Beauty has become a key factor in society. It drags people down while pulling others up. But the thing with beauty is that it is a social construct, a concept we have made to put certain people in a box of “better.”

Beauty is desired — but what is beauty? See that’s the problem, we can say what beauty is to us now, but in a few years, it won’t be the same. The standards of “beautiful” change. Just 30 years ago, “beauty” meant willow thin, so thin you looked like you could be starving. But now, “beauty” is more along the lines of curvy and luscious. The checkboxes that you check to be “beautiful” change with the ebb and flow of time. This creative poem is just a fragment of the thoughts I have about the concept of beauty. We each have our own experience, we are each beautiful. Never forget that.

Beauty is a figment of our imaginations,
a fleeting thing,
created from our current surroundings.

It is a shifting, impatient beast,
waiting to catch us in its web,
to wrap us in its misconceptions.

We are caught in the loop of comparison.
Constantly setting ourselves next to those around us.

Constantly, contrasting
And measuring our so-called “beauty.”

Her eyes are stunning,
her legs are long,
her hair is like silk…she is beautiful,
we wish we looked like she does.

We look in the mirror and stare.
Stare until another girl is staring back,
but she is not us anymore,
she is an image of our expectations.

We look at that reflection and are drowned
in disappointment,
for it is not a reflection.
Not anymore.

But what we forget to see is that girl,
that girl we strive to be,
that girl is counting calories, that girl is pinching her skin in the mirror.
She too is staring at that image of her own expectations.

Beauty is fickle,
the expectations changing
with the snap of a finger.

The beauty that we wish for today will only last so long.
Wait another minute
and soon that wish will have changed.

Beauty is a figment of our imaginations,
a fleeting thing,
created from our current surroundings.

It is a shifting, impatient beast,
waiting to catch us in its web,
to wrap us in its misconceptions.