Every day we see more faces than we can process. What does that make us? What effects does it have on our self-perception?
If one wants to believe biology, humans intensively memorize about 10 faces per day. Historically, this also makes sense. After all, why should the brain have to memorize more than 10 faces per day in small life groups?
The faces of the day:
But how many faces are we actually exposed to every day? In the morning on the news app, on the way to work on advertising posters, later on TV and then in the evening on Instagram before going to bed? There are countless faces on Instagram alone. And which 10 of this flood of faces do we memorize? Of course, the ones that occupy us the most - the most beautiful! And what is our standard of beauty? By the standard of the most beautiful faces we have seen.
The reality:
But take a look around. On the train or on the street and tell me whether these people meet our imprinted standard. What do they say? How do they feel? What emotions and what soul is behind their eyes? Are they all unattractive because they don't meet our standard of beauty? We are "only" human beings and compare ourselves in the evening in the mirror with exaggerated images of the already most beautiful models. And maybe we feel unattractive because we are below our beauty standard.
However, if we compare ourselves with our real surroundings - for example the baker who bakes bread in the morning or the overtired guy in the train with coffee in his hand who is reading the news - we would notice that we are perhaps even more beautiful than we thought we were.
Why do we indulge in this flood of information, take our value system to such extremes and pressure ourselves to be as good as Jay Alveres, Alexis Ren or Kim Kardashian, who are secretly probably even worse off than most of us? All this information is interesting. And we need more and more consumption to keep our economic system going, there's no question about that.
But must many of us suffer so much from such aspects? Do we have to make ourselves so dependent on our beauty standard? Do we have to be just like most of us out there?
No, we do not. Maybe it is good for us to put the mobile phone aside more often and feel what is REALLY happening around us. If we see our true environment as a relation, we will feel better than if we let distorted standards destroy us.
Why don't you try:
Why don't you try on the train or on the road to turn off your mobile data for a little while, look at the people around you and let them affect you?
How do they feel? What is going on inside them? What does their soul say? And do they meet your beauty standards? I bet only a few will meet it!
Interestingly: Women can remember faces better than men because they can perceive more details in the face and create a richer memory image.