Why Should We Hide Our Flaws?

We've all heard the cliche "Beauty Is Skin Deep" and although I truly do believe to be classed as a beautiful person you need to have a beautiful heart, it is extremely hard to be happy with your appearance in today's society. Not only do we have the media portraying this image of what people, particularly girls should look like, men and women can also be so judgemental on how people look. Why must we all be so perfect? I know that majority of the photo's you see in magazines of these women having flawless skin are photoshopped and caked on with make-up but when you have ordinary people picking out peoples flaws and judging you on them that's when it becomes worrying.

If a celebrity is seen without make up and has "bad skin" they are heavily criticised for it, like recently Harry Styles from One Direction was spotted with a few spots on his face, now instead of the people criticizing him for having terrible skin and saying he is unhygienic they should be supporting him in the fact he isn't ashamed to go out without covering them up. He is a teenage boy, what do you expect? being a celebrity does not make him immune from getting spots. Also having spots/acne does not make you unhygienic at all, in fact people with such skin conditions probably clean and look after their skin better than people who don't.

Now I'm not saying I'm never judgemental, because as a natural instinct for humans we judge people from the second we meet them but why does it always have to do with there appearance? Unfortunately for me I have the top 3 terrible flaws, 1) Being over weight 2) Bad skin 3) Being short. Although being short doesn't actually bother me as much as it does other people. The first thing people say to me when they meet me for the first time is "No way you can't be 21, you're so small and look so young" to begin with this use to really bother me but I've heard it so often it's like yes, well done for pointing out the obvious, and in fact I actually like being small, and looking young is a bonus in a lot of ways, my point is you don't hear people say "Woah you're so tall and look so old" because that would be considered rude.

Now a lot of people who know me will know I hardly ever wear make up, I probably wear it on average once a month. I only wear it when I'm going to see people I want to make a certain impression on. The reasons for this is because I honestly can't be bothered to apply it every day it takes too long. I also get really mad/upset with myself when I have to look in a mirror, especially when it goes wrong, because I have such low self esteem and I'm my own worst critic I think "You're too ugly to wear make up Becky, you look like a clown, you just look like you're trying to look pretty and you actually look stupid." yet when I do wear make up everyone compliments me on how pretty I look and how much it suits me, I don't really know if this is a compliment or not, because it's like saying you should wear make up more because without it you don't look as good. This is probably my mind twisting everything round into a negative because I find it hard to believe someone can find my beautiful.

So the point of this post (Sorry it's took so long, well done if you've even read this far ha) is I'm trying to not be so hard on myself, I do have bad acne and skin, and the strange thing is I'm not afraid to go out to the shop or to the cinema with out make up on, but when it comes to uploading photos on to the internet I feel I have to either wear make up or edit out my bad skin, i'm so afraid of getting negative comments about my skin, when in reality I shouldn't be, because it's not my fault I have acne, I cleanse, tone, and moisturise my skin, it's hormonal and genetic. I was just unfortunate, same as everyone else who suffers with skin conditions.

So this is quite challenging for me, as I'm about to upload three pictures, the first being the original photo straight from the camera, the second is the same photo but  edited - what I would have done to it if say I was going to upload it to a social networking site, and the third is a photo of me with a full face of make up. Now 99.9% of my photo's on facebook are photoshopped and I shouldn't feel as though I have to edit them for them to be acceptable and to not be judged. Yes I have acne/bad skin but so what? does that make me less interesting or not as nice as someone who has flawless skin? I honestly don't think it does, and although it makes me feel insecure at times, I'm learning to live and deal with it, I'm still young so maybe I'll grow out of it eventually but if not then it's no big deal, I'm still me.

This is what I would normally do to a photo of myself, adjust the lighting, smoothing out the skin and covering up all the red scars/spots. It's quite a noticeable difference between the two photos which shocked me and made me not want to upload this but how can I expect people to love me for me if I can't even accept/love myself. So what the heck!

This is a photo of me with make up on, I've adjusted the lightning but nothing else.

Now I'm not saying I'm never going to edit my photo's again, especially when it comes to uploading them on facebook, I want to become more confident and I'm trying this new technique of not letting people judging me for my looks and letting my low self esteem rule my life. So this is me, take it or leave it, it's your choice. I'm only human just like everyone else.