What it takes to look like a celebrity - Sonam Kapoor

"So, for every teen girl leaning into her bedroom mirror, wondering why she doesn’t look like a celebrity: Please know that nobody wakes up like this. Not me. Not any other actress. (Not even Beyoncé. I swear.)

Here’s the real deal: Before each public appearance, I spend 90 minutes in a makeup chair. Three to six people work on my hair and makeup, while a professional touches up my nails. My eyebrows are tweezed and threaded every week. There’s concealer on parts of my body that I could never have predicted would need concealing.

I’m up at 6am every day and at the gym by 7:30. I exercise for 90 minutes and, some evenings, again before bed. It’s someone’s full-time job to decide what I can and cannot eat. There are more ingredients in my face packs than in my food. There’s a team dedicated to finding me flattering outfits.

After all that, if I’m still not “flawless” enough, there are generous servings of Photoshop.

I’ve said it before, and I will keep saying it: It takes an army, a lot of money, and an incredible amount of time to make a female celebrity look the way she does when you see her. It isn’t realistic, and it isn’t anything to aspire to.

Aspire to confidence. Aspire to feeling pretty and carefree and happy, without needing to look any specific way.

And the next time you see a 13-year-old girl gazing wistfully at a blemish-free, shiny-haired Bollywood actress on a magazine cover, bust the myth of flawlessness for her.

Tell her how beautiful she is. Praise her smile or her laugh or her mind or her gait.

Don't let her grow up believing that she's flawed, or that there's anything she's lacking for looking different from a woman on a billboard. Don’t let her hold herself to a standard that’s too high, even for the women on the billboards.