I’ve always resented the inventions that supposedly make women “prettier”. How much pain, time and money have they cost women throughout the ages?

I’ve always wished people could be happy to leave well enough alone, and that makeup, cosmetic surgery and beauty treatments never existed. I resent having to put in so much effort to look good.

And yet, because all these inventions and implements are in place and have become the norm, I must conform to standards or be overlooked.

To give you a visual image of what I mean, let’s talk about bound feet in ancient China. It was considered beautiful for women to have ridiculously small feet. Females had to endure the pain of having their feet broken and mangled through their lives.

Imagine yourself living in that era. As a girl, you would want to have tiny, mangled feet so you can look as “beautiful” as other girls, to be an object of envy and admiration rather than to be discriminated against or overlooked.

But wouldn’t you wish that the practice never existed in the first place so your feet can grow normally without you feeling the pressure to conform?

But, the way it was, you could have happy feet and be ugly or tortured feet and be admired. Either way, it sucks.

Unfortunately, we still have what I consider barbaric practices today to mould people into societal standards of beauty. Plastic surgery, tattooing, waxing. They are all barbaric because they cause pain.

Sure, everyone has a choice whether to do it or not. But when everyone is doing it and you don’t, you lose out. You’ll find it harder to get jobs and find partners or just fit in. Your self-esteem will plunge and life will be more miserable.

And when your naked photos accidentally get leaked a la Cecilia Cheung, you get criticised by the whole world for not having put yourself under the torture of waxing your privates.

There are all these people who self-righteously claim that inner beauty triumphs over everything and that painful beauty procedures are dumb. I’m sure even they cringed at those photos.

These people go around criticising celebrities who go for plastic surgery and yet expect women to magically have hairless privates and flawless physical beauty.

There’s no such thing as natural beauty.

Cosmetic surgery existed long before anaesthesia was invented. (I suppose we can count ourselves lucky that those days are past.)

Besides the ancient Chinese binding their feet, the Maori carved up their faces with sharpened bones and applied dye on the wounds to create elaborate patterns. Burmese tribal women collapsed their collar bones to create long necks.

I think the long neck thing is still happening today. The tattooing too, with less painful methods.

In the past, painful beauty practices reflected the status of those who were able to do them. Being able to mutilate yourself was an enviable luxury. It’s still the same way today, seeing as how plastic surgery costs the skies.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD? Who the devil invented these practices in the first place? I wish people would just leave things alone and stop coming up with bizarre ideas for making humans look “better”.

Aren’t we good enough as we are?

Unfortunately, we all have to conform to all these crazy standards in order to ease into society better.

Everyone conforms to some standard or other to varying degrees. Some are easier to follow (like makeup and hair cuts) while others are tougher (like big boobs).

But everyone must conform to at least something, which is the whole problem. It’s not easy being the person who gets stared at and pointed at just because you refuse to get a Brazillian wax.

You must suffer, either now or later.

I will state for the record that I opt for beauty. I just wish the option didn’t exist. That’s all.