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The Dangers and Causes of Continuing Superficial Societal Practices Nathan Engquist English 102 As we are beginning life in the twenty-first century, people are very concerned with appearance and will go to drastic measures to alter or preserve it. Why, in a culture that tends to believe that looks shouldn’t be important are looks so important? Extreme levels of pressure are put on each member of American society to look a certain way. Americans are willing to undergo cosmetic surgery and pay exuberant fees in hopes of attaining social acceptance. The acquirement of such “outsider” status by individuals in our society makes those individuals willing to go to extreme measures so that they will never feel ostracized by society again. This is the way that models on television and the magazines are portrayed. What caused our society to become so obsessed with physical appearance in the first place? Most people experience some form of social alienation during their lives at some point. Due to stereotypes each of us still hold in our minds, the media, and the continuance of a social class structure in our society, people will continue to feel like they are different than everyone else. People will keep trying to reach a goal that cannot ever be reached. In “The Birthmark,” Hawthorne writes about a fictional character named Georgiana who is made to feel like an outcast because her husband cannot tolerate a birthmark upon her cheek that he sees as the only restraint upon her perfection. Georgiana feels so horrible because of the effect of this one simple imperfection, that she would rather die than go on living without absolute perfection. As the story concludes, her husband actually succeeds in removing the birthmark as she then dies from the drugs that were used in removing the birthmark. Although “The Birthmark” is a fictional account of what social pressure does to people, it is an account of what can happen and actually does happen in contemporary American culture. “In 1997, Judy Loveless, a 49 year-old flight attendant, died while having eyelid surgery at an office suite in Atlanta” (Kalb, 59). Loveless simply wanted to look “better.” Better in our society is often a word that can too regularly be synonymous with “conforming.” Yet many people every year, as many as half a million, according to Jill Neimark author of “Change of Face…& Change of Fate” from Psychology Today magazine, are willing to take that possible risk of death that can occur from any surgery just so they can fit in to modern society more effectively. The need for human companionship and acceptance must be a very powerful force indeed. It is so powerful that people are willing to risk the possibility of death in many instances, than to live a quality of life that is short of perfection. When looking on a deeper level, it would seem that the average human spends their entire life looking for methods to attain greater levels of acceptance among all. If a person is asked why they want to be rich, one of the most common responses if that then they could buy expensive cars, a large home, and that this would make them happy. But why do people want fast cars or expensive cars and bigger houses than what is needed anyway? Expensive things make people look grand to others. Everybody knows that if you have two people who look the same and one drives a Porsche and the other a mid eighties model sedan, then the one with the Porsche will be treated by others better. People want a better job and salary so that they can compare to others better. Men often prefer better looking females because then they will gain more acceptance among their peers and believe that they will achieve happiness through these and other such similar methods. Women like to wear expensive jewelry so that they may show how sophisticated and classy they are to others. People connect happiness with materialism. This is evident when in our modern society we see multi-millionaires choosing which girl is the most beautiful to be his wife on TV. On Fox there was a special called “Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire.” It is the modern disease upon American culture. It is nothing new though. Since the beginning of time people have believed that they would be happy if only they were rich. The real truth is that the rich are no happier than the poor or the middle class. The rich simply have things different, and everyone has their own misery to deal with which either may be obvious or hidden from the world. The methods of general socialization of females in America lead women to believe that beauty is their ticket to wealth, fame, love, and prosperity. Even though women are considered equal in the eyes of the law, the reality is something different. Women do not receive pay that is equal to men for doing the exact same job. Mothers, who still raise most children in America, teach daughters the best ways to succeed in life. They teach what they know to be the best because they love their children, not because they mean to continue enforcing a stereotype as old as our most ancient texts. As long as women are taught in childhood that beauty is the key to happiness, then women will always be led to believe that they are not good enough. Children watch movies such as Cinderella and Snow White as children, and both of these movies describe the evil characters as appearing physically ugly and the good characters as being physically attractive. What is the real hidden goal of most people? To be accepted and loved by all others. A person who is rich only wants to be because then that person will find love, respect, and friends. However the people who now associate with the newfound rich person, probably only associate because they too hope to get some of the riches. Now the rich person who believes that he/she has found happiness learns that the love and friendship were really hidden greed and manipulation. Yet it is a sort of paradox because people only become this way because they have experienced how horrible it feels not to fit in. So why do people decide to make others suffer as they have by making others feel different just because they had to feel different at some other time. It seems that the causes of this epidemic are not new, they are old causes and no one knows who started it in the first place. Ostracism is a cycle that is very old and is a learned behavior, just like prejudices are learned. Unfortunately, one of the best ways of fitting in is to alienate somebody else. The way that this works is that by making someone else appear undesirable to be friends with. The individual who is making fun of the “other,” is instilling fear into everybody else and this bully is then accepted because people will treat him/her nice so that they are never treated the way that the outsider was. The reasons why bullies, or people who like to pick on others , do this is because they are often made to feel inferior or like there is a problem with them by family members. Then they disperse this anger in the same manner upon other people. It is a common practice for humans to do the things that they hate the most to have done to them, upon others, even though it may often be done unconsciously. Nancy Mairs writes in her essay “Carnal Acts” about what it is like to live with the outsider status day after day. She has multiple sclerosis and must use a wheelchair to get around. The automatic perception of her by others and thus subsequent treatment of her is that she is disabled and thus less than human. Being treated like this all the time makes her feel like she is in reality less than human from time to time. It is hard to be a human when a person does not feel that they are a human. For this reason many people feel the need to make changes in their lives so that they will be treated like a human and not an animal. The causes of such an alarming emphasis on looks is something to be expected given the way that our culture sees its’ priorities. As long as people are encouraged to be like everyone else, true liberation of the human mind will not be at hand. Freedom shall be inaccessible to all those who subscribe to the “Centerfold Syndrome” as it is called by author Gary R. Brooks, because treating people differently is treating one’s self as though one was different from everybody else. Hence it is like trapping one’s self in a cage. The idea of finding true happiness by subscribing to idealism based upon the physical appearances which are only temporary is a setup for failure and disappointment every time. Appearances are not permanent, however the mind lasts for an entire lifetime and it cannot hide the truth of one’s persona. The mind is the only logical choice to use as a basis for comparison if people must compare because it is the true identity of each individual. It cannot be fabricated or hidden in a way that cannot be uncovered and found. Whereas the exterior identity that each of us has will all end up being the same in the end-old, gray, wrinkled, and forced to have no other means with which to judge each other except for what each of us has to say. It is simple, do we compare ourselves to each other when it is something that each of us cannot control, or do we judge each other on the true accomplishments of our beings as humans?
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