Big Light on "Beauty"

What makes people so obsessed with being beautiful on the outside? Why does it equate to being un-lovable? The more I get past my own obsession with it, and the feelings of insecurity that go along with it, the less logical and more compulsive it seems. It's illogical because most people aren't that attractive, and most people have people that love them. It's compulsive in the way that a compulsion makes you focus on one thing and exlude other things. I compulsively focused on my outer appearance and over-looked my positive inner qualities, in addition to all the obvious life success of people that aren't that attractive. It is also compulsive in the way that a compulsion makes you focus on one thing as the solution to all problems, which makes it easier and easier to avoid dealing with problems at all. I focused on my outer appearance in order to avoid looking at the unattractiveness of my insides. And I was convinved that the inside didn't matter, that only my outer appearance needed to be good. For me the extraordinary power of wanting to avoid my insides is what made being beautiful seem all important.

I'm speaking in the past tense to highlight my progress in this area, but I still do often fall into the trap of obsessing about my outer appearance.

Our culture is currently not very supportive of working on the insides. It's almost like working on your inner beauty means you're ugly and you've given up trying to be less ugly. What a horrible message to send! There is this imagined ultimate-validation that comes with being ultra beautiful. It doesn't exist. The ultra beautiful are just as insecure about their appearance as the rest of us. I think we should be trying to bring about an age where good hygiene and a modicum of attention to one's health are all that is needed to be beautiful, and people spend their energy becoming loving, tolerant, generous, patient, and kind. Think about how much more beauty would exist in the world if that happened? Where people like themselves because they're likeable, and their beauty shines out of them like a big light.