“Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.” ~ Albert Camus

“Every person in the United States participates in a daily beauty pageant, whether he or she likes it or not. Engulfed by a popular culture saturated with images of idealized, air-brushed and unattainable physical beauty, we cannot escape feeling judged on the basis of our appearance.” ~ anonymous

In Japan, there is a popular concept of Beauty that appreciates the way the human body naturally changes over the course of a lifetime; the way the passage of time sculpts a person’s appearance and form; where what is considered “beautiful” remains deeply connected with what is patently natural.

In the west, however (indeed, in many countries around the world), “beauty” is a status reserved only for the young, the athletic &/or the shapely.

In the west, “being beautiful” requires that we keep our bodies in a changeless state; a perpetually radiant nubility where women are always “pretty” (see “fertile”) and men are always “fit” (see “virile”).

It is a standard that is patently unnatural and one that fights the flow of time. And it inspires a set of unnatural behaviors that are as dangerous as they are addictive – from women slicing open their bodies &/or injecting them with neurotoxins (Botox) &/or starving themselves to remain “hot”, to men laying for hours in tanning booths &/or imbibing hundreds of carcinogenic fitness-supplements on order to appear “sexy”.

And what are the costs of such a violation of the flow of Nature? For many hundreds of thousands of people, the results of this futile struggle are disease (including cancer), depression, poverty and/or mental illness (including most eating disorders).

In essence, at least in the west, the quest for “beauty” has become more than a mere obsession …

It has become an epidemic.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF BEING ADDICTED TO APPEARANCE

We are talking about more than a few bouts of the “blues” for those folks who don’t feel “pretty enough”. Our culture’s insistence that we become addicted to vanity has devastating consequences that affect our health, our sanity and our lives in general.

*According to one recent study, more than 80% of women in the United States are dissatisfied with their physical appearance, and nearly 10 million of those women suffer from an eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia as a result.

*According to another study of women between the ages of 25-45 in the United States, 67% of American women (excluding those with actual eating disorders) are actively trying to lose weight, even though 53% of those dieters are already at a weight that is healthy for them.

*According to a third study,13% of women smoke cigarettes either to lose weight or to keep from gaining weight — and this despite the fact that lung cancer has surpassed breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the U.S.

*Anti-aging skin products are a 3.5 BILLION dollar per year industry, and a recent report showed that young shoppers spend 170 BILLION dollars each year on fashion in order to “look better”, and that American citizens spend over 7 BILLION dollars each year on cosmetic supplies.

*A 2002 study revealed that 22 percent of 8th graders, 33.2 percent of 10th graders, and 46.1 percent of 12th graders said that it is “fairly easy” for them to obtain steroids, and that over 500,000 students worldwide (almost 3% of the total student population) have used steroids by their last year of high school.

*Over 80% of women interviewed in a recent study said that they have competed with women over physical appearance, and it is no surprise that the drastic rise of aggressive bullying between girls has coincided with the drastic rise in the sexualization of women that now pervades virtually every form of the American media – a sexualization that not only inspires said aggression among girls, but also the sexual harassment of women by young men, and a chronic spike in the superficialization of relationships in men & women of all ages.

HOW TO KNOW WHERE YOU ARE ADDICTED

If you have grown up in the west, the chances are that this addiction has a hold on your subconscious mind (and therefore your conscious life) to one degree or another. Remember that this does not make you “bad” or “weak”. It merely means that you are maintaining a set of values that are not serving your best interest – indeed, theses desires are shackling your ability to be truly Happy and denying your ability to know real LOVE.

The first step to removing any self-destructive behaviors from your life is having the humility to identify them. With this in mind, have the courage to answer the following questions honestly, and thereby look calmly upon the places in your life where you too have become addicted to your appearance …

Do you look in the mirror more than twice a day?

Do you buy new clothes more than once a year? … Or do you buy clothes not based on function (what the clothes do for you), but fashion (how they look on you)?

Do you wear clothes that are uncomfortable because they “make you look good” or because you think that other people think they are “sexy”?

Do you take longer than 15 minutes to get dressed before going out in public?

Do you wish you looked younger?

Do you wear make-up?

Do you style your hair?

Do you wear clothes designed to draw attention to certain parts of your body?

Do you diet? … Or do you take supplements to enhance your muscle growth or muscle size? (i.e. do you sacrifice your internal health for your external looks?)

Do you go to the gym or engage in any exercise-routine in order to “look better”?

Do you fantasize about how you used to look in “the good old days”?

Are you envious of the lives of the “beautiful people”?

If you could have cosmetic surgery done that is 100% effective and costs nothing, would you do so?

Can you name more than one part of your body with which you are not aesthetically satisfied?

While the post that follows this one will go into a bit more detail on how you can free yourself from the clutches of this very common addiction, it is enough for you to know now that YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL – period … and that anyone who says anything other than this is not identifying your “flaws” …

… but rather their own.

“Beauty doesn’t need ornaments. Indeed, any true softness cannot bear the weight of ornaments.” ~ Munshi Premchand

“Beauty & folly are old companions.” ~ Benjamin Franklin