Human Physical Appearance and Beauty

Vivian Nguyen
November 29, 2012 Beauty is what society likes to set, so everyone could have something to compare to each other. Given time, money and pain, what we call beauty, could be defined by cosmetics and surgeries. Females often worry more about beauty. Beauty is both a physical and mental kind of subject. Beauty can be defined differently through different people and culture. It is perceived as important as we grow up, influenced by the medias. Because of this, girls grow up thinking of beauty in the most distorted ways. The society around us likes to influence our judgments on beauty. We look up to celebrities and models as if they were gods and goddesses. Every human has idealized a body that wasn’t before. Envy, being one of the seven sins, affects the corruption in society. Koggel states, “Women are placed on a pedestal as exemplifying physical beauty at the same time as the great majority of women are considered drab, ugly, fat, loathsome”. This quote stands out the most in a way. It states the truth. As I grow up, I face many other females in the world and I feel like I’m constantly compared to. Throughout high school, majority of the students have probably thought they were ugly, fat or loathsome once in a while. Society decides what is attractive and what isn’t. We have a choice either to agree or disagree, but eventually most go with the crowd. It is in our nature to be bothered by what others’ think about them. Because of what Society considers beauty, everyone considers it as well. Not only does Society cause our views on beauty, Culture is an important example for beauty’s definition. As a child, I was taught to never go against my parents’ and elders’ judgment. I was taught what’s said to be right and to be against what they thought was wrong. “From practices of foot-binding in ancient China to contemporary alterations in the form of plastic surgery or anorexia” (Koggel). In ancient China, their culture had men thinking it was attractive seeing small feet so from a small age, the higher class females had their feet banded at a young age. It caused the feet to bend awkwardly but also distorts the skeleton. “Women have been prepared to go to great lengths to meet the cultural paradigms of feminine beauty” said Koggel. As absurd as it may seem, they were influence that it meant beauty and wealth. Montez says, “Some nations squeeze the heads of children between boards to make them square, while others prefer the shape of sugar-loaf as the highest type of beauty for that important top-piece to the human form divine”. Sugar-loaf shaped heads were considered the most beautiful in this nation and children probably had no choice but to do it. Compared to America, beauty is looking thin, attractive and having perfect teeth. We’re recommended braces if even one tooth is out of line. For all we know, somewhere else might suggest that we’re absurd like foot-binding and using boards to fix our head shapes. Beauty should be known for confidence. Beauty industries target people with insecurities. They use their customers’ emotions to their advantage. I don’t consider beauty deceptive but instead the stuff these industries sell. Make up is deceptive and just an illusion. It’s said the enhance you’re beauty but when it’s used so much that the person looks completely unrelated to you, it’s deception. In the “Dove Onslaught” commercial, an innocent elementary student appears and many things we call “beauty” is flashed one after another. It shows skinny, thin and curved ladies. Some wearing less clothes than the others but they all give off the same image. Afterwards, it moves on commercials of losing weight or getting surgeries. By the time all the images stop, the video said “Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does”. This just shows how much these awful things that appear on everyone’s television at home can influence anyone. This one line that appears in the Dove commercial sums up the entire video. The beauty industries go to such extreme lengths to sell their products. To sum it all up, they used rhetoric to reach everyone’s emotions. Pathos is what appeared to me throughout the commercial. I felt disgusted that anyone would want to put surgery in another’s head and devastated because the girl might become like them one day. Because Beauty industries use products and things that everyone thinks they must have, they cause Society to want it as well. And that is how trends start. It is a chain effect that medias use against us. Beauty has no exact definition. It can mean differently from mines, just like how beauty is portrayed differently in other cultures.