Brooke HundleySenior Seminar

The Betrayal of Beauty“What’s it like to be beautiful?” I remember asking my mother this question (one

of many I’m sure that day as I was known for being quite the inquisitive child) as I gazed

at the newest sugary treat in the grocery aisle. To which she replied, “It means you get to

wear anything you want, you get to have a lot of money, and everyone loves you,” as she

pulled me through the seemingly endless array of goodies. For the rest of the day I was

set, forget being a doctor or a teacher or a mom or any of the other assorted jobs my 4-

year-old brain dreamed up, when I grew up I was going to be beautiful.

Somewhere along the way that 4-year-old’s dream became a sad sense of reality

when beauty was discovered as something to be achieved through whatever means

necessary, a socially-pressured, seemingly unattainable goal preventing each of us from

appreciating the splendor in everyday situations. Looking back over the course of one’s

life, one is likely to find that the most mesmerizing moments, those moments in which

life seems to stand still like a frozen image in time and all of one’s troubles lose their

significance momentarily, were those in which one truly appreciated the work of nature

for what is, not what it could be. Whether it’s a child taking his first steps, a boy off on

an imaginative adventure with his loyal canine companion, two teenagers experiencing

their first real kiss, or simply the feeling of home one experiences with the savory smell

of freshly baked cookies, beauty lies in these exciting moments we wish to hold on to.

As generations grow older and the media becomes the American “tween’s” new best

friend, one can often lose sight of the simplicity of beauty in our everyday lives and

instead be sufficiently sucked into an artificial idea of beauty sold in a neatly packaged

form by our local advertiser. It is this beauty we often describe as a series of physically

humanistic and feminine images. From having soft skin and long hair, to big lips and

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bigger breasts, the female body is broken down piece by piece as if on an examination

table, each part defined by a standard of “beautiful” or simply put not “beautiful enough.”

And if we’re ever unclear about our opinions of what is beautiful, the media is right there

to give us a reassuring pat/shove in the right direction. Tear open the latest edition of

Cosmopolitan and it will take you 10 pages of advertising to get to the first page of

content. Along the way however you will be sure to find image after image of beauty

sold in the newest perfume bottle, the longest-lasting rejuvenation cream, or the most

alluring mascara. When did beauty stop describing breath-taking sights such as the view

from the Grand Canyon or life-changing events such as the birth of a litter of puppies and

start being sold to us in the form of size zero models with abnormally large breasts and

the strongest bottle of liquor? Never once we do stop to judge a child’s first walk as

inadequately perfect or criticize a blooming flower for unsymmetrical petals. So why do

we spend so much concentration and dollars on judging the imperfections of other

humans? Imperfections that only leave us striving to become an unrealistic dreamed up

image rather than focusing on the uniqueness each of us has to offer?

As children we live in an utter state of appreciation for everything around us. As

I think back to my years as a preschool Sunday school teacher I remember fondly starting

each class with a round of show and tell. The items for display would run the gamut

from a wilting dandelion picked along the way to a ladybug patrolling a mighty leaf to a

chewed up Frisbee from a rousing game of fetch. Each child saw the significance and

appreciation for the smallest things in life, the beauty in simply living and enjoying the

world around them. After watching the film “Mean Girls,” I wonder as the years will

progress how long before society removes this simple pure admiration the children have

Brooke HundleySenior Seminar

for the world around them and instead replaces it with the pressure to be the skinniest or

the most muscular, wear the most fashionable clothes, and be “accepted” into society’s

clearly defined lines of beauty. Will they be graced with just enough good looks to join

in with their own version of the “Plastics,” forever working to maintain a level of

acceptance by the likes of girls like Regina George or a level of adoration and respect as

a football star like Aaron Samuels? Or will they find an inner acceptance that they must

struggle to maintain as an outsider among their cookie cutter peers like the characters

Janis and Damian? I wonder if they do manage to make it beyond the terrible awkward

teenage years of fighting to fit in, if they will be forever more chasing an idealized idea of

perfection. Succumbing to a life of dying to achieve that dream husband/wife, dream

wedding, dream car, dream job, dream life…and in the process miss out on all the little

pieces of beauty to be found in each and every day aside from materials goods and

magazine covers. Suppose any of them are able to achieve their dream body with the

“wonders” of plastic surgery or gain the loving affection of that seemingly perfect person,

what happens when the “illusion” as Andrew Cohen describes it in his work “The

Promise of Perfection” wears off? When other areas of the body start to sag or that

“perfect” person has annoying habits. When disillusionment sets in, will they see it as a

new challenge to take on, or will they enter into an endless cycle of “wanting to possess”

people or objects due to “the power of our desire to create an illusion of perfection” if we

are able to possess these things (Cohen)?

I was asked the other day why selling this counterfeit version of beauty was so

successful especially with regards to our young women. To me it seemed like an almost

obvious result of the world in which we live in. As I’ve grown older I’ve watched “play

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dates” with friends turn into online games over the Internet. I’ve seen knocking on doors

to see if anyone’s home as the best way to reach a friend, to 9-year-olds with cell phones.

I’ve watched sweet and seemingly innocent boy bands corner the CD market only to be

replaced by scantily clad women and sexually explicit lyrics. In today’s world children

are so far separated from one another that the idea of a little girl even being best friends

with a boy seems far-fetched. Yet how are the sexes supposed to learn about each other

if we can’t talk and socialize with each other on a friendship basis at a young age? Naomi

Wolf describes this state of isolation and unwanted outside influence in her work “The

Beauty Myth.” Relating today’s disconnection to “an environment in which men and

women rarely get to talk together honestly in a public setting about what each really

desires.” Deprived of spending time openly communicating with their peers young

women turn outside their social groups to new sources of information to get the latest

inside scoop in the form “wise advice, tested by experience, of an admirable older female

relative,” speaking out to them from the magazine rack (Wolf). It is these “wise” sources

of information that prevent our young women from hearing the honest truth that men like

all sizes and shapes and personalities of women, and instead utilize advertising dollars to

convince them that if they want to experience love and affection from the opposite sex

they must fit into skinny jeans and a tube top.

The movie “Gia” is a perfect example of the fight for our young women in this

society against the pressures to be beautiful. I’ve heard many times that America’s

families are in danger right now as our parents work longer hours, our kids are left on

their own and the media in turn has begun to raise them. Without the love and attention

at home, young girls like Gia turn to their parental guardians: the media, to give them a

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lesson on how to get ahead in life. Lessons that led to nothing more than a damaging

struggle to be accepted and loved through any means necessary as can be seen by the

tragic death of young Gia and her battles with addiction and fighting for affection. David

D. Burns, explores the life of a perfectionist in his work “The Perfectionist’s Script for

Self-Defeat.” In it he details perfectionism as a way of “dealing with feelings of

insecurity and uncertainty that result from growing up in an unloving household.” Our

young women are turning to a life of trying to be so perfectly beautiful that they in turn

become so imperfectly broken inside, encountering severe self-punishment anytime the

slightest mistake is made. From eating disorders to cutting to severe cases of depression

it isn’t so much our families that are in danger, but our young women that are taking the

brunt of this disconnection of human interaction, fighting to find a place where attaining

the completely fabricated image of beauty on paper will give them all the love and

affection and security they never received in life.

Why not live in a world where a man is just as beautiful for coming home at the

end of a hard day and helping to cook and prepare his kids for bed as he is for spending

countless hours in the gym perfecting his lean body? Why not support women that tackle

a job and a family with words of encouragement instead of provoking them to feel

insufficient without the newest anti-wrinkle cream or the most effective detergent? Why

not use our media to encourage family outings, open communication, and an unwavering

support for achieving one’s goals? Because extra time with the family, a child’s hug, a

wife’s loving kiss, aren’t things that can be sold in multiples by a manufacturer, but

rather are unique products of life. Our media has conducted countless research on the

consumer’s mind and realized that there is more money to be made out of feeding our

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insecurities than in rewarding our strengths. So instead of having a country of confident

over-achievers unconcerned with material possessions, we live in a society where one is

constantly trying to fit a mold of perfection, where one never feels as successful,

beautiful, powerful, or just plain happy as those on television who have the newest car or

the clearest skin. Wouldn’t our men rather have women who are confident and proud of

whom they are rather than insecure and needing constant reassurance? Wouldn’t our

women rather have men who are supportive and fun rather than constantly trying to

appear successful and afraid to show emotion? How great would our world be if our

advertisers weren’t rewarded for the rare cases in which they effectively represent

minorities or show a variety of men and women in all shapes and sizes, but were

expected to portray the real make-up of our world in every advertisement?

We may never completely do away with wanting a shiny new car, a cute new

outfit, or even the best smelling cleaning product, but if we could redefine our wants and

put aside our media defined definitions of beautiful, then maybe we could stop to

appreciate the beauty all around us. A state of being described as “the greatest challenge

for the ego and the personality (Cohen).” Perhaps it is difficult and demanding, but

collectively it might also be healthy and encouraging. It’s the simple things in life that

get us through the day, the touch of another, a smile, a laugh; rewards that cannot be

bought or sold, traded or re-gifted. Moments that stay with us, change us, teach us and

reward us. It is these gifts of nature, these simple humanistic qualities that are the true

definitions of beauty. If only our advertisers could find success in selling the beauty

prevalent in each and every one of us rather than a beauty that’s only skin deep.

Brooke HundleySenior Seminar

Works Cited

Burns, David D. “The Perfectionist’s Script for Self-Defeat.” Psychology Today

(November 1980): 36-52.

Cohen, Andrew. “The Promise of Perfection.” What Is Enlightenment

(Spring/Summer 1998): 21-29.

Gia. Prod. James D. Brubaker, Dir. Michael Cristofer, Perf. Angelina Jolie.

DVD. Citadel Entertainment, 1998.

Mean Girls. Prod. Lorne Michaels, Dir. Mark Waters, Perf. Lindsey Lohan,

Rachel McAdams. DVD. Paramount Pictures, 2004.

Wolf, Naomi. “The Beauty Myth.” Perennial (1991): 58-85.