From heels to filler suffering never left aesthetics. It just reinvented itself.

High heels deform your feet. Filler can migrate. Waxing hurts. Corsets compress. Blepharoplasty leaves scars.

We know all of this. And we continue.

Not because we’re foolish. Because it’s complicated.

There’s a comfortable narrative that says the beauty industry manipulates us that impossible standards are imposed top-down, by brands and magazines and algorithms. That’s true. Partly.

But there’s the other side we conveniently ignore: choice. Pleasure. The power you feel when you look exactly the way you wanted to look, even if it cost something.

Pain and beauty have always been connected.

In feudal Japan, women blackened their teeth and bound their feet. In the West, the Victorian corset was the norm for centuries. Today we have preventive botox at 25 and laser treatments we call “self-care”.

The form changes. The logic stays: the body is a project. And projects require effort.

The question isn’t why we suffer for beauty.

The question is who we suffer for. For ourselves or for someone else’s gaze? And do we still know the difference?

Body positivity tried to break this logic. It ended up on H&M t-shirts. Beauty neutrality is trying now but it too will be co-opted by marketing soon enough.

Maybe the answer isn’t to stop the suffering. It’s to be honest with ourselves about why we choose it. Without guilt. Without illusions.