Are you beautiful?
During the period of the Stone Age when the evolving Homosapiens began to depict the beauty of nature in cave paintings, figurines and artifacts, also giving a detailed account of the time when women were worshiped as goddess. The female figurine called as the Venus of Willendorf found in the Paleolithic site near Willendorf- a village in Austria depicts the time when man was unfazed by the present notion of beauty. The figurine also signifies the time when the hour glass and the pear-shaped figure was the epitome of a perfect figure. It was also the time when a women’s beauty was portrayed as it were, unaltered by the artist’s idea of what is beautiful.
Cut to 25,000 years later the hour glass figure has become a representation of evil, disgust and out of the convention of beauty held by the society today. What drove this change in such a rapid fashion has been the birth of capitalism fueled by the patriarch nature of society. Since the inception of the beauty products, it hasn’t been the male who was the target audience it was not the male who had to look beautiful, it was the female who had to take care of her of beauty and her fat levels.
The global beauty industry is predicted to reach 260 billion dollars by the end of 2017. It’s a promising growth but the way most of them are making it up there is without ethos by creating an make believe image of beauty through advertisements that utilize women who are fair and thin with a 24 inch waistline. The capitalist nature of this beauty industry like every other market lies in its ability to create a want for their products. The fair and thin digitally enhanced models that constantly make the covers of top magazines are made to promote these beauty products. The features of these models and movie stars are digitally enhanced using software’s like Photoshop to make them appealing and fit the notion of beauty set by the industries themselves. More women today are anorexic than they ever were. The road to being thin and walking the ramps does not go through exercising and eating healthy but through constantly punishing oneself by eating lesser and lesser and undergoing numerous plastic surgeries to enhance ones natural features to make it look exactly like the Barbie look alike Photoshop images on the cover of the magazines.
We are living in an age where a few at the top- the ruling class decide for the large majority below- the working class. The ruling class in order to maintain their status and hold on to their positions enforce certain values and beliefs on the working class. Like for instance the ideas ofbeauty is about being fair and slim which falls in our endeavor to be acceptable, desired and liked by the society. These reinforcements can be seen in the media through ads, movies, TV shows and magazines. Looking up to these celebs young girls fall prey to the image set by the ruling class. As a social animal we rely our position and status in society which today in the hands of the capitalists is an image that suits them more than it does to us. It’s for us to be aware to choose what we need and not what we want. If we take out these preconceived notions of what is beautiful out of the picture we will learn that everyone has desirable qualities. Each and every person is beautiful if only we appreciate the true meaning of beauty. Beauty after all lies in the eyes of the beholder and its time we take out the lenses gifted to us by these capitalists and see a person as they are naturally.
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About the Author: This article is contributed by Zuber Ahamed, our Intern.