Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?
Remember the vengeful reaction to this question by the evil queen from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?”
In “real life,” most people do not experience this same shock when the more celebrated depiction of beauty isn’t them. In fact, most of us do not expect it to be.
What do you picture when asked to imagine a beautiful man or woman?
People magazine named Julia Roberts, Zoë Saldana and Scarlett Johansson on its recent World’s Most Beautiful list. Channing Tatum, Bradley Cooper, and the former ASU football player turned Old Spice guy, Isaiah Mustafa, representing the men.
Did you see any of these faces flash across your mind?
Numerous things can influence an individual’s perspective of beauty, but one very important factor is what he or she is “fed.”
Your mind and emotions function on what you feed them.
We consume ideas, images and standards of what is acceptable, beautiful and ideal on a daily basis. If it isn’t by exposure to someone close to us, we can be sure to get it from movies, websites, magazines and certain books.
This can be dangerous to our self-image, but it’s inevitable we will be fed by these various sources.
We have to decide how, if at all, we consume this information. We can eat until our minds are full, or choose not to partake in the different “meals” altogether. My advice is to take the latter.
The standard of beauty we are fed is a false one. No one has the perfect nose, and there is no ideal length of hair or perfect skin tone.
Hollywood retouches reality in order to produce the image it wants you to see. It is pointless to pursue the “set” images it feeds you because, in reality, they do not exist.
Everyone has an image he or she associates with. For example, in certain religions, people feel they’re made in the image of their divine being.
You can continue to chase after a pseudo idea of what is attractive, or you can allow yourself to see beauty in your reflection.
You’ll always find the greatest happiness in the latter.
Tell Shala the images you see at smmarks3@asu.edu.
