True Beauty?

The writings in this post are prompted almost exclusively by a post from my great friend Emily, who posted an article pertaining to someone called Heidi Montag. Like Emily, I had never heard of Heidi, probably as she is the main attraction of the TV show 'The Hills', and my reaction when shows of this ilk appear on my screen is the same as my reaction upon witnessing a party political broadcast - scramble for the remote. Therefore, the name was completely unbeknown to me until Emily's great article brought her to my attention.

You can read the whole article here, under the highly appropriate title of 'Fake'.

Whilst I mention that this particular post is inspired by the article I linked to, the ideas here are ones that I've long held with regards to beauty and image - here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago on the subject - and as such I may well be repeated long-held beliefs of mine here. But basically, there are several points that really spring to mind for me here.

Firstly, the fact that she is such a prominent reality TV star - and let's face it, much as many people like to mock such shows, there are an annoyingly high amount of people who actually do watch such shows and pay attention to them - means that, by doing this and going through with such huge levels of image modification, she is adding to the already asphyxiating weight of media and cultural pressure on young people - and particularly women, though men are by no means immune - to look perfect, and beautiful. This is something I decry straight away, as the question needs to be asked straight away - who is the judge of beauty? Who in their right mind can stand up, bold as brass, and say "I can determine whether someone is beautiful or not"? The answer is, you can't. Everybody is entitled to an opinion, and everybody has different tastes, which means it is natural human instinct for us to make an opinion on whether someone is beautiful to us personally or not. But this is completely different from saying "you are not beautiful. You are ugly." This implies a flat line, a definitive fact. Which is complete stupidity.

I fear I might be muddling my point a little, so let me give you a simple example. From November 2008 to the end of January 2009 I dated a girl whom, to my mind, was gorgeous. And yet, to several people I knew, I may as well have been dating an ogre - in fact, one person who shall remain nameless went as far as saying I had discovered the real-life version of Shrek. These are personal opinions, in the same way that I have disagreed with people on so many other things - political standpoints, music, literature, ways of life, beliefs, token things like TV shows, cars, gadgets...anything and everything. My personal opinion was that I was dating a beautiful young woman. People disagreed with that, and that's fine.

However, a situation we have far too often are people taking it upon themselves to decide what is beautiful and what isn't, and that is fundamentally flawed for the reason I gave above - we all have different tastes and opinions. Let's take Heidi for example. Pull up the picture featured in Emily's blog post, and look at the before and after shots. For me personally, she is mildly attractive to start with, pretty, with a nice body and lovely flowing hair. But afterwards...she may as well be a life-size Barbie doll. There is something unnatural, something manufactured about her, which sits very awkwardly with me. All because she has taken such drastic measures to conform to someone else's idea of beauty.

This leads me on to my next point, which is this. It used to completely gobsmack me that people I knew would consider themselves unattractive, or too fat, or too short, etc, but I've since come to realise that this is a natural human instinct, caused by the fact that, no matter how hard anybody tries, they will never be perfect. A good example is Emily herself, and I hope she doesn't mind me using her as an example here. As she mentioned in the article she wrote, she reckons she could do with loosing a little weight. Now, I strenuously disagree with this - I personally think she is gorgeous, and have said so before. But, it would be incredibly hypocritical of me to say she is silly for thinking such things, because I have exactly the same thoughts about my own body and image. In fact, there was a time a few years ago where I couldn't stand to be in the very body I am sat in right now, typing away at my desk. I was, and still am, overtly flabby, not quite tall enough, too hairy, far too prone to perspiration, and to cap it all off, I have been blessed with hair that would not be out of place on a small child's Playmobil figure. I'm fully expecting to be able to wake up any day now and have the ability to unclip it from my head at will. To my mind, my body defines the term 'average'. I am certain that everybody has these thoughts, and has parts of their body that they would change given the chance.

So why haven't I opted for plastic surgery? Surely I can just modify my body to my personal tastes with a little trip under the knife? I can happily say with confidence that, even if I were to take possession of a huge lump sum of money tomorrow and have more than enough cash to visit a plastic surgery clinic with a shopping list of bits that need changing, I would not do it, simply because, as the pictures of Heidi show, plastic surgery does not actually directly improve your look. Pure perfection is unattainable, and instead, what one is left with with plastic surgery is a distinct feeling of unrealism. Look at Heidi's new face - there is something unnatural about it, something...plastic. It is very obvious that some artificial modification has gone on. It is as if some of her human elements have been stripped away, and replaced with a more emotionless facade. As I said above, like a Barbie figure; unnatural, plastic, and one-dimensional.

I could go on to more everyday examples. I've lost count of the amount of times I've witnessed girls (usually in Bluewater shopping centre, as it goes) walking around with literally tonnes of makeup, skin foundation, hair colour and stylings and other such tools plastered all over them, and all it achieves is the same effect - of making someone look a little fake, a little unnatural, a little less rounded. All of this in the vain pursuit of a perfection which someone else has judged to be the standard.

The message then, is clear: do whatever the hell you want with your body, but never EVER feel like you are under pressure from someone else to live up to their standards. Take pride in who you are, accept who you are, and make the absolute most of it. But one should never feel under such drastic pressure to conform to a certain idea of beauty or image that they have to resort to selling themselves out, essentially, in exchange for new body parts which aren't their own.

What would you like more to meet - an imperfect human being or a waxwork?