Inner Beauty

This week we learned about sociological influences on gender roles.
We watched a documentary called "Killing Us Softly 4" which clearly showed us the influences of media on women roles. There were mulitple examples of how women's bodies are materialized or how some pictures imply a condescending image of women. Along with these offending pictures, there are myriad of pictures that suggest to girls of what beauty is.

Beauty is indescribable. It's hard to define because of the vagueness along with the limitless possibilities. Perception of beauty is up to the viewer. However, at such a young age girls have been shown that beauty is big eyes, tiny waist, stick-like legs, glamorous body, v-neck, and flawless skin. This kind of beauty is unrealistic as well as disturbing.

But still, so many girls, teens, and women think that beauty can be defined. And sometimes, nature isn't fair-so the logical thing to do is change themselves in an unnatural way. With needles and cutting and sewing and ripping. It has been estimated that 420000 Americans of all ages have done plastic surgery in the year of 2009. However, that barely compares with the whopping number 740000 people doing plastic surgery in South Korea. And these numbers are just in one year.

I know that in South Korea, the double eyelid surgery is popular-obviously because Asians have chinky, small eyes. I've always been so against this whole plastic surgery phase. My sisters and I used to joke around that every girl in South Korea looks the same because they all have the same perfect nose and same big eyes and the same shaved neckline. This joke is becoming a scary reality.

In a couple more years how many more people will do plastic surgery? It's so disturbing and more sad that so many people feel like they have to physically change how they look in order to feel beautiful. Have any of these people ever thought of having inner beauty instead?

I guess the problem is that we have a physical beauty set. And although our world supports "inner beauty", Miss.Universe always has a gorgeous body, and a beautiful face. We say we  teach children that "it's the inside that counts" but our real world doesn't prove that.

We all need to think about how we sociologically influence people around us. Small comments such as "I wish I was skinny as her" or "She's ugly" contributes to the problem. If we start with ourselves and change our view of "beautiful" we can start teaching the social world what beautiful really is.




A plastic surgery ad in Korea (for double eyelid surgery)

 


A plastic surgery ad in Korea (on nose and neckline)