Name
: Mochamad Rasyid Karim
Class
: English 101
Professor
: Teddy Chocos
Topic
: Boosting the Idea of Outer Beauty.
Name: Mochamad Rasyid Karim
Topic: Not everyone is beautiful and they should not be, if everyone is beautiful than no one is.
Beauty is a characteristic that is owned by a person which brings pleasure to anyone that
sees it or feels it, including the person who has it as well. It is mostly referred to by the person’s
outer appearance by the society, whether it’s the beauty of the face or the body of that person.
Society itself uses beautiful person to promote what is beautiful as well because it is the most
efficient and the best way to do so. Commercials use the body of a woman with slim, slender and
sexy body to make people believe that the image of beauty is portrayed by the beautiful lady.
This method of commercials plants an idea to the people of the world that if they want to be
beautiful they have to look like the lady in the commercials and if they want to pursue the beauty
they will have to consume the products which are displayed on the commercial. However lots of
people in this world have an opinion where commercials should not promote outer beauty
whereas they should boost the inner beauty of a person because everyone is beautiful in their
own way. This should not be the case, beauty is a pure and holistic thing to behold, saying that
everyone is beautiful insults the meaning of beauty itself. A showcase of beauty should be
displayed if they do bring pleasure to people who are seeing it, if there are no singular definition
of what is beautiful and everyone in the world believes that everyone is beautiful in their own
way then no one would be beautiful as well. There are a lot of things that can create the idea of
beauty into someone’s mind.
A person’s personal looks affects heavily on the idea of what beauty is. When a person
looks in the mirror and sees his/her own face they are able to look at their own physical
appearance. When the person is beautiful he/she will find pleasure in seeing his/her own face,
however when they are not beautiful they will feel uncomfortable therefore plants an idea in
his/her own mind on what beauty is. A quote from Mirrors a poet by Lucy Grealy, a writer who
has a pretty unpleasant physical appearance because she had a cancer in her jaw causing the right
side of her jaw to be totally removed she then mentioned, There was a long period of time,
almost a year during which I never looked in a mirror. It wasn’t easy; just as you only notice how
often people eat on television when you yourself are on a diet, I’d never suspected just how
omnipresent were our own images. (Grealy)” From the writings she mentioned that she
suspected which means when she was looking at herself she also creates an idea in her brain
about what beauty really is which is the idea that she is not beautiful and there are a lot of people
who are more beautiful than she is. If she adapts the idea of everyone is beautiful which makes
her believes that she is beautiful will change the meaning of beautiful itself as there are no
pleasure in seeing an unattractive face.
Not just how a person pleasantly looks as well as their race. When a person has a certain
race people always stereotype the person as what the race is usually do. This kind of ideas grown
by people can be seen easily from one of the readings made by Edward Iwata entitled Race
without Face. In this reading Edward quoted, “Indeed to many Anglos, the males of our culture
are a mystery. Most whites know us only through the neutered images: Japanese salary men.
Sumo Wrestlers. Sushi Chefs. We’re judged by our slant of eye and color of skin. We’re seen
only as eunuchs, as timid dentists and engineers. Books and movies portray us as ugly and
demonic. We are truly a race of invisible man. (Iwata)” This is all true, the fact that most
Japanese Man do all these sorts of stuff, most people always categorized Japanese man as people
who do such things eventhough some of them does not want to become the stereotype Japanese
man. The fact that after knowing that all white people judges all Asian people as the typical
stereo types he wanted to change his own face with plastic surgery. This shows really well how a
peer pressure can really pressure someone to think what beauty really is.
The next factor which causes a person to develop an idea on what the meaning of beauty
is peer pressure. People love to judge how other people looks like because they like comparing
themselves with other people, especially about their own looks. Most people in the society judge
by their looks first, which is the outer appearance of the person such as their facial structure body
structure and whether they have any impairment in their looks. When a person has a better look
which means they have a symmetrical facial structure, they have no impairments on their outer
appearance, they automatically judge the person to be friendly, nice to hang out with and easy to
mingle with, when a person has an unpleasant look however they tend to make themselves to
avoid such person because the ugly factor of that person would automatically give the sense of
unfriendly vibes. This forces the person to have a different meaning of beauty as well to the point
where they want to change their outer appearance to earn that beauty. Another quote from
Edward Iwata which made him change his own face can also be seen again from one of his
articles called Race Without a Face, where he quoted, “My friend already loaned me the money,
whole 1500 dollars so there is no going back.” A person could’ve easily refused to get a plastic
surgery if they finance it themselves. However when someone else is paying for it, there is a
feeling of uneasiness because it is rude to reject someone’s offer, especially if it is a big one.
Therefore peer pressure can be a heavy factor on how person decides what is beauty to him/her
and how he/she wants to obtain such beauty.
The third factor which causes a person to develop the sense beauty is media pressure
from commercial and other social media tools that are able to spread the different ideas of
beauty. Literally the amount of advertisement that are used by the media social to influence of
beauty to the society has been very strong and the point of doing it is to keep shoving the amount
of beauty product that they are selling to be sold highly. From the facts every human in the world
in average actually see around 3000 advertisement every day (Kilbourne), that’s 125
advertisements per hour, and the facts are not wrong. If you walk around the city of New York
you can actually see the number of advertisement around the city not just from the TV but buses,
taxis and buildings as well even the chairs that we sit on has an advertisement. Clearly this fact
shows the number of people trying to change the idea of what beauty really.
All the factors that are shown on the top are the ways that are used by the society to bring
up the idea of what is beauty to the people who wants beauty and consumes anything that they
have to earn such beauty. It is a must as well for the people to show what is beauty because
without it people will have no idea what beauty is.
Bibliography
Grealy, Lucy. "Mirrors." Autobiography of a Face (1994): 53-73.
Iwata, Edward. "Race Without A Face." The Asian American Movement (1991): 50-53.
Kilbourne, Jean. Cant Buy My love. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.