Opinion: What Khloe Kardashian’s viral photo says about beauty standards

Khloe Kardashian’s recent Instagram photo, showing off her new hair has caused quite the stir on social media because simply, that photo does not look like Khloe. 

In this article, I’m going to talk about what this photoshop tells us about how society has taught women to view themselves.

First, let’s talk about FaceTune. A popular app for social media users to manipulate and edit their photos to their liking. This can be something as simple as removing a pimple or as extreme as full-body reconstruction.

Photoshop has been around for a very long time and is used by professionals to perfect a magazine cover or billboard, but FaceTune puts dozens of editing tools in the hands of the average person, which can be a weapon and a blessing.

I have a dilemma with FaceTuning and photo editing in general. It offers a false idea of what your favorite influencers look like and gives their viewers a false perception of what they should look like.

Then again, it’s your picture, so you should get to choose what happens with it. And if you’re open about it, then is there any harm? I am not sure, and it is a difficult topic to form a final opinion on. For that reason, that’s not what this article is about today. Instead, I’m here to talk about the why of the FaceTune dilemma.

I think an important place to start is the fact that some female body parts go in and out of style. One day everyone wants a thigh gap and the next, thick thighs are all the rage. I have zero recollection of “hip dips” ever being an undesirable feature before last July. New female body trends show up every day, making it so a woman can never be happy with her body.

This (women being subconsciously told to hate themselves) is a very calculated phenomenon. Many industries thrive off of women being insecure. Shapewear, clothing, makeup, skincare, weight loss programs, fake tans, botox the list could go on.

If women didn’t feel the need to change the way they looked or were “allowed” to be confident in the way they look, so many industries would go out of business.

To circle back to my point of women being “allowed” to love themselves — they aren’t. No matter your size, skin tone, facial features, hair there is always something women will be chasing.

A new body trend they will work out or get a surgery to achieve, an influx of hate comments on social media causing them to FaceTune every aspect of their posts. If a woman is confident and expresses such, that is almost always met with backlash. If a woman goes out in a bikini, she will be attacked by magazines and social media users.

Khloe Kardashian was dissatisfied with her natural appearance, so she felt the need to alter the way she looks entirely. Khloe Kardashian along with most women, can’t win. They get attacked for the way they look, then they change it, and get attacked for changing it. We need to take a step in the direction of stopping female features from coming in and out of style, scrutinizing every move a woman makes, and just letting her be because reminder: women are not on earth to please you.