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.
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2 comments:
This is an excellent blog post that raises many important issues and questions! I have a theory that part of the cause for this obsession goes back to the Protestant Reformation. That event really reinforced and crystallized the distorted view that the human body is inherently a cause and source of most sin and that sex and sexual pleasures are sinful. From that point onwards, painters and sculptors had to start covering nudity in art with little fig leaves; stricter and more violent enforcement of moral laws increased; suddenly the human body went from being something divine, an integrated part of God's creation and the natural world, to something sinful, fallen, and shameful that needed to be covered up. The pendulum has kept swinging as a result, going from the extremes of the Puritans and Victorians to our modern, artificial, "human-body-as-piece-of-meat-to-be-consumed" media-obsessed age. Until we as a society come to grips with our dysfunctional mentality about the body (and many other related topics as well, such as death), and find healthy ways to express beauty and sexuality, we'll continue to see strange manifestations acting themselves out.
Regarding the lack of interiority, that is also another great topic! I would connect that with the domination of the Cartesian, rational mind for the past few centuries. The rational, scientific mindset has really negated the value of inner, subjective truths. We've become afraid to look inside and see what's there. The greater the inner emptiness and meaninglessness, the more desire there is to substitute and cover up that emptiness with external things like clothing and material possessions. We've confused and switched the meaningful for the meaningless.
I love this post!
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