What an ugly world we live in. When did we allow our society to become so obsessed with the way other people look and what other people are doing? Every day impressionable young girls and boys alike will be pressured into dieting, obsessive exercising, eating disorders. Every day millions will wake up and avoid looking in the mirror for fear of what they will see. Or else they will look in the mirror and do nothing but degrade the person looking back at them.
Since when did it become more important to be thin than to be intelligent? When did having perfect abs take precedence over having a college education? When did being beautiful start to matter more than being individual?
Society claims that they support individuality, and then pounces on those who dare to disturb the "norm". Celebrities are followed relentlessly, praised and worshiped when they look perfect or are wearing the right clothes or are starring in a great new movie. Why do those things matter than the other things those same celebrities are caught doing? Drugs, porn, arrests, DUIs--these are the people that we are expected to want to be like? These are the people that they are exposing our children to?
Young men are ridiculed if their bodies are not perfectly tanned, toned, and muscular. Girls are sneered at if they are not a size zero. Your skin must be flawless, your teeth white and straight and even, your lips perfectly symmetrical. Your nose must be straight and small. Your eyes can't be different sizes. If your eyebrows have a stray hair, you have committed a grievous sin. Your legs, ladies, must be long, toned, thin, tan--and do please make sure you have shaved them. You have to have the type of body that will look good in a bikini. Your breasts must be a certain size and shape. Guys, if your abs don't look like sections of a Hershey's bar, then no woman will ever love you. Also, your pecs must be massive, your shoulders broad and your waist narrow.
What happened?
When did fad diets replace books on the list of important things in our minds? When did exercising obsessively take over all the free time we could be spending with people we love? When did being the belle of the ball take precedence over being actual productive human beings?
When did women start getting pregnant for the extra press attention, instead of for the furthering and enriching of their lives and their families' lives?
And what, pray tell, will happen to those children? Children of my own generation are struggling and falling everywhere I turn. Individual people with beautiful minds and hearts are being squashed because their outside appearance is not what this broken and ugly society considers perfect. What will happen to the children of rising generations? The children bred and born to have their faces on the covers of magazines from the moment they first enter this world, as well as countless others whose faces are less well-known but no less important?
When will society understand, and adjust its priorities to what they should be--not on who looks best without makeup, not whose body looks the best in a bikini, not whose arms are bigger, not how many calories are in such-and-such a dish. Not how many hours you should be spending at the gym, and if you aren't, you're a fatty and doomed to be so forever. Not on how to make your hair grow longer, thicker, curly or straight. Not on how to flatter your face shape the best.
Not on who has been voted Country Weekly's hottest man and how you should look more like that. Not on how much muscle mass you should have. Not on the definition of your abs or pecs or legs.
Not, in other words, on the meaningless appearance of things.
The kind of beauty that the world values fades with time. And when it does, society mocks and ridicules it. True beauty is something else altogether.
It is talent, and the joy that talent brings to someone. The pride that shines through his face when he plays a masterpiece--his own composition--on the piano. The way she can see beauty in unusual things, and then capture and share them with her paintbrush. A good grade on a tough assignment, a scholarship received, an engine restored, the solving of a difficult mathematical equation, the ability to make someone's day brighter, a dress sewn, jewelry made, a car beautifully restored.
It is love. The way the newlyweds smile at each other in every picture. The tenderness in a new father's eyes. The exquisite joy when the child graduates high school, college, or even grade school. The jokes played, the tears shed, hands held, kisses exchanged. Photos taken, memories made, words spoken and remembered.
It is patience. It is kindness. Honesty. Charity. Integrity. Intelligence.
When will society understand that it's not about what things look like. It's what they are.
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