Many of us tell ourselves that we wear makeup for our own pleasures, that we are in fact dressing well to please ourselves and only ourselves. Yet, this is not the case, many of our actions are dictated by our subconscious mind that is heavily influenced by the world around us. Where we may love to believe what we wear or how we act is to impress ourselves and uplift our confidence, it is truly just a cover up to get other people’s approval. Now there is nothing wrong with trying to gain society's approval. However, we need to understand and accept the fact that we are not in control of our confidence or appearance. Beauty is subjective, it is a concept entirely made by human beings based on our culture, race, and community we reside in. Beauty standards change based on geographical location and culture, in Korea beauty in women is showcased with a pale face, light makeup and slim build, whereas across the globe in North America, beauty is identified with having a slim waist, big hips and caked makeup. Women everywhere are constantly tested by their appearance and are forced to change how they look based on the beauty standards that are surrounding them. The question still remains as to why? Why do we adapt ourselves to these unreachable beauty expectations? Who Are we really trying to please? There is a lot to cover when tackling the topic of self-identity and appearance. What we think of ourselves isn’t what we truly believe we are. A big part of self-identity is gender identity. Being that humans cannot cultivate the thought of understanding ourselves. We assign a gender to our identity to make it easier for us to adapt to what being a “female” or “male” means to society. The self-identity theory in psychology is one visited often, it is a vast topic covering all from personality, mood, self-concept, and gender. Yet, most of the time we find ourselves running in circles with these concepts because they are all subjective, they all rely on the person in question. Being that we are all different, a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ would not suffice to explain why we chose to do the things we do. Returning back to the topic of gender-identity, as humans living amongst an ever-changing society, we see ourselves adapting to what society has placed an “option” for us. Before being LGBTQ was an option most of us identified as “male” or “female”. But because of the addition of different genders we have now found room to explore our own self-identity but still be refined to what society thinks we should be. When you think of the phrase “be a man” what do you think of? What image plays in your head? What does a “man” look like to you? Even if YOU don’t have an answer, society does. Tall, Built, Nice hair, suit and tie, etc. These are all characteristics society has created for the gender “male” now moving along to females. Pretty, slim build, fragile, elegant, long hair, nice eyes etc. We are never surprised by the image society has created for these genders. Understanding these concepts will play a helpful role in connecting the pieces when it comes to appearance. Appearance defines class, authority, income and beauty. An officer has to be in uniform for him to be identified and respected as an officer, a lawyer is always in a suit, doctor’s can’t be without their lab coats. These examples are not found in the cartoons, they are real life, we have taken them out of context and twisted them to adapt to our communities. The never ending pressure we face as humans to keep up with our appearance has unfortunately taken a rocky turn, with millions of men and women attempting plastic surgery to enhance their appearance and provide them with long-lasting effects. But as my first point stated, beauty standards change, ten years from now big hips and a slim waist won’t be the norm and we’ll go back to being sickly skinny. What these surgeries don’t offer is the “undo” button, so oftentimes we are signing away a body we can never get back, we are sculpting faces that wrinkle and sag with time. The constant race between beauty and man will never reach an even finish line, beauty will always be one step ahead of us, and we will always be falling behind. What worries me isn’t losing the race, but losing ourselves in the process. We must take the time to learn more about ourselves, the more we choose to love our "defects" the easier our lives will become.