Matilda Almelöv studies social science in senior high school and writes about having the courage to make your own choices.
Beauty+money+several friends=happiness. If society had an equation which explained happiness, it would look kind of like that. There is a strong ideal of how one should act and what you should do to get to the place we call happiness. Every day we are told about the perfect life and the perfect personality, from media, TV and magazines (you are doing well but you can always do better). We should be nice, social and get good grades without effort, a sex-life focusing on the guy, work out and eat healthy, have a good relationship with your family, matching pillows on the couch and a big group of friends to lean on. And all this with no effort.
But what if you wanted to be a bit ugly some day? Sitting on the couch with a bag of chips and with unwashed hair with Britney Spears’ “pineapple-tuft” on your head? Maybe I feel better then, as opposed to jumping around on a dance-floor with eyelashes weighted down by mascara and alcohol rushing through my body.
You don’t have to exclude one for the other, but it seems people are always expected to prefer the latter. I think it’s mostly because of the ideal image of the perfect life and the perfect girl. But no one else can decide what I like to do, or that I should always choose the same. In the long run it’s all really about being a person you feel comfortable with and doing things that make you feel good.
You don’t have to love yoga and have clean hair on a regular basis. Maybe some people always want it that way, others skip it completely. But that doesn’t mean that one person is happier than the other. It’s actually true what they say; it would be boring if everyone was the same.
To me, diversity and respect for others is so much more important. Having the courage to make your own choices and knowing that other people’s choices are just as good for them as mine are to me. I think it’s easier to respect people with that approach, on all different levels (and you also feel more content. Win – Win)
You can be human, make mistakes and have shortcomings. Fit in sometimes and other times not. Maybe you have to work hard to get good grades, or perhaps without making an effort. You spend your weekends at a bar with a glass of wine or maybe with your family and a bottle of coke. You are the popular girl who everyone looks at or perhaps the dorky one who no one notices. You love to jog and do it every day, or maybe the closest you get to a workout is getting up to find the remote. You spend an hour to put on makeup every morning, or maybe you don’t even look at yourself in the mirror. Maybe it depends on what day it is.
You are beautiful regardless.
But don’t forget that you can do something beautiful sometimes, to get better karma.
Spend a minute to sign the Fair Sex campaign,
Matilda Almelöv for RealStars