#modern statement

[sweetlog]

Why Society’s Standards Are Overrated and How to Escape Them

Society has a way of setting expectations that dictate how we should live—what to achieve, how to look, and even how to feel. From the perfect career to the ideal body image, these standards often leave us feeling inadequate or trapped. But here’s the truth: society’s standards are overrated. They’re not a blueprint for happiness but a recipe for frustration. It’s time to break free.

The Problem with Societal Standards

Unrealistic Expectations Society glorifies unattainable ideals, from airbrushed beauty to the relentless hustle for success. These standards are often unrealistic and ignore individuality. Not everyone wants the same career path, physique, or lifestyle.

Harm to Mental Health Trying to conform to societal norms can lead to stress, anxiety, and low self-esteem. The pressure to meet these expectations fosters a cycle of comparison, making it harder to appreciate who you truly are.

The Illusion of Universality Societal standards assume a “one-size-fits-all” approach. They don’t account for cultural differences, personal values, or unique circumstances. What makes one person happy may be irrelevant—or even harmful—to another.

Consumerism and Exploitation Many societal standards are fueled by industries profiting from insecurities. The beauty, fitness, and even self-help industries thrive by convincing us we’re never enough.

How to Escape Society’s Standards

Escaping societal standards isn’t about rejecting society altogether—it’s about redefining your relationship with its expectations. Here’s how:

Identify Your Values

Take time to reflect on what truly matters to you. What brings you joy? What aligns with your beliefs and passions? Write these down and use them as a guide when making decisions.

Unplug from the Comparison Trap

Limit time on social media, where curated perfection reigns. Instead, seek out content that inspires authenticity and self-acceptance.

Redefine Success

Stop chasing society’s version of success (e.g., wealth, fame, or status). Create a personal definition of success that includes fulfillment, peace, and happiness.

Practice Self-Compassion

Give yourself permission to fail, to rest, and to grow at your own pace. Self-compassion is a powerful antidote to societal pressure.

Surround Yourself with Supportive People

Build a community of individuals who respect and encourage your choices, even if they differ from societal norms. Positive influences can help reinforce your path.

Set Boundaries

Learn to say “no” to expectations that don’t serve you. Whether it’s career advice, lifestyle choices, or family traditions, it’s okay to chart your own course.

Celebrate Your Authenticity

Embrace what makes you unique. Wear what you like, pursue what excites you, and let go of the fear of judgment.

The Rewards of Escaping Societal Standards

When you let go of societal expectations, you gain freedom—freedom to live authentically, to pursue what genuinely makes you happy, and to define your own worth. You’ll also find greater peace, as the constant comparison and pressure fade away.

Rejecting societal standards isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. Remember, life is too short to live by someone else’s rules. Dare to be yourself, choose happiness, and inspire others to do the same.

Society has a way of setting expectations that dictate how we should live—what to achieve, how to look, and even how to feel. From the perfect career to the ideal body image, these standards often leave us feeling inadequate or trapped. But here’s the truth: society’s standards are overrated. They’re not a blueprint for happiness but a recipe for frustration. It’s time to break free.

The Problem with Societal Standards

Unrealistic Expectations Society glorifies unattainable ideals, from airbrushed beauty to the relentless hustle for success. These standards are often unrealistic and ignore individuality. Not everyone wants the same career path, physique, or lifestyle.

Harm to Mental Health Trying to conform to societal norms can lead to stress, anxiety, and low self-esteem. The pressure to meet these expectations fosters a cycle of comparison, making it harder to appreciate who you truly are.

The Illusion of Universality Societal standards assume a “one-size-fits-all” approach. They don’t account for cultural differences, personal values, or unique circumstances. What makes one person happy may be irrelevant—or even harmful—to another.

Consumerism and Exploitation Many societal standards are fueled by industries profiting from insecurities. The beauty, fitness, and even self-help industries thrive by convincing us we’re never enough.

How to Escape Society’s Standards

Escaping societal standards isn’t about rejecting society altogether—it’s about redefining your relationship with its expectations. Here’s how:

Identify Your Values

Take time to reflect on what truly matters to you. What brings you joy? What aligns with your beliefs and passions? Write these down and use them as a guide when making decisions.

Unplug from the Comparison Trap

Limit time on social media, where curated perfection reigns. Instead, seek out content that inspires authenticity and self-acceptance.

Redefine Success

Stop chasing society’s version of success (e.g., wealth, fame, or status). Create a personal definition of success that includes fulfillment, peace, and happiness.

Practice Self-Compassion

Give yourself permission to fail, to rest, and to grow at your own pace. Self-compassion is a powerful antidote to societal pressure.

Surround Yourself with Supportive People

Build a community of individuals who respect and encourage your choices, even if they differ from societal norms. Positive influences can help reinforce your path.

Set Boundaries

Learn to say “no” to expectations that don’t serve you. Whether it’s career advice, lifestyle choices, or family traditions, it’s okay to chart your own course.

Celebrate Your Authenticity

Embrace what makes you unique. Wear what you like, pursue what excites you, and let go of the fear of judgment.

The Rewards of Escaping Societal Standards

When you let go of societal expectations, you gain freedom—freedom to live authentically, to pursue what genuinely makes you happy, and to define your own worth. You’ll also find greater peace, as the constant comparison and pressure fade away.

Rejecting societal standards isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. Remember, life is too short to live by someone else’s rules. Dare to be yourself, choose happiness, and inspire others to do the same.

Society has a way of setting expectations that dictate how we should live—what to achieve, how to look, and even how to feel. From the perfect career to the ideal body image, these standards often leave us feeling inadequate or trapped. But here’s the truth: society’s standards are overrated. They’re not a blueprint for happiness but a recipe for frustration. It’s time to break free.

The Problem with Societal Standards

Unrealistic Expectations Society glorifies unattainable ideals, from airbrushed beauty to the relentless hustle for success. These standards are often unrealistic and ignore individuality. Not everyone wants the same career path, physique, or lifestyle.

Harm to Mental Health Trying to conform to societal norms can lead to stress, anxiety, and low self-esteem. The pressure to meet these expectations fosters a cycle of comparison, making it harder to appreciate who you truly are.

The Illusion of Universality Societal standards assume a “one-size-fits-all” approach. They don’t account for cultural differences, personal values, or unique circumstances. What makes one person happy may be irrelevant—or even harmful—to another.

Consumerism and Exploitation Many societal standards are fueled by industries profiting from insecurities. The beauty, fitness, and even self-help industries thrive by convincing us we’re never enough.

How to Escape Society’s Standards

Escaping societal standards isn’t about rejecting society altogether—it’s about redefining your relationship with its expectations. Here’s how:

Identify Your Values

Take time to reflect on what truly matters to you. What brings you joy? What aligns with your beliefs and passions? Write these down and use them as a guide when making decisions.

Unplug from the Comparison Trap

Limit time on social media, where curated perfection reigns. Instead, seek out content that inspires authenticity and self-acceptance.

Redefine Success

Stop chasing society’s version of success (e.g., wealth, fame, or status). Create a personal definition of success that includes fulfillment, peace, and happiness.

Practice Self-Compassion

Give yourself permission to fail, to rest, and to grow at your own pace. Self-compassion is a powerful antidote to societal pressure.

Surround Yourself with Supportive People

Build a community of individuals who respect and encourage your choices, even if they differ from societal norms. Positive influences can help reinforce your path.

Set Boundaries

Learn to say “no” to expectations that don’t serve you. Whether it’s career advice, lifestyle choices, or family traditions, it’s okay to chart your own course.

Celebrate Your Authenticity

Embrace what makes you unique. Wear what you like, pursue what excites you, and let go of the fear of judgment.

The Rewards of Escaping Societal Standards

When you let go of societal expectations, you gain freedom—freedom to live authentically, to pursue what genuinely makes you happy, and to define your own worth. You’ll also find greater peace, as the constant comparison and pressure fade away.

Rejecting societal standards isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. Remember, life is too short to live by someone else’s rules. Dare to be yourself, choose happiness, and inspire others to do the same.

[demaparbat-hp]

Grumpy, meet Sunshine.

Quote by @sstarbitss

[revivalofadornment]

𝕾𝖍𝖎𝖊𝖑𝖉𝖒𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖓

[duahauuoplanh]

Son Sukku in chemise A killer paradox (2024)

[1lifeinspired]

The Gingko Cascading B Spiral ~ All White Leaves ~ Galileo Lights

Source:  https://galileolights.com/products/ginkgo-cascading-b

[simplymadewishes]

[r-u-living]

I'm listening to Mikaele Salesa's statement and it's fucking hilarious

Like this guy has never given a single fuck in his life

[magiefish]

Something I've kind of noticed about a lot of the academic scholarship I've read about Frankenstein / Dracula / Jekyll & Hyde is that everyone just seems to completely dismiss/ignore the characters as actual characters most of the time unless they're the Main Guys. Like, they'll go really in depth about Victor or the Creature's motivations and backstory and spend ages talking about Jekyll's relationship to Hyde and stuff, but the second it comes to characters like Enfield and Elizabeth or Lanyon and Clerval or frankly the Entire Rest of the Cast of Dracula, they just immediately seem uninterested. They'll just sort of vaguely gesture in their direction and go 'Oh yeah X and X thing happens to this character and here's a one sentence summary of their personality which doesn't really matter because this entire cast is interchangeable, anyway, onto the next theme' and half the time their One Sentence is just textually incorrect (looking at the New Woman/Traditional Woman descriptions of Lucy and Mina). And the reason I find this so baffling is because with other analysis I've read (e.g. Great Gatsby stuff) people seem to actually slow down and consider the characterisation and motivations of the cast as a whole with like. Nuance. Like they sit down and treat the characters as multifaceted and complex and having actual relationships with one another, and then you get to these books specifically and no one seems to care? Like they'll go really in depth with various interpretations and historical context for the Big Guys, and then never apply the same sort of examination to anyone else, and if they do, very rarely and probably only for one other character e.g. (Utterson or Mina).

If I had to posit an explanation, I would say its a combination of the archetypal nature of the title characters and the admittedly patchy writing of these books (which arguably lends to their archetypal status). I think academics kind of assume that the primary draw of these books are The Big Guys and the expansive themes and ideas they cover and that everyone else is just a pawn there to enable the narrative around the Big Guys, and the propensity for film adaptations to scrap or rewrite characters probably compounded this impression. And while I think this is at least partly true, the thing is, these characters were not always archetypal Big Guys. They originated in stories alongside *these* other characters *specifically* and it is worth asking what it is about the rest of the cast that makes the story interesting as well. Because, let's be real, if there was approximately no interest in the fucking *narrators* of Dracula, the best friends of Henry Jekyll, or the victims of the Creature, the original readers would have been completely bored out of their minds for most of these novels and public interest in them would not have been as great as it was. All of these novels were stories before they were myths, and academics should not be letting pop culture eclipse them unless they're specifically talking about the relationship between the two.

Overall, I just feel like academics are not only shooting themselves in the foot, but also doing a disservice to these stories by not bothering to investigate the other characters because frankly. It's lazy. It's lazy to dismiss an entire cast and basically skim read any sections involving them just because it's easy to focus on The One Guy. If you people really cared about themes, you'd understand that characters are inextricable from them. Like shit dude I see more care given to characters in essays about Greek tragedies, you guys are waaaay fucking behind

[anghraine]

One of the more peculiar things about my current academic existence is that it's like—

me (to my best friend): It feels kind of strange that I've always had so many ties to people who are much more literary than me. There are all these people I know who keep ending up at "I discovered True Art and now I'm too good for Star Wars" and I'm just thinking, "damn, couldn't be me."

best friend: ...you have a PhD in literature.

me: True, but not their kind of literature!

best friend: It's still a PhD in literature. Do these people have that?

me: Well, hmm, maybe not, technically. But I've never been all that interested in major experiments with form and style—doing that stuff myself or reading the kind of literature that focuses on pushing those boundaries. I've always cared more about popular literature that prioritizes immersion and world building and just getting people to care a lot about characters and plot and such, not the really prestigious stuff.

best friend: You literally teach Shakespeare.

me: Well, I decided not to study the things I love most so they didn't get tainted by academia. And anyway, I still focused on popular literature from my eras. The seventeenth-century stuff I was writing about made a lot of the late Victorians very angry because they thought it was crude and cravenly appealing to unrefined common tastes instead of True Art. The novel in Austen's lifetime was even more of a low-prestige popular form at the time, especially the female-dominated genres, which were most of them, and she took care to identify herself as a woman.

best friend: I know you did get into academia through Tolkien and then didn't study anything close to that.

me: I couldn't let them ruin him for me! And besides, I know that Shakespeare and Austen are about as prestigious as it gets now, but for me they've still got that pop culture media energy, you know? Though sometimes when people make sweeping pronouncements about artistry and literature that don't make sense for anything in English published before 1700, I have to fight the temptation to be ... that person.

best friend, laughing: You mean pulling a well akshually? At least you have the credentials. You could even do it like "well actually, *obnoxious cough* as someone with a PhD in this subject..." now. You spent years earning this! Tell a few people Well Actually as a treat and then go watch Star Wars.

[catenary-chad]

Chubby Electra because my mind just really had to know what that would look like. Bottom-heavy, very ambiguous looking, very cute.

[andrewvehansen]

Scarcity

This approximately 36″ x 36″ quilt was created for the Brooklyn Quilters Guild Earth Day fence quilt show. I used improv piecing to create a feeling of water gradually disappearing into nothingness. I then used free-motion quilting to outline the word “water” which is only slightly visible, symbolizing how this essential resource is disappearing around the world due to climate change and…

[sludgekludge]

to be fair if other people are doing something that makes it more likely to be socially acceptable. other people whitewash biblical figures all the time.

i think if your modus operandi is based entirely on whether or not other people are doing something then it only shows you have a lack of individuality and no backbone.

call it what you want but hazbin is undeniably a unique and unusual project to make its way to corporate funding. this show has an out-there sense of visual design and an almost entirely queer cast centred in hell, it is at least somewhat controversial by nature. it has never been attempting to cater to traditional white christianity. the idea it would bend the knee to societal norms when it specifically comes to white evangelical racism is concerning, if that's why they did it, especially when this show already has an existing history of controversy surrounding racism.

[revivalofadornment]

𝕲𝖚𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖊

[poorks]

if anyone calls me a "content creator" i'm stabbing them with my impossibly long spear

[simplymadewishes]

[elderflowergin]

A little rant about MBC My Dearest, purity and men who weaponise it:

(Trigger warning: sexual assault, rape as a war crime)

Fusion sageuk or not, this world has some set rules around purity, even in the relatively loosey-goosey Neuggeunri, where women and men can and do commingle, chat and meet in groups. The last barbarian invasion hangs over them; the old ladies in Gil-chae’s hometown tell the girls that death is better than allowing the barbarians to touch you and that if they do, you should kill yourself for the sake of said purity. Death is preferable to lost purity in this time/place; that’s firmly established from the beginning of the show. (It’s reinforced midway when Injo’s court reports of women who jumped off cliffs into the sea at Ganghwa rather than be taken by barbarians, no doubt perceived not as an avoidance of pain and torture, but a praiseworthy act designed to retain and restore purity).

Gil-chae and Eun-ae have to grapple with this when Eun-ae is attacked by a barbarian. Eun-ae was violated and felt violated by what happened. They know what they are supposed to do, what the old ladies told them to do; and yet Gil-chae holds Eun-ae close and says, nothing happened. We were hurt and our clothes were torn because we rolled down a mountain. Nothing happened to us. She rewrote that story, in the face of everything that said Eun-ae didn’t deserve to live anymore. Consummate survival requires rewriting stories, even the ones that are the hardest to paper over.

Because it appears again in Hanyang, in relative peacetime, when Eun-ae feels she cannot accept Yeon-jun’s proposal, because even if Gil-chae rewrote that story, it’s harder to reconfigure shame when it’s under the skin, when it’s attached to the thing that makes you valuable as a woman. Yeon-jun may never know what it took for his future wife to survive, and that ignorance too, is a privilege. But Eun-ae knows, and perceives her value differently now than before. It’s Gil-chae who persuades her again, who reminds her that they rewrote this story together, two women who survived against all odds.

In this postwar, still somewhat vulnerable time, the possibility is high that there are assault survivors around, just as there are women who may have had to sell their bodies to feed their families, or broken any number of rules around purity for survival. It’s foreseeable that women survivors have been through or seen unimaginable things happen to other women, to their friends and have experienced it themselves. I’m not saying this to undersell the general trauma of war on men - just to say that war crimes hurt women in a very different, very intensely long-lasting way* as compared to theatres of war and fighting.

All of this to say: it didn’t take Jang Hyeon very long to go from “you’re not as pure as you think you are for loving a taken man” a few episodes ago to “you couldn’t live without a man for a day? If you were going to give it away you might as well come to me at least once.” I am truly horrified that he pretty much gets away with it; Gil-chae moves with the punch and gets in a hit of her own, but that’s a bone-chilling thing to tell a woman, any woman. It would be a terrible thing to say to a woman now, let alone in a time when that mattered so much to women, let alone in a time and place where it was forcibly taken from so many women, many of whom died so it wouldn’t be.

This callous attitude continues later when she’s run away with him and they’re in a room for the night. She tentatively asks about marriage, saying that it would be hard for her, since she’s almost a married woman, and people would consider her “used”. (Her fiancé later tells Yeon-jun that he is permitted to kill his partner and the adulterous lover, so this isn’t a gossip without consequence.) In essence, Gil-chae put her life on the line for a man who still says “Husband, no. I am your servant and my body is yours”, a promise that carries little substantive meaning in their world. Marriage isn’t a luxury good that she’s asking for as a whim. It’s what protects Gil-chae and her family from harm; it’s what will allow her sister to find a suitable match later on.)

Jang Hyeon is shown from the start as a man of his own ideas, someone who who doesn’t truck with traditional Joseon morality. He can and does reinvent rules for himself, and clearly doesn’t think that much of notions of purity, but he’s fine using them against Gil-chae.

Yes, Jang Hyeon saved her life during the war, but Jang Hyeon also had the choice of participating or not, the luxury of stepping back if he so chose. Gil-chae had no such luxury, no such choice, an open target on the run. He no doubt understands that the barbarians are raping women, that to survive as a woman is fraught, that sex has become fraught. To use purity to attack a woman he claims to love, to reduce her momentarily the way those old women did - to express his anger by lashing out in this way, in a way calculated to hurt, to violently pierce at the foundation of what it means to be a woman in this time and place is a cruelty that is hard to countenance. It’s telling that his anger at her leads him there, that it escalated with all that time, because he knows that’s what hurts. He knows it’s valuable, knows it hurts when he strikes at it, and yet will do little to protect it for her. I don’t know if there’s any amount of growth that will change this, whether it’s something he can change at all.

There are many upsetting things about this episode, but Gil-chae’s choice to stay at the end is the least upsetting part of it, and the most conceivable, intelligent choice she could have made in the face of a man who - in her perspective - can only offer her fervent words and a feverish gaze, things that will not feed her family or protect her reputation, her business or her heart.