A bad week for the beauty myth part 2

The problem with  spells of hot weather is that it lends opportunity for the’beautiful people’ to wear less clothes and smugly parade their toned bodies around. In fairness, it’s not every lad who walks around with their shirt off that does so to show off their muscles, and its not every girl wearing a skimpy dress that does so just to show off their toned legs and (probably fake) tan, some just find it more comfortable, but there are plenty of people that walk around feeling smug about how good they look – you know the types – their the ones that are constantly looking at their reflections in shop windows, and the ones who have that ‘sex in the city’ gait.

What depresses me about this is that these people are shallow enough to have bought into the social norm that you should base your self-worth on your appearance, they have thoroughly, males and females alike, bought into the beauty myth – and the most depressing cases are people in their 30s and 40s – the types that think they’ve got a ‘good for age’ body that parade it about in the summer.

I just want to take this opportunity to reiterate the important truth that the thinking that you’ve achieved something because you look good ( and I don’t care how many hours you’ve spent in the gym or how much effort you’ve invested in buying whatever clothes or ‘procedures’) basing your self worth on your looks – and getting a ‘self esteem’ fix in summer by parading your bikini body around is flawed for three basic reasons –

1. No one else really cares what you look like, they are too busy worrying about their own looks, or other things.

2. Eventually,you will sag, this period will last for more than half of your life, so at some point you need to get over your looks.

3. If you do judge yourself by your looks – and you get your cues from the media, then you are probably aspiring to an unrealistic goal of beauty that you will never achieve and thus you are unlikely to ever be satisfied – happiness is just around the corner…..

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