By Hope Bowser
Western Sun staff writer
My looks have gotten me free drinks, job offers, taunted, asked out, stereotyped, days where I stuck a finger down my throat and nights where I cried myself to sleep.
Something as seemingly arbitrary as the way one’s face and body are put together can become a dominant facet of one’s self esteem, in turn greatly affecting the quality of life.
If you break it down to the basics, looks are just that- something to look at. They are the shell, the wrapping paper of a person, covering up what people are really excited to see.
Nice cheekbones and long eyelashes can’t carry a conversation. A body is there to help us move, achieve things, and get places. A hot guy won’t experience life any more than an average Joe in a baseball hat.
So then why do we hold attractiveness on such a pedestal? Why are billions of dollars each year spent on makeup, cosmetic surgery, fake tans, and not to mention all of the funding for advertising for the aforementioned?
Why do almost 80% of college girls experience disordered eating, the predecessor to a full blown eating disorder? Why are we taught that to find our soul mate we must have perfectly straight smiles, perfectly big boobs, and perfect highlights?
Why do guys feel like they have to spend as much time as their girlfriends do in the mirror, but with more hair product? Why are “pretty people” so often treated differently, whether better or worse, than the “average” ones?
Yes, human beings are visual creatures, we are innately drawn to the fiery reds of a sunset, the sharp angles of architecture, the curves of a body. We are passionate about things we can see and interpret them into emotions. That is the real beauty we should all recognize.
But our society has become so visually focused that we too often irrationally believe that we must possess certain features to be attractive, whether its a tiny waist, blonde hair, or buff arms. The prevailing ideology in American culture is that beauty equals all that is good.
Beauty implies good morals, good genes, good personality, and is a natural assumption that is rarely true. So what am I proposing? I say that we push to see not only the beauty, but the intention behind a smile, the strength within a body, the emotion encompassed within a pair of eyes.
I say we should live in a world where guys are celebrated for the sometimes hairy, sometimes sloppy men they can be, and when boyfriends tell their ladies they look just as sexy in a pair of pajamas as they do in a short dress and heels they really believe it!
I say we stop nitpicking others for their flaws, and end criticizing ourselves irrationally once and for all, because I’m definitely not perfect and neither are you, and that is the most beautiful thing of all.
Life’s beauty lives in the freckles, the big dimples, the gaps in front teeth, and the confidence that is buried, sometimes too deep, within all of us.
So give yourself a break. Stop and look in the mirror, check yourself out. And while you’re at it, go ahead and ask yourself, “how you doin’?”
