trouble (back pain, difficulty in finding clothes that fit, them bouncing around and tugging on her body when she runs etc.) and the large pricetag that comes with them, only to be disapointed that she still cannot find a partner who like a living plastic-fantastic-barbie-doll, then I think that she would be better of if someone had corrected her by telling her their honest opinion about what they find attractive and what they are not so fond of. ...and the same goes for the girls who starve themselves to death, due to a misguided ideal that the skinnier they get, the more attractive they will become, when infact most men like some curves, and don't find the walking skeleton look particularly sexy.
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I mean, all of these sound more like personal preferences. Because what one person may find criinge, someone else might find pretty.
A f*****g horrible article! But that's expected on BP. Y'all either need to post better stuff,or just shut down this damn website all together.
bi·zarre - adjective/ very strange or unusual, especially so as to cause interest or amusement. This article didn't quite reach the low bar of bizarre, but they did manage to air out the judgements of shallow grumps. Except for 2 of them that thought foot binding and circumcision are somehow elective surgeries on the same level of butt lifts and nose jobs.
I am surprissed that those earlope expanding earrings is not mentioned in here. It was clearly a fashion thing, and making permanent changes to your body just to fit into a fashion trend is in my honest opinion a stupid thing to do (what are you gonna do when that look becomes outdated and unpopular?). To be honest I have always thought they looked awful, and considered it be part of a culture that was fit for native tribes, not white people in an office job. ...and the same goes for tribal or other types of fashion tatoos. It is ok to get inked with something that means something to you, e.g. your children's names (though I would never use my body as a canvas myself), but stay away from the "cheap" fashion stuff, because you couldn't come up with something better. But that was just my personal opinion, it is your body and you can do what you want with it.
I'd agree with all of it. Huge lips, eyebrows, fake lashes, nails, the BBL thing is just nuts. It's almost all to imitate the Kardashians, which is appalling.
Whats also funny is the fact people can do what they want with their body, without needing the backlash
Load More Replies... Aside from a handful of good ones, most of these seem to be in favor of beauty standards more than against them...
Nobody expects your support, dude. Not when it comes to anyone's body
Load More Replies... This list is appalling and the comments under the pictures aren't any better.
BoredPanda has sadly become a pretty really mean and toxic place anymore. If you can believe it, this site actually started as a "family-friendly" website that posted artwork from new artists and posted fun articles about uplifting news. It truly frustrates me that BoredPanda staff have writer and editor in their titles when they just copy-and-paste nasty stuff like this.
Load More Replies... Wow, what a disgusting article BoredPanda. What the hell is up with this site anymore? How about we stop objectifying people's bodies?
I thought the premise of this article was noting objectifying trends that are otherwise pointless?
Load More Replies... it's kinda weird how comments against women are a lot higher ranked than comments against men. the first comment I saw about men in this post genuinely surprised me because I wasn't expecting to see any directly against men, only things like "silly women and their silly makeup" and gender neutral things
I always thought bored panda was a safe space because people were mostly kind to each other and non judgemental. Until I read that article. It's vile.
BoredPanda hasn't been a safe spot for over three years. Ever since the pandemic this site has turned into a really toxic place. BoredPanda used to pride itself on being a family-friend site, now they censor all of their users yet still have some of the worst trolls I've ever seen on a site. They also no longer write their own content and copy-and-paste listicles (without editing) from Reddit. It's pretty sad. What's even sadder as articles like this bring in the trolls.
Load More Replies... This was really toxic. Those person's fake lips hurting me? No? None of my business. That person bulked up beyond understanding; Is that hurting me, or hindering me from living my own best life? No? Then I have zero say. I can silently judge and make all the assumptions I want on why they made those choices, but at the end if the day? I still won't know what to make for supper, and the laundry keeps piling up.
Well I think that the issue is that if nobody speaks up, you can get these kinds of selfsustaining feed back loops, where a lot of people do some horrible things to their body, because they think that other people will then find it more attractive, when in fact it not like that at all. If you want to modify your body because it makes you feel better that is one thing, but if a girl get some big fake boobs, and gets all the trouble (back pain, difficulty in finding clothes that fit, them bouncing around and tugging on her body when she runs etc.) and the large pricetag that comes with them, only to be disapointed that she still cannot find a partner who like a living plastic-fantastic-barbie-doll, then I think that she would be better of if someone had corrected her by telling her their honest opinion about what they find attractive and what they are not so fond of. ...and the same goes for the girls who starve themselves to death, due to a misguided ideal that the skinnier they get, the more attractive they will become, when infact most men like some curves, and don't find the walking skeleton look particularly sexy.
Load More Replies... I mean, all of these sound more like personal preferences. Because what one person may find criinge, someone else might find pretty.
A f*****g horrible article! But that's expected on BP. Y'all either need to post better stuff,or just shut down this damn website all together.
bi·zarre - adjective/ very strange or unusual, especially so as to cause interest or amusement. This article didn't quite reach the low bar of bizarre, but they did manage to air out the judgements of shallow grumps. Except for 2 of them that thought foot binding and circumcision are somehow elective surgeries on the same level of butt lifts and nose jobs.
I am surprissed that those earlope expanding earrings is not mentioned in here. It was clearly a fashion thing, and making permanent changes to your body just to fit into a fashion trend is in my honest opinion a stupid thing to do (what are you gonna do when that look becomes outdated and unpopular?). To be honest I have always thought they looked awful, and considered it be part of a culture that was fit for native tribes, not white people in an office job. ...and the same goes for tribal or other types of fashion tatoos. It is ok to get inked with something that means something to you, e.g. your children's names (though I would never use my body as a canvas myself), but stay away from the "cheap" fashion stuff, because you couldn't come up with something better. But that was just my personal opinion, it is your body and you can do what you want with it.
I'd agree with all of it. Huge lips, eyebrows, fake lashes, nails, the BBL thing is just nuts. It's almost all to imitate the Kardashians, which is appalling.
Whats also funny is the fact people can do what they want with their body, without needing the backlash
Load More Replies... Aside from a handful of good ones, most of these seem to be in favor of beauty standards more than against them...
Nobody expects your support, dude. Not when it comes to anyone's body
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