MISTERYOSA.COM

Silky long hair, fair complexion, chinky eyes, and a great body - these are the physical qualities of someone, especially a woman, who is “beautiful”. I have a mop on top of my head that passes for hair, and the sun has been brutally cruel on my skin. Depending on my mood, my eyes get evilly chinky or surprisingly round. I do have a body to boot - in a wrestling match, that is. If the aforementioned attributes are to be bases for determining beauty, then I can conclude that beautiful is everything I’m not. But where does this standard of beauty come from? Why do people squeeze themselves into this socially-constructed mold?

Beauty has no clear origin. It is the creation of nature that is made complicated by the society. Beauty, in the present context, is constructed by the society and reinforced by the mass media. The issue regarding beauty affects women more than men. Standards for males are not as extreme or as inimical as the women’s standards. As women become more important, their physical features also become more important. Beauty becomes a qualification for a woman’s rise in power and a means of communicating her economic role and social status. As a result, no woman is entirely satisfied with the way she looks. A woman who doesn’t meet or conform to the prescribed norm of social desirability is viewed as different and is often isolated. Beauty becomes a commodity with which one may bargain with in order to obtain social acceptance.

People compare themselves to unrealistic media images. They feel insecure with the way they look when they see “beautiful” people in the media and in society. Television, movies, and magazines bombard people with messages about what is beautiful and what is not. In these media, happy and successful people are almost always portrayed by people who meet the society’s beauty standard. Advertisements and magazines have done more to cause the social unrest when it comes to the ideology of beauty. These media elements, instead of making people feel good, persuade them to think that they are physically incapable and unacceptable. Media coerce them into thinking that in order to gain success and self-worth, they should buy and use impossibly expensive and unnecessary beauty products. Mass media influence their ideas and perceptions not only on concepts like beauty but others as well. Mass media almost dictates society because they present us with distinctions on what beauty should be. If a person is not beautiful, then he or she is ugly. Media stereotyping has gone a long way, and in order to battle faulty characterization and convention, media consumers need to be critically wise consumers of visual images.

For years, advertisements and magazines supposedly try to make people feel good about the way they look. These media encourage people to be contented with what they are. But how can they believe the motives of a medium if this very same medium shows stereotypically beautiful people selling beauty products? How credible is a magazine supposedly in favor of natural beauty if its articles about that subject are surrounded by advertisements which make people feel insecure? Do the media present images that open a window on the real world, or do they hold up a fun house mirror in which the reflection of real people are distorted? Media images are powerful tools, and they make the society’s definition of beauty very confusing.

So what, then, is beautiful?

People make it clear that they believe in this one-dimensional, narrow, and physical definition of beauty. Authentic beauty is a notion fixed in people’s minds and hardly ever expressed in popular culture, or validated in the mass media. But then, we all should have our own take regarding things like this.

You, as a person, can change this view on beauty by first believing in yourself. Do not let others define who you are. Your standard of beauty should be set by you and not by others and the society. Being beautiful is only a basic human pleasure, but being ugly doesn’t make you any less of a person. The standard of beauty should not be a standard of your happiness. You need not subject yourself into something only because it is universal. Let go of personal put-downs. If you catch yourself being self-critical, change the dialog. Beauty includes much more of who a person is. And if you believe this short piece, then trust me when I say you are beautiful - in more ways than one.