Giselinde Kuipers: Beauty and inequality
[11:34]
AN INEQUALITY THAT IS HARDLY EVER SPOKEN ABOUT… which makes me ask, do we really care? If we did, would we not address beauty inequality just as much as all the other prejudices? I remember at the age of around 3 or 4 I was highly attracted to the original Charlie Angels back in the 70’s… Kelly was my first love. My brain registered her beautiful symmetry, my young eyes almost popping out of their sockets! Somehow, and their are various theories for this, there’s an innate something inside us that creates this admiration for symmetrically ‘beautiful’ faces.
Does that mean that we escape from the responsibility to keep growing as a people, to help shape a better, fairer world, instead of just flowing with what evolution helped produce as a ‘norm’ for us and never questioning? Is that how basic we are with our thinking? Sure, beauty is in the eye of the beholder ultimately, and we do appreciate various characteristics in a person…. no good choosing a ‘gorgeous’ partner who is too aggressive or lacking in various positive traits…A mix of good characteristics is essential when choosing a mate, we are aware of that, and we do make compromises knowing we can’t have everything. Besides, the vast majority of us do not have gorgeous looks anyway, so we are limited in choices…
Moving on….we all know that most magazine covers, Hollywood actors/actresses, TV stars / presenters, Rock stars, etc etc just so happen to be, along with their talent, symmetrically beautiful and also ‘six packed’ or just the right type of curves. I appreciate beauty of this sort over someone who isn’t myself. I’m not going to write a blog painting this righteous picture about me, making out I’m some kind of equality guru. I prefer to flow as honestly as possible. I would rather have a pretty / sexy girlfriend… along with intelligence and other depths of character, but pretty is up there with the most important traits… I observe myself as ignorant though for still being in that mindset.
I’m not happy that I’m still conditioned that way… I would love to change this paradigm of accepted thought process in society, and creating a discussion about it may be a good first step….. Sky Sports News is a 24 hour TV channel keeping me updated with all the latest soccer news. All the presenters on that show are in the ‘gorgeous’ category…
To think we want equality for ‘minorities’, Black people, Palestinians, Syrians, for disabled people, for our elderly folk, for all who deserve equality and don’t get it, and hear continuously on the news the fight for the right to….. yet to think that if 100 people went to the job interview of that sports channel show, full of enthusiasm, humor, talent, knowledge, optimism, hope…… those who were not gorgeous would not have been told so, they would have just been given a polite NO!!! and left to trudge off wondering what went wrong… despite the bosses secretly appreciating what could have been far better presenting skills than the better looking options they actually chose.
At some point we have to come together and take a good look at ourselves. Are we conveniently empathetic just to cover our guilty conscience now and again, or do we really want a better world? We all seem to want to hammer the ‘Trump’ type characters that exist, but how sure are we that we are not just the same discreetly, without being all loud and proud about it?? I QUESTION MYSELF… NOT EASY TO CHANGE THE IGNORANT THOUGHT PROCESSES I HAVE, BUT I DO CHALLENGE ME! ….. and if I want a better world, then change starts with me! As we speak, literally thousands of men and women globally have been praised, hired, chosen for something, based on their good looks only or mainly, and others who didn’t match up to those standards, just cast aside like meat… That is the stark reality, and that is not right! The media bombardment we get minute by minute of this type of beauty promotion is constantly giving off the message that ‘we are not good enough’ because we do not match up to beauty standards. Over and over and over the message is repeated and is a major contribution as to why more and more people are becoming depressed, and forming addictions. This type of beauty is a major player for the economy… This is why the inequality conversation rarely comes about… The word hypocrites comes to mind… I start with me…
People want to feel loved, they want to feel connected, they want to feel special and showing perfect teeth in every toothpaste commercial is a cultural paradigm we accept, it’s normal…. If we can’t do equality properly all across the board and question things like this constantly though, then maybe we are all mini little Trumps and by denying this are just very good liars, especially to our own selves…. Tell me what you think?
By Panayiotis Stavrou
[Video source: TEDx Talks You Tube channel]
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