Do you know those days where everything goes wrong? You fuck up with everyone, you drop literally everything, every piece of crap falls out of your hands. I swear, it made me so mad that I had to start screaming - which, I never really do but there is this thin red line that once it is crossed there is no turning back. You feel fed up and you want to quit. This was my day today... and I feel I have to write about something that is keeping me pensive for a few months by now.
Anyways, back to the story. I have so many ideas for my blog that sometimes it is hard to choose for me, which idea should come first and which one can be postponed for a later entry. I feel like every entry is like a stamp that gives you a certain look or simply changes your appearance as the reader gets a certain impression of you - or changes it entirely (maybe that goes with how many similarities there are between the writer and the reader).
Agreed, I do not really have a position in this blog world. I am more or less anonymous; I have no readers as I am just offering food for the mind, not in pictures or recipes. The question if I will ever gain any new readers is simply not for me to answer. However, here is my topic of the day, the issue that everyone around me seems to constantly be talking, worrying or bragging about. Sometimes I wonder if I am the only one being confronted with this topic that it has started to daunt me in various ways. I am talking about BEAUTY (all in caps, it cannot be presented without the big deal, at least when it comes to letters!) and the effects that it has not only on the individual but also on the whole planet seemingly.
Being the woman I am, I usually get up in the morning, and spend what might be considered (to a rational person) as a total time waste. All those questions about what I might wear today, the time I spend with make up and hair do... even I think that it is useless, senseless, to put so much effort into my outer appearance. And, mind you, I am not even doing much! Other women put way more effort into their looks. This is usually where problems start: first of, I am half of the time thinking as to why exactly I am doing all this and secondly, the competition has begun to take everything a bit further, higher, better. Wait a second: better? Really? Looking at past decades, I am really asking the question: have we become, in all we learned all that we are trying right now, really something better, more desirable or valuable?
As world population keeps growing (moreover exploding), we need to find ways to categorize people in order to make personal choices easier. Choose the perfect candidate for the job vacancy, choose a friend, choose a lover (for one night, for multiple nights, does not matter!) or, if everything goes well, choose a life partner. AS we do not have all the time in the world (although our life expectancy grows century by century), we need ways to find all those matches quickly, if possible before we retire. Give me love, happiness and friendship - fast! Give me competence, the right qualification and everything else - by yesterday, because today will be too late.
All this sums up to the ultimate truth: we choose mainly by looks. We simply do not have the time to get to know every single person on this planet, so we choose by looks. Simple, short, and absolutely superficial!
Beauty - we all want it and we all love to look at it. We admire everything beautiful... and I am no exception, do not be fooled! Since I am an artist, beauty plays a major part in my life, front to center to back. However, beauty to me goes way deeper than the physical aspects of it.
Of course I also enjoy the so called "eye candy" at the end of the day, though the beauty of the mind is a lot more important to me, as it is (in my opinion!) the beauty that comes close to immortality. A beautiful thought produced by a creative and bright mind can last forever - a beautiful face stays that way for ... let us say shorter period of time if you do not include any plastic surgery. Never mind, a beautiful though does not need plastic surgery, the though wins anyways.
I find it strange, that we always want to be like "someone" or "something" that we admire. We define ourselves through various categories that we mix and match to become something like "individuals". The fact that we already are is often times being pushed aside in order to select "the best", the most appropriate match to one self.
Individuality is first defined through that outer shell we represent: the color of our skin, our hair, our eyes, then our height, weight (oh, never forget about that weight!), and probably the size of our feet and hands because, after all, you need to categorize yourself in some way, or to be categorized. Visual individuality becomes pretty soon a pain in the neck, especially if all the categorized that you represent are not "en vogue". Automatically, your looks become "not good enough" once they are not "the thing" according to the latest fashion. Strange enough, a chubby woman is, in times of poverty, considered as the most beautiful thing in the world. Nowadays, as we all have money and enough food to eat, you need to look as if you are starving as a woman to be desirable. Call it the other way around: if you have 1 inch too much around your waistline, you get the stamp of being the undisciplined, the unhealthy and the unattractive.
Well, we did not get here from one day to another. However, it happened. It is neither a bad twist of events nor is it a good one. It simply proves that we have not learned one single bit in the past 1000 years or more. With all the knowledge gained, the privilege for the majority of us to be able to read and write, we come down to the same idiots as before. Our biggest challenge nowadays seems to be to fit into a box, the prettiest box on the market. Instead of embracing our individuality, we punish ourselves if we do not look like some people dictate us to. Punish yourself, punish others - it is a chain reaction of the vain and the rejected.
One questions though: what is wrong with every single person being an individual? Do I really need to fit a jeans size 0 to be compatible? What exactly am I competing in anyways? Is there a prize to win? I prefer to be notified in case I should ever win... or at least: tell me what I am fighting for and then I will decide if I want to be in this competition or not.
My mother raised me to be a proud woman despite all the bullying and pain given to me by people that are not even half way close to my heart. So why are we that way? I am certainly not the only one wanting to be liked by everyone or at least a good number of people. What makes us like that though? Is not one friend enough? Maybe even just a half? Agreed, you cannot measure a half friend, my point is though, why do we measure our own worth this way? Is the quantity of friends really more important than the quality?
Never mind, I already see that this topic is a longer one and needs more than just an "interlude". My point for today is this: which law states that you need to be slim as a woman, well toned, lean, whatever you want to call it? Give me one official document that obeys me to be that way and I will start a diet right away! I am talking about a law though, not a recommendation by the health ministers that changes weekly. Truth is, a law like that exists nowhere except for our own heads. Yes, we totally made that up. By now, it is so deeply stuck in our heads that we consider this to be the ultimate truth. However, what is truth anyways? Is it neutral? Do we really need to stick to certain beliefs to know that we are right? Or is a belief simply what it is - something we WANT to consider true...
Same goes for our thinking when it comes to beauty. Of course, beauty is as individual as the individual itself. The saying is not out there for nothing: beauty lies within the eye of the beholder. What one person finds beautiful, the other might find ugly and vice versa. Even the consideration of beauty is not always mutual - even worse: it hardly ever is! This is why it is so hard to find a partner. Do not fool yourself: even in times of the Internet and the super profound conversations and philosophy, we are superficial like almost no other time has been. 90% of the people feel attracted by beauty - which is not surprising. Even I tick that way. After all, what is a man good for when his heart is good and clean but you cannot look at him without disgust?
Well, maybe this is exactly the point: what is disgust and why are a clean heart and a good spirit not worth more to us than good looks? The pressure to look good has started to become a nightmare to me because I sometimes feel I cannot win. Then I look in the mirror and wonder why I make my days so horrible just because other people tell me what is being considered beautiful. Do not misunderstand this whole blog thing: I am a really attractive woman. I am not someone hiding on the Internet writing stuff and looking like a worn out shoe. I am a healthy, good-looking woman with a pound or two more than a skinny bitch that give me curves. If Jennifer Lopez or Beyonce have those curves, they are beautiful - if I have those curves, I urgently need to lose some weight. For real?
I prefer a clean spirit and a healthy body, not skin and bones and a nasty mind that is only out on rating down others in order to stand out as the best. This whole competition thing has gone totally wrong; we have come to a point where we cannot live with each other without trying to ruin one another. It gives me the creeps to see and experience day in and out what we are doing to each other. Beauty is subjective - however, preferences can change with time and we all should open our eyes to see people, not just a certain look that we might like one day and unlike the other. In times of social media and trends, thumbs up or down and way too many shades to choose from, we still should take the time to figure out if it is only the superficial we want to be, if all we want to choose only size 0, only blonde, only red haired, only tall, only 5'4'', only with big breasts, small breasts, long legs, more booty... do we really want to just ignore everyone else because of expectations on how a person needs to look?
The heart and mind of a person is what lasts a lifetime (excluding diseases affecting this heart and mind), but if we ignore this in favor of looks, which are like flowers - they fade. A lifetime is long and choosing the right friends and lovers or partners should not only be about looks. Same goes for role models btw. Do people nowadays really only choose role models by the sizes of their waists? What a sad thought. If I had to choose between Gisele Bundchen or Malala Yousafzai, guess who I would choose? Admittedly, Gisele is not even a bad person beside her good looks and Malala is not unattractive at all. Point is though, having a mind and using it is more important than chasing something like "beauty".
Finally, just matching my concept of blog post titles as song titles, I am posting my personal "Video of the Post" (instead of "Video of the Week", as we all do not know whether I can write a post every week!). So, this time the song has to be all about beauty - and this one sums it up quite good for me:
So, that much for this week’s episode of things I had to get "off my chest". As I said, this topic will need some more thoughts - let us just keep those for later.
Until then - happy week to all readers! - Gene Lewis :-)
