Julia Roberts challenges narrow beauty standards with one picture
Julia Roberts just took to her Instagram to make a important point about the dark side of seeking physical perfection, a pursuit she calls “the disease of our nation.” In her post, Roberts makes a powerful argument for self-acceptance with her pitch-perfect caption, paired with a stunning makeup-free photo.
Roberts is right. We need to stop scrutinizing our bodies and start scrutinizing our souls. Happiness is not a diet or a surgery or a bag full of stuff from Sephora. Self-acceptance is a hard war to win, but every battle in which you triumph makes it that much easier to let other people love you and help others love themselves. Then, of course, there’s her gorgeously real Instagram itself, a picture which is worth at LEAST a thousand words.
The thing about our image-obsessed, perfection-driven culture is that it is so often movie stars that are held up as the ideal to which we all must adhere. Which is why it was so important for Roberts of all people to take a public stand against narrow beauty standards.
Roberts has long been regarded as one of the most beautiful women in America, and so for her to not only get real with us about her make-up free skin, but also to embrace her face and love herself just as she is sends an important message.
When the women whose beauty has been represented as unobtainable bust through the smoke and mirrors and take a stand, revealing their real faces and selves and advocate for widening beauty standards and dismantling the perfection machine, those women, whose images may have been used as weapons against self-acceptance, become our allies and our heroes. To pivot from being part of the problem to being part of the solution is a thrilling maneuver, and we applaud Roberts for using her platform to fight for love and acceptance.
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(Image via Columbia Pictures)
