Musing #2

Why are We Obsessed?

You can find it almost everywhere on billboards, trucks on the street, television, magazines, the Internet, even in schools and churches. Millions upon millions of dollars are spent every day on advertising that pushes the latest fashion or trend. It seems everywhere you turn you can not escape the deluge of commercials, images and pop-ups from advertisers. Modern culture has showered us with what soap we should use, what car to drive, what cell phone is the best, where to shop, what shows to watch, but most importantly and the topic of this musing, What we should look like and what we should wear.

Let’s explore the core of this issue. Human beings all want to be wanted and loved. We want to be attracted to the opposite sex and looked upon as equals or even better than our neighbors and peers. With that understood, we go above and beyond our natural physical state in an attempt to make ourselves more attractive to the opposite sex. We dye our hair, wear make-up, obsessively workout in the gym, all in an attempt to fill that basic human need. We purchase the same car, electric devices, or clothing in an attempt to be like our neighbors and peers, otherwise known as “keeping up with the Jones’.”

The modern commercial businesses and advertising agencies know this. They feed on our basic desire to belong, be acceptance and loved. They exploit our needs and own self-conciseness to further their profits. They sell that in order for us to be one of the “beautiful people” or one of the “happy people” we must blindly follow (purchase) their product or service, which changes from month to month. If we don’t, we are doomed to unhappiness, loneliness, unattractiveness and being outcast. There are those who embrace this sub-culture of outcasts however advertisers have crept in and now have a “target market” for their demographic as well. Sadly we know they are doing it but we have been programmed to buy what they are selling from an early age.

When we are very young we mimic our parents then as we gain social skills and become more aware of our place in society we start to worry about how we are viewed. What our peers think of us and if we will fit in. These issues are very important to the growth and development of children and how they will perceive themselves as adults. Peer Pressure is a powerful tool harnessed by the advertising industry. If the impressionable youth of our culture learn the message as we did that to be accepted we must hide our true self and conform to our peers, that we must buy this brand of clothing or look like that model on the magazine cover to belong then they has been program successfully and the advertisers have won a new generations worth of customers.

All that has successfully been done is to teach children to hide their real and true self from the world only showing the superficial, just as the advertisers want, and the cycle continues. The more we buy into the idea that we can buy happiness, beauty and love the more we spend and the more they spend pushing the next “latest and greatest.”

If beauty is only skin deep then shouldn't we obsess about whom we are inside and what kind of person we really are instead of how we look and what appearance we show the world? If we believe the media and the advertisers then skin deep is all that matters.

I disagree with this whole idea of superficial beauty. Personally I find most “supermodels” not very attractive and apparently some of the world agrees with me. Recently, Spain and Italy banned size zero models from walking the catwalk due to the fact they send the wrong message to the younger generation. Finally someone has realized that the super skinny is not healthy and is a bad influence on young girls. I applaud their efforts and hope this counter thought will continue. At least it is a step in the right direction.

I truly hope that, we the consumers can send a message to the fashion world that enough is enough - That our culture dictates what is beautiful not them. I personally do not think that a woman with 30 rings around her neck is attractive but in some cultures in Africa she would be the most beautiful in the entire village. There are countless cultural differences the globe over. I guess in the end “beauty is [after all] in the eye of the beholder.”