The Reason People Hate How They Look

The Crisis of Self-Loathing Among Young People

Between the ages of 14 and 18 today, according to various statistical studies, 30 to 50 percent of young adults hate how they look. They hate how they look. They call it self-loathing.

They look in the mirror and they feel disgusted by their looks. One in three young girls between the ages of 12 and 16 harm themselves with a sharp object — and I'm not talking about a toothpick, I'm talking about a knife, a compass. They make themselves bleed. They scratch their skin. Why? Because they hate the way they look. One in three young girls.

This sad scenario that we have today — this obsession with looks, this obsession with one particular form of beauty and everything else is ugly — a study that was done across five countries asked: what was the number one reason young people have reached the position where they hate how they look?

What was the number one factor? The media. Social media. What they watch — the Netflix that they watch, Amazon Prime subscriptions, the movies that they watch. They're constantly exposed to images of so-called perfect men and women in a specific shape, in a specific form, a specific form of beauty — and they are exposed to it again and again and again until they don't know anything else but this. When they look at themselves in the mirror, they don't recognize it.

How This Relates to the Names of Allah

The Prophet ﷺ was talking to somebody about arrogance. One of his companions says, Ya Rasulullah, a person likes to beautify their clothes and beautify how they dress and how they smell and how they look — is this arrogance? Is this pride?

The Prophet ﷺ said: Allah — one of His names is Al-Jameel, the ultimate beauty — and He loves beauty.

"Indeed Allah is beautiful and He loves beauty."
(Sahih Muslim, Book 1, Hadith 164)

And part of that means: everything Allah created has beauty in it. Everything Allah created has beauty in it — but it is upon us to appreciate that beauty. And the moment we start looking at ourselves in the mirror and feeling disgusted, we are actually insulting Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

The Name Al-Quddus: Embracing the Imperfect

We have started now to reach the position where Allah is Al-Quddus — the perfect — but no, we want perfection in everything that we see. We want perfection in ourselves, and that is not asked from anybody.

Part of understanding Allah's name Al-Quddus means: embrace the imperfect. Accept — enjoy — the fact that you and I, as human beings, will never be perfect. But there is a beauty in every blemish.

In every ugliness, there is a beauty — because it depends on who is looking. It doesn't depend on the one that's being looked at. In everything Allah created, there is something to appreciate.

But we have reached this sorry situation — and it affects marriages.