Who to measure your beauty standard?

Love the pool but didn't know how to swim yet :D

 

There are a million questions that might come to your head when you heard people from place to place define their beauty preference. The first reaction of yourself starts to come up when those people did not mention what you have owned in their categories. 

How do you feel when you first hearing the criticism? Who should define all these beauty standards for you? How to measure it? Living in the region of skin bleaching makes people felt self-doubt from day to day and wish to do whatever to make themselves look exactly belong to the group of people they're living in.

It is not a crime to make yourself look decent and attractive, but the question is "Is it worth it?" What would be worse spending too much time on one thing and haven't paid enough attention to another? This article is not to crush the readers, but to smash few terrible habits/ perspective and open the door to see things differently.

I went through a lot of things in my childhood which mainly create a thought of never being good enough and struggling to define where exactly I am belonging. I didn't have a great childhood nor teenage life. I was almost invisible for where I grew up; it was a moment where I found it was the hardest time to socialize. Those including the status of where I came from, especially how I look from the outside does matter_A lot! I was a chubby young teenage girl, with fizzy baby hair and dark skin which most people are not a fan of. 

Back in the day, body shame brought me down easily and now I realize that I have a lot more to hustle my life for. There was a time where I realize that actually, it was nothing wrong with how I look, but the people and society who have been taught for different expectation and value different things. 

A regular me on vacation in 2020

 

In January 2019, I was nominated to take a flight to one of the countries in Africa for my career purpose. I flew past a couple of countries in South East Asia and finally layover in Ethiopia. I didn't expect many eyes were hunting, watching, and ghosting me around the airport-willing to have a chat with me. I was not thrilled to the fact that I could get a high possibility to go flirt with strangers, but this is the other side of the story that the same person gets additional attention just after a couple of hours far away from home. This scenario definitely told a story that the person itself is beautiful just need the right people to see them and value certain things within.

A layover moment in Dubai International Airport 2019

 

I am not trying to decide who earns the most score in living right, but there should be a consistent approach on how we treat others by not using first sight as a measurement. In 7.9 billion humans on earth and a lot more to come, there are many other criteria to judge or decide to choose that one person to be around us. Why not behavioral, morality, openness, generosity, or empathy, but beauty? It is ironic to let one thing overtake the power and blindfold the other values. 

Okay, so back to the first three questions putting out there. Sometimes you just need to ask extra questions to answer that one question. Don't over complicate things, we live our lives and be confident in our own skin. That's it! If we let others interfered you by their preference that won't allow you to define your own one. I appreciate the passion and willingness of some influencers who inspire young Cambodians to shift their perspective toward self-care and becoming mentally stronger. There might be more initiative that Cambodia starting to commence on the subject, but here is a couple inspiration clips from Cambodian social media influencers sister Pidor Ham as well as នារី- Neary. Hear them out and hopefully, they could help to find your soul of true self and love it better. 

 

Choose yourself! I am beautiful and so do you, take care <3