Pretty Hurts

A beauty pageant, is a show that make girls walk around half naked while putting on plastic smiles. They have been on for quite a long time. What’s the point of it all, except getting lots of money and becoming famous !? I believe the industry was designed to make young girls highly insecure with their looks and who they are, make them aspire to be ‘pretty’. Pretty in this context would mean having a coke bottle body, soft hair and a fairly light skin tone(not all the time). I think of myself as pretty, except for the times I don’t succumb in my yummy curve body to an uncomfortable posture, put on lots of makeup and take selfies in broad day light where my skin tone would be a little bit  brighter than usual.

So who set this standard, who set the rules on whose pretty and who isn’t? As an artlover, I watch a lot of art documentaries. There was a particular one which talked about the history of art, according to the documentary, nomadic man made a statue out of limestone dating 12500 years old which was later called the Venus of Willendorf. This statue was a woman who had huge thighs, hips, large breasts, no arms, the head left hardly defined and a very pronounced sexual organ. The archaeologists believed that the nomadic man placed emphasis on just the ‘important’ parts of the body. Those days, women didn’t need a head to think, reason or hands to produce and denominate. The nomadic women were only useful as child bearers given their features, hips for supporting the unborn child and huge breast to feed the child. This brings me to the 'form follows function principle'.

This principle is associated with the modern architecture and industrial design in the 20th century. The principle states that the shape of the building or object or (person) should be primarily based upon its intended function or purpose. Even the famous architect, Adolf Loss declared that architectural ornament was criminal. Good to know that even our ancestors believed we couldn’t just be pretty for pretty sake, that beauty has purpose!

So the world wide obsession with ‘the perfect body’ may not be such a waste of time. But I ask myself, why did God make the majority of women assless and boobless? Are we to blame from all the chemicals and toxins we’ve injected to our bodies? Have they somehow alternated our biological makeup? Well, thank goodness we have the ability to permanently alter our physical makeup so that we can become ‘useful to our purpose’.

I even find myself being attracted to men with broad shoulders and huge arms. Maybe its because subconsciously I believe that a man with these features would be able to take care of my children and me. I bet nomadic women would have created sculptures of men with large arms and board shoulders, if only they didn’t believe they were only good for bearing children. I’m so grateful I belong in a time when my hips and chest size don’t define my worth.

With or without boobs, ass there are women who have no interest in bearing children. Also with or without broad shoulders there are men who are highly incapable of providing for their families. So what’s the whole purpose of beauty then? Why do we accept beauty for beauty sake? Are we to blame society for dictating what is beautiful or are we to blame ourselves for accepting what society says is beautiful?

I believe that beautiful is whole, a perfect balance of depth and definition. Depth represents darkness; it shows the magnitude of an object, how far it’s come and where it’s going. While definition represents light; it shows the details of an object, the little details that make that object unique, and the constants that would never be altered no matter the situation. Let’s translate that to a human. With us humans, beauty goes beyond looks, it much more than that. In fact you can only understand beauty when you love someone. 

When you encounter someone whose depth would mean life experiences, experiences they had control over, like friends and the kind of knowledge they let themselves get exposed to. While definition represents things we have no control over, God given features like sex, temperament or social upbringing. Like a beautiful landscape, the ying yang symbol or an old lady laughing, you can only find beauty in the perfect balance of two opposites. 

So I believe that beauty goes beyond physical purpose, it’s multi-dimensional. From now on, any time you look at someone or something think very hard before you define, term as beautiful