Your Self-Esteem Isn’t Low — It’s Exhausted: How Beauty Standards Shape the Way We See Ourselves

Why the solution isn’t in filters, procedures or copying someone else — but in what is natural, authentic and already yours.

INTRODUCTION

There’s a pattern I see over and over again in image consulting: people arrive saying they have no style, that nothing suits them, that their hair isn’t “good”, that they look tired, worn out, off.

But after a few minutes of conversation, it becomes clear:

Their self-esteem isn’t low.It’s exhausted from chasing a standard that was never theirs.

And this exhaustion is not accidental — it’s the direct outcome of a highly profitable industry.

A THE INDUSTRY CHANGES THE STANDARD, BUT NEVER THE PRESSURE

Beauty standards are never stable. They move according to commercial interest.

• Yesterday, the “right” hair was pin-straight.

• Today, it’s the perfect curl — defined, shiny, magazine-ready.

• Natural grey hair is acceptable — but only if it’s “the perfect grey.”

• Skin should look natural — as long as it’s flawless like porcelain.

Notice the pattern?None of this is natural.It’s just a new filter sold as freedom.

The industry shifts the ideal, but keeps the same message:

“You’re still not enough — but you can buy enough.”

WHEN COPYING THE STANDARD BECOMES A CYCLE OF SELF-DOUBT

The problem with trying to follow these ideals is simple:

Every time you copy someone else, you disconnect from yourself.

And with that distance comes:

• insecurity

• comparison

• the feeling that something is always missing

Because something is missing:identity — something no cream, cut or procedure can give you.

THE “WRONGNESS” THEY INVENTED FOR YOU

Here are some of the aesthetic lies many of us absorbed without noticing:

• Curly or coily hair is “bad”

• Volume is messy

• Frizz is a flaw

• Short hair isn’t feminine

• Baldness is a failure

• Bare skin looks “tired”

• A natural body is always a “before”, never an “after”

None of that is true.It’s aesthetic conditioning — and an extremely profitable one.

The problem was never the frizz, the volume, the coils, the grey, the baldness.It was the aesthetic terror they taught you about them.

SELF-ESTEEM DOESN’T DISAPPEAR — IT GETS WORN DOWN

When you try to fit into a manufactured ideal, a silent erosion begins:

• you criticise yourself more

• you compare yourself more

• you consume more

• and you recognise yourself less

This is why so many people think they need “more style”, when what they really need is:

a reconciliation with themselves.

THE ROLE OF IMAGE CONSULTING IN THIS PROCESS

In my consulting work, I don’t push anyone into a mould.I don’t encourage procedures, filters or aesthetic miracles that make you a hostage of perfection.

I walk in the opposite direction:

I bring you back to what’s already yours —your shape, your texture, your story, your language.

Image doesn’t begin with what you hide.It begins with what you decide to own.

BEAUTY WITHOUT THE PERFORMANCE

There is beauty in real hair.In real skin.In real bodies.In real life — the kind that doesn’t make the front cover or a campaign.

Beauty was always there.They just taught you to doubt it.

CONCLUSION: THE WAY BACK IS THE WAY FORWARD

When you stop fighting the mirror, your image stops being a battlefield and becomes a language.Coherent, strong, strategic — and yours.

If your intention is to build an image that honours who you are, not who the market expects you to be, there is another path:

strategy, awareness and authenticity.

This is the path I guide my clients through.No filters.No moulds.No pressure.Just identity.