Essay 3 Final

Conner Evans

September 5, 2014

English 1100

The Negative Side of Beauty

Everyone perceives beauty as a good attribute but not too many understand its negative effects. Beauty might be amazing to others but for many, it’s not all what it’s cracked up to be. It’s very hard to maintain beauty, for example, physical beauty since one has to always watch what to eat, work out, and then there the whole problem with age. Many push themselves and endure some pretty harsh treatment to remain beautiful. No one really understands what it takes to be beautiful; all they know is that what is indeed beautiful. Beauty can lead to anxiety, depression, and other issues. How can beauty cause that? If one is not beautiful, where does that leave one always feeling second rate, always being looked down on that’s not a way to live.  People can be beautiful or what they’ve done can be considered beautiful if they have been born with traits like potential skills, or intellectual excellence. For the people who don’t have that, it’s an uphill battle to evolve themselves to an ever changing consumer society.  Denis Dutton a very well respected philosopher says in his TED Talk “A Darwinian theory of beauty,” “Beauty is in the cultural conditioned eye of the beholder” (Dutton 2:20). What this means and how this relates is that an every changing society consistently remodels and changes beauty as society changes itself. Yet, beauty has a negative side too since the failure to acquire beauty causes people’s blind embrace of society’s dictation of beauty.

With the desire for beauty and beautiful things no one quite understands the level of stain beauty causes. Dutton explains Darwin’s theory of beauty in connection to “sexual selection”. As he says, “The experience of beauty is one of arousing and sustaining interest” (Dutton). Therefore if one fails to arouse or sustain interest from another person, one does not feel valued for one’s beauty or worse feels not beautiful. A lot of people they aren’t born with striking looks and defined features. They struggle of trying to always make beauty work or hide since they don’t feel beautiful. When one first meet someone, the first impression is on looks thus beauty. People make assumptions on looks. Hence, if beauty is not aroused in another person, then it becomes associated with negativity. People want to be Beautiful. The want to walk down the street and everyone takes a look their way because they can just sense the beauty. It’s this impossible goal of being perfectly beautiful that is making people make irrational decisions like wasting money on surgery and products to improve their physical features.  It’s this problem which reflects the negativity and problems beauty causes.

Another negative effect the quest of beauty is the failure of its acquisition. People want something to take pride in, whether it’s a skill like the ability to sing or maybe being able to dance. It can be physical beauty like a model or something personally created like art or a new invention. Better examples would be already famous creations the Monalisa or Adelel. We all dream of accomplishing and or creating these beautiful thing but it’s a sad truth that most people just won’t meet their goals.  People fail and fail, and keep failing to create beauty and a lot of time, people just give up. One example of people searching to acquire beauty is the talent show American Idol. In the audition rounds, countless numbers give it their best shot to “make it Hollywood” but, in actuality, only few make it and everyone else fail to reach their goals.  What we just saw is something quite sad. We just witnessed someone’s dreams crumble before them. They wanted their beautiful pride and joy to be their voice but failed in an entertaining fashion. That’s just one example though. All day, everyday people fail to find their beauty, and thus beauty can become negative. People invest all that they have into what they think is acquirable. If they fail then, they have nothing. Is it worth it to lose everything? We strive to be great like Messi and Beyoncé who what they do is considered beautiful but that’s the problem with beauty we all can’t be great.

The changing of society and what society says is beautiful is also a negative aspect of beauty. Now a days society dictates what’s beautiful or not, but the problem is that their idea of beauty is unobtainable. Tall, young, skinny girls with zero flaws is what society deems beautiful. The issue is that everyone has flaws, even these poster girls are having hours of makeup done and top it all off their photos are photo shopped. Therefore beauty becomes negative when one does not meet societies standards. Cameron Russell well renowned model says that “image is superficial” (Russell). Superficial means existing or occurring at or on the surface. Well that would mean image the idea that people and society is so concerned about doesn’t get deeper then what you see. Then it’s very negative for those who don’t understand that beauty can be shallow. We should worry more about deeper ideals like your identity and worry less about something as shallow as image.

Beauty isn’t just all the pretty things in life. There is a dark negative side to it as well. Beauty cause a lot of harm to all of us. It’s very hard to maintain beauty, for example, physical beauty since one always has to watch what to eat work out and there is the whole problem with age. Many push themselves and endure some pretty harsh thing to remain beautiful. As it’s also very hard to acquire beauty, a lot goes into and not too much comes out. Beauty is the root of many problems in society today.

Work Cited

"Looks Aren't Everything. Believe Me, I'm a Model." Cameron Russell:. Ted Talk., Oct. 2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.

"A Darwinian Theory of Beauty." Denis Dutton:. Ted Talk, Feb. 2010. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.