Somewhere in the process of growing up, in the pompom ponytails, hours of playing with Lego blocks and Barbie dolls, cycles of fighting, loving, and arguing with your brothers and sisters, you became the woman in the reflection before you today. Taken back into time, the woman that glared back at you was completely unknown and unimagined.

Growing up with a beautiful family, living in your innocence, you created an identity. Taking the best of Belle, Cinderella, and Snow White you formed a fantasy of your own. You’ll grow up to be beautiful one day, intellectually capable, and the soft loved protagonist. Then one day the most handsome and caring prince charming would come into your life and just sweep you off your feet. Quite simple and all figured out right? Not really. But I’m sure if you’re a female, you know exactly where I’m coming from.

As we girls grow older though, these fantasies that we only described to our selves as long awaiting realities, become more and more of a taunting and haunting experience, more than anything. From the length of your hair and the colour of your skin to the size of your waist, you realize you’ll never be your childhood fantasy. That’s probably the biggest question I ask myself today, why were these fantasies so universal, among all of my friends and cousins, we all wanted to be that perfect princess.

What is perfection anyway? Growing up watching and reading about readily labeled beauty symbols such as Cinderella and Snow White, the definition of perfection became encrypted, not only into you, but all the fragile young girls that you grew up with at such a young age. If everyone believed it, it MUST be true. Beauty is to be white. Beauty is to be tall. Beauty is to be thin. The definition is exclusive. Disagree? Sorry, while we were growing up the women who were portrayed to live happily ever after never deviated from this definition. These characters created the realities that they only claimed to describe.

Emerging out of innocence, you look at yourself one day, critically. You’re not fair enough, you’re lips and cheeks aren’t the right shade of pink, and you most certainly don’t see the hour-glass shape in your young and fragile body. There begins the obsession to erase, recreate, and improve your entire existence. You just aren’t good enough. Out comes the concealer, blush, mascara, the curling iron, followed by hours in the gym and guilt filled food indulgences, all in the subconscious attempt to achieve your childhood fantasy.

Then you grow even older, the proposals begin to come in, and you search for perfection. None seem like prince charming. And again, you turn to yourself and begin to question. It must be my complexion, the circumference of my waist, or maybe the shape of my eyes? Something must be wrong. And there is something vey wrong, but it’s with the way perfection and values are subconsciously defined within us.

Fairytales of fair princesses may make great bedtime stories, but they most definitely don’t provide an accurate understanding of self worth. If beauty were so quantified and determining of our fait, we’d see ‘happily ever after’ in the lives of very different people. The woman glaring back at you, as you gaze at the reflection the mirror portrays, may look nothing like Cinderella, but that’s why she’s a splendor of her own.

Hirra Shaikh is currently a third year student at York University.