Veronica Erickson

"Looking good" shouldn't always be rooted in conforming to beauty standards

Plenty of our social media platforms today have granted us easier accessibility to seek out what other people everywhere are doing and how they personally broadcast themselves to the rest of the world. Sometimes, however, it’s understandably exhausting scrolling through everyone’s Instagram or Facebook profiles and seeing how they appear to be both overwhelmingly physically attractive and financially well-off. It can leave us thinking, “Well gee! What am I not doing to get to that level in life? Why don’t I look like that? What ab exercises do they do so I can get mine to look like theirs?”. Thoughts like these are often rooted in some people not feeling good enough, thus feeling pressure to change their appearance in hopes to conform to expectations under the guise of ‘looking good’. But what exactly is ‘looking good’ anyway? That question may not seem tricky at all until we remember that the idea of looking good alone has many different definitions for everyone. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t universal standards set in place with historical context.