Why am I not pretty enough? Should I diet or binge? I wish I looked like that. I'm never gonna be good enough. These are questions and statements young girls and women consider everyday. Society puts such  a big expectation for how women should look. Women and teens will take hours to put on makeup before they go anywhere. Teens will wake up at four in the morning to do their makeup, but school will not start until seven. If girls felt more comfortable in their own skin, there would be more love in the world.

I think it’s ridiculous when people say in the workplace there’s no discrimination against women. A study in the American Economic Review said women who wear make up can earn 30 percent more pay than non-makeup wearing women. So not only is society pushing women to wear makeup, companies are taking away money from those who don't wear makeup. There was another study in 2010 from the Queensland University of Technology that studied 6,500 Caucasian blonde women and found they earned greater than seven percent more than female employees with any other hair color. Both of those studies proved that sometimes a woman's paycheck can be determined by her looks. Sometimes women will get judged on their looks when getting hired or raises. Some studies have found out that obese women are even more likely to be discriminated against when it comes to either getting paid, hired, and raises.

Dieting, starving and binging and purging are very dangerous ways to lose weight . Many teens turn to those types to become "skinnier" and they end up becoming anorexic. Anorexia is a fear of being overweight, so therefore, to keep weight down they will starve themselves or over exercise. Author Diane Yancey wrote a book called Eating Disorders  about a couple of girls resorting to these ways to lose weight. The one character, Hannah, was attractive and popular, but the distorted image she had of her own body pushed her toward an eating disorder. Diane Yancey really points out that the pressure from girls’ families, friends, coaches and others - not to mention those applied by society itself - that to be successful and attractive you must have a certain body type. Eating disorders are a serious manifestation of real pressure that young people feel everyday. They can ruin your life, or even worse, end it. Eating disorders are as much mental as they are physical. It is crazy how much society has an effect on people and how they think about themselves or how they think in general. It’s a scary thought that girls and women put themselves in these positions. Every girl has a different body type. Every girl has a different mindset. It’s okay to be different.

Cosmetic industries (plastic surgery) are growing more and more. In 2005 the industry was worth an estimate of 750 million dollars.  Five years later the figure was estimated at 2.3 billion dollars. They are growing because women don't love themselves. Women increasingly crave beauty, and for good reason. We live in a world that tells pretty women they are ordinary, and ordinary-looking women they are ugly. Increasing radical “solutions” come to seem normal. I believe that a lot of women and teens  have mentors that they grow up with that are very beautiful, so  they gain a lot of attention in movies or television.  Even though the world is full of pretty and normal women, the world sees-the world of television, films, magazines and websites, which makes normal-looking teens and women think they are ugly. Then celebrities like Kylie Jenner, who know that teens look up to her and want to look like her, makes a makeup brand to earn millions. That, in my opinion, is manipulation, because of her  knowing that these young females look up to her. Instead of telling them to enhance their true beauty and to love themselves, she's persuading them to wear her makeup to hide their “flaws.” Not to mention that plastic surgery is very dangerous as well. Getting silicone or any chemical injected isn't very safe or healthy. It only takes one time for something to move the wrong way or break open and you could put yourself in a potentially deadly situation.

I am happy that some celebrities like Alicia Keys, who supports true beauty, stepped out and started a #Nomakeup trend. Alicia vowed after reading a meaningful essay on Lenny Tuesday to officially stop covering her face. “Not my face, not my mind, not my soul, not my thoughts, not my dreams, not my struggles, not my emotional growth. Nothing,” she said.  She's a great mentor because she wants to be known for her talent and passion, not her looks. She also decided to stop wearing makeup because it was a way to empower herself. I love the fact that she's spreading the message to women and teens to love themselves for being themselves. She also states, “I swear it is the strongest, most empowered, most free, and most honestly beautiful that I  have ever felt”. Sabine Lisicki won a tennis tournament and she was just being judged on her looks, not how she played or her highlights. I hope one day the world could see past just the looks of talented women. The next time any girl goes to grab their makeup brush or to get on the scale, remember you are beautiful and if someone doesn’t  look beyond your looks, then they don't deserve to know the real you.