We all know this tale, the tale of Snow White. A princess whose skin was supposedly as white as snow, lips as red as blood and with hair as black as ebony. We all know she had an evil stepmother who had a magical mirror that concluded that although she was beautiful, Snow White was the most beautiful of them all. Now, the moral lesson at the end of the story was evil is evil, love and good wins blah blah but what if there was something more.
We never really thought about the evil stepmother and her magical mirror, we never realized that her being evil was as a result of her own insecurities. We can’t blame the mirror because mirrors in general are just reflections of what we want to see. The evil stepmother already agreed that yes she was beautiful but not as beautiful as Snow White, she had created a standard of beauty in her head and to her she didn’t reach that standard. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t need the validation of a mirror but she did and ended up letting her insecurities get the best of her.
The same goes to a friend of mine, let’s call her Andrea. Andrea has always been considered beautiful, she was the true definition of black beauty. With full afro hair, dark brown eyes that shone brightly, well carved pointed nose, pale pink and plump lips. Her body was the type we’d spend hours working for in the gym, everyone that knew Andrea wanted to look like Andrea.
Andrea knew she was a goddess, she knew she commanded attention, she’d spend hours in front of her mirror, she always had one in her bag. She loved admiring her appearance or so people thought. The truth about Andrea was that although she knew she was beautiful she never truly believed it, she’d always put up a strong confident front in public but in private she’d ask her mirror why she had grown a zit? Why had eye bags taken over her eye lids? Why did she have wrinkles whenever she smiled? Why were her lips not pink enough? Why were they so plump? Why wasn’t her nose any straighter?
Andrea had created a standard of beauty in her head and her mirrors depicted what she created. Andrea always sought for validation from people’s comment but most especially from her mirrors.
Along the line Andrea let her insecurities eat her up, people’s validations were not enough, her mirrors were her only truth. Unlike the evil stepmother who believed that Snow White was her own enemy, Andrea believed she was her own enemy and so she went through surgeries upon surgeries just to kill her own enemy. I’m not saying plastic/cosmetic surgery is bad, I am a firm believer of do what makes you happy as long as it’s not hurting the next person. My point is going through series of surgeries for the wrong reason obviously isn’t right and will definitely have its repercussion.
We all have insecurities just like snow white’s evil stepmother, just like Andrea, no matter how perfect a person seems trust me they have their insecurities, it what makes us human but letting those insecurities get the best of us doesn’t. It ends up clouding our sense of reasoning, understanding, action and judgement. The goal is to work towards accepting those insecurities and making the best out of it and not the other way around.
