Conner Evans
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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
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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 everybody 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 like the Monalisa. 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.
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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.
If we were all great then there would be no standards and society would completely
change. If everyone was special then no one would be able to explain what’s
not. Being that we can tell the different then 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 are so concerned about doesn’t get deeper than 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.
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