everyone wants to be beautiful
"come for hair for hope! I'm shaving my head as well!"
"hahaha why?"
"let's show them cancer patients some support - show them that they are actually beautiful as well."
(Well if only we toss away the very likely idea that most people are only shaving their heads out of peer pressure/ in an valiant (or maybe not so?) attempt to be 'cool' and assume that all shavees are doing it in a sincere wish to help the cancer community in the little way they can..)
Anyway, in the age where we're surrounded with countless images of slender waists, sensual curves and bright sparkling eyes - the set of criteria we use to gauge physical beauty, what truly is beauty? In today's schools, are the pretty girls starve themselves voluntarily because "their legs are too fat for the boys to like" and those who who spend 2 lives' worth of fortunes on beauty products in a desperate attempt to hide away their insecure souls beautiful?
Maybe it's this excess superficiality in our culture that has somehow forced a counteraction of promoting the message that everyone is beautiful in their own ways regardless of their physical appearance. That is what the dreamy idealists amongst us will like us to believe - that fairy tales still work their magic in real life - that there is still beauty in even the most wretched of human beings. That's what all the everyone-is-beautiful movements today are born out of.
Doesn't this all water down to the claim that to be human is to be beautiful? Now what is human? Certainly there is nothing to deem beautiful about the escalating crime rate around the world as well as the wars, strife and mass killings terrifying the human race today. Lots of things humans do are far from beautiful so I just hope we can just stop romanticising the idea of beauty and realise that NOT EVERYONE IS BEAUTIFUL.
(the definition of beauty here has grown vague so I feel the need to state that the 'beauty' i'm referring to here isn't the superficial, apearance-based attractiveness that is so outstandingly present in, imo, almost everybuddy I meet everyday sighhh)
And maybe this is a little naive of me but I really cannot agree when people deem sadness and suffering as beauty. Yes, there is beauty in the courageous spirit of the struggling cancer patients, there is beauty in the love which made the mother give up her life for her beloved kid - but sometimes, we shouldn't kid ourselves. There's nothing beautiful in watching a gaunt cancer patient undergo chemotherapy with his chest heaving heavily with every tear that escapes from the pain in his eyes. There's nothing beautiful in the agony of a child who lost his mother, his light, his saviour, as well as the quiet sadness experienced by the rest of the family. Let's not discount this pain, this suffering, and just because we cannot bear to watch it, pass it off as beauty. That is just incredibly duplicitious and sad - to not recognise the ugliness of suffering and to even try to conceal that marring disformity by attempting to sell it as yet another form of beauty.
If you think this distortion of the human body and mind is still beautiful then in my opinion, hmmm. Until you have witnessed someone pass away or disappear into the abyss of tarnished emotions - doesn't matter if it's someone you hold close to your heart - you will only have your ignorant judgements to count on.
So yes while we commiserate with the suffering and admire courageous spirits living among us today - let's not downplay the inherent ugliness, pain and suffering in the world today because what is beauty without those?