From the moment we’re born until the moment we finally feel fed up enough with the unrealistic beauty standards to stop caring about them, women learn that one of our most important assets is our appearance. Ask a woman when the first time was that she learned – usually from her mother – that our bodies are something we have to put under a microscope every day before leaving the house. The reply will probably be before her eighteenth birthday. Hating ourselves is such an integral part of our existence that we will chat about it over lunch breaks. While feeling guilty for nourishing our bodies.

It is a harsh reality we live in but capitalism relies on the lie that the patriarchy tells us: that we always have to keep chasing beauty. And that lie relies on the premise that we will never actually be enough. Because a woman who loves herself unconditionally is a woman who stops using her money to purchase acceptance. Women are raised with a lack of self-worth. And the very system we live in relies on that low self-esteem to make it so we’ll always keep chasing the expectations of others.

The motivation for this? To finally find a man to love us––something we are taught to strive for. Women are taught through media and the people around them that the one goal in their life is a husband and children. So, we chase beauty in order to be desirable by a man who can give us purpose: being a wife and mother. But we aren’t the only people in this system who are faced with unrealistic expectations. Because men are also raised with strict gender-roles that dictate what it means to be a “real man”. And with that, how to truly be ‘happy’ as a man.