In the Boom community, we often talk about rethinking the messages society gives us, especially the ideas about how we’re supposed to look.
We grow up surrounded by magazines and advertising that push a narrow, restrictive idea of what counts as “beautiful.” It’s a concept that completely leaves out women over the age of 40.
When we’re young, these messages seep in because we aren’t equipped to filter them out yet. These messages wind up shaping our idea of what’s “beautiful”—whether we want them to or not.
Over time, holding these narrow images of “beauty” can cause us to be really tough on ourselves.
Almost nobody naturally fits our society’s mainstream beauty ideal—extremely slender (but large-breasted), very tall, very young, smooth, perfectly symmetrical, delicate, and usually Caucasian. And so if we don’t fit that one specific image, we get all sorts of stories in our head about how we’re not “beautiful” enough.