The Other Side of Good Looks

You see sexy models posing on the sides of the underwear you buy. You find the idealized bodies of mannequins in department stores wearing the clothes that only good-looking people can wear. You watch Hollywood celebrities and fashion models parade around in glamorous dresses and suits, and you wish you could look like that. Even your average reality show star, sitcom actor, and pop singer are the ideals of beauty in modern society.

The recent showcase of Britain’s Got Talent with Susan Boyle was a great wake-up call to just how shallow societies have become all over the world. The looks of pity and disgust were rampant as Susan Boyle took the stage. In the face of this contempt, she wowed the world with her beautiful voice, and even though she wasn’t the modern definition of beauty, she proved that she did indeed have talent.

So, what does this obsession with looks have to do with you? Well, the biggest problem it causes is that it ostracizes people who cannot achieve these slim looks in a normal, healthy manner. People resort to eating disorders to get the kind of body that they think they are supposed to have, and worst of all, people around them usually compliment them on it! Society is so conditioned to appreciate a strict type of beauty and condemn anything that doesn’t quite match its rigid definition that it practically encourages detrimental behavior. This obsession even affects people’s careers and livelihood.

Think about the last time a woman became famous who wasn’t extremely thin and attractive by society’s modern standards. You might find a couple exceptions, but for the most part, only the most attractive men and women will attain the highest fame and glory. There are many people out there that are very good at playing and composing music, but in a modern age with music videos, late night television, and concert tours, only the ones that look good on a magazine cover are deemed appropriate for the big music labels.

More and more people are trying to look like these idealized celebrities. The fact is, no one who’s actually normal gets famous, so the only people that society as a whole can look up to are the ones who most people cannot begin to look like. Even so, many people try to reach that ideal, and for those who have the odds stacked against them, they may feel pressured to do something desperate. Imagine being passed up for a good job because you aren’t as attractive as another candidate. These kinds of things happen everyday, because people put a price on looks. With that kind of competition, it’s no wonder that some people are willing to do anything to meet society’s arbitrary definition of beauty.

If we want to combat eating disorders, it starts not just with education about a healthy lifestyle, but also a reversal of this mental conditioning that only thin is beautiful. In fact, there are plenty of people who are perfectly healthy, but feel that being a normal weight isn’t good enough. There’s no doubt about it: thin is still in. There are a lot of different factors in why people resort to eating disorders, but we all have to work together to help keep people from needlessly hurting themselves in the future.