The illusion of Beauty

Did you ever question why you found some people beautiful and others ugly, and why you desire to be as , or even more beautiful - or be envious because you judge yourself to be not?
Who do you think is beautiful? Angelina Jolie? Victoria Beckham? Justin Bieber? Natalie Portman?

When you ask a group of men what and who they find beautiful, their answers will differ according to the time,place or culture they are born in.  In the past it was a sign of beauty to have a white fair skin, while now people run to the solar center to bronze themselves up. The standards in the western culture now a days are to be tall and slender  – sometimes on the verge of anorexia – while ages ago, females who had more fat and bigger breasts and bottoms were considered as beautiful. 

The concept of beauty is related to the prevailing culture which is presented and carried out by print or visual media. The effect of bombarding children and adults with the images of beauty (often fake photoshopped images), is a culture of plastics:  women and men who get plastic surgery and all kinds of procedures done to look “beautiful”, as what is the standard of beauty within their culture or the group they wish to be part of. A plastic, superficial world.

Beauty and survival

Many women want to  enhance their breasts and undergo cosmetic surgery because there is a total obsession with it. People want to attract mates, and image how the other is seeing them. Walking around, thinking about what another is thinking about them, how they are seen, what the other will judge as attractive or not about them. People do this to find a mate, someone to start a relationship with - most of the time looking for someone to have sex with.

Cultural Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is the tendency to believe that your own ethnic or cultural group is the most important, and that all other groups are measured in relation to one’s own. Someone who is ethnocentric will judge other people or groups by his or her own ethnic group or culture. These judgments can be about language, customs, beauty, behavior and religion.

Relativism of culture

There is no scientific standard for considering your own group as intrinsically superior or inferior to others. We should not lift our own culture or group up, just because we are part of it. It is important to look at it with common sense and see what your group or culture supports, why they support it, and if it is really something you want to contribute to. If your culture is one who abuses animals for vanity (which happens in our western culture), does that mean you have to blindly accept this? Of course not – it is an unnecessary practice, which includes massive suffering for the animals that have to undergo those tests.
But culture does have a major influence on who and individual will become. We are not just who we are because of random chance, or because we think that we “made ourselves”. We are largly products of our own culture and those around us which were part of our upbringing (this includes TV and media).
This is one of the reasons why we at Equal Money are working on a change of the world system. Our current world system is based on profit and ego. This will produce human beings that are programmed to support this world system. Within an Equal money system, this ends, profit and ego are no longer part of the system – and true insight, self-honesty and  life education are part of someone life from the very beginning. In that way a person will not be dumbed down like what is currently happening, but will be able to see for oneself who he/she is and take self-responsibility.

Beauty in different times

To have a look at the relativity of beauty

Victorian times

the 1940’s

 

the 70’s

The future?

There is also a difference within subcultures

Beauty in different cultures

In our culture at this time, being slender, 90-60-90 measurements if possible, perfect teeth, hair and fashion  is considered to be pretty.   the means of achieving beauty are sometimes very extreme. From plastic surgery, implants, hair extensions, botox, fillers, hair colour to fitness, diet and cosmetics.  
Also extremely high heels are considered to be beautiful for a woman.

In Fiji, traditionally the body was seen to reflect the community in which the individual lived, rather than the identity of just the individual themselves. Fijian women ate as much as they want and went to lie down afterwards. A lack of appetite and thinness was seen as unhealthy and undesirable.

In Asia the standards for beauty differ from country to country..

Now a days Asia wants to join in with the west, and have adopted many of the western styles including beauty. More and more woman and going for eyelid surgery, to have more “open” eyes like western people.

Foot binding  was a custom practiced on young girls and women for approximately one thousand years in China, beginning in the 10th century and ending in the first half of 20th century. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding )

The female members of the Kayan tribe (on the border between Burma and Thailand) are also known as “long necks”. They measure a woman’s beauty according to the amount of rings worn around the neck.

The number of rings are increased as they grow older, which makes the neck longer and longer. This ritual starts at age 5. The shoulders are pushed down due to the pressure of the rings.

Lip plates can be found used by tribes in Africa, South America and the Amazon. For some, the plate size is a measure of social or economic influence or status. But for others, the size is just a matter of how long the lip has been stretched. There are varied reasons for putting the plates, but suffice to say, these tribes see these ‘ornaments’ as beauty and status (http://www.funtasticus.com/2008/10/30/african-beauty-lip-plates/)

In India they were lots of jewellery, coloured saris and long hair.

In Africa the idea of beauty varies from one side of the continent to the other. In Ethiopia, the women of the Karo tribe wear scars on their stomachs meant to attract a husband. The scarring process starts in childhood and once finished it means that the woman can get married and have children.

In Mauritania a beautiful woman is a woman with curves…big curves. Young girls are even being force fed to fatten up. A big lady is more likely to be desirable and get a man. Divorced woman are also considered attractive, because it shows that they are liked by males.  

In the Middle East beauty is sometimes not connected with what ones sees, but with one does not see, or with what one smells or catches a glimpse of. From the head to toe black covers women wear (abaya) that sometimes revealing only the eyes, that are made up with dark eyeliner sometimes, henna tattoos, oud and coloured fabrics, scarves and jewellery.

For Polynesian women , tattooing the lips and chins is considered to be beautiful.

 

Beauty styles and standards are in our cultures used to make profit from. As long as people desire to look a certain way, they will look for those things to fulfill that desire – and when they have the money they will probably buy it. Our system exploits this, and creates judgments that people take into themselves and project onto themselves and others.
Those judgments only do harm. Is it really best for yourself to judge yourself like that? Instead of being fine with no matter what you look like? Accept your physical body as it is without needing to become a certain image that the world recognizes, or to attract males to find you attractive, have fantasies about you and desire to have sex with you? Or the other way around – males that do this so that females will find them attractive. Is this really the superficial world we have all been dreaming of? Is this what is the perfect world to you?

We also have to realize that many of those objects and items bought to enhance our so called “beauty”, are made by sweatshop workers, who work sometimes 18 hours a day for barely any money – or the make up and all kinds of beauty products that are tested on animals.

Why do we allow ourselves to look at others, and start to judge them according to how they look?  We place all value on the appearance, and become like empty bags moved by the money wind mills of the system that blows us to wherever it wants to. And we are so dumbed down to not even notice it – or to accept it as normal because it feels so normal. It is all we have ever known.
Like when I went to my grandparents after I shaved my hair off – my grandmother could not get passed my image, and even admitted that who I am is what I look like, and my inside is non important.

Is this the kind of world we want? The kind of world we want to create for the children to come? A world system that exploits in the sake of profit and ego? If you do – then that is because you have only become a product of the system and have lost yourself completely, not even knowing how much in a prison you really are.

We can change this, by changing ourselves as well as changing the monetary system. All people should have the ability to live a dignified life , to express themselves and to actually discover life. People can still discover various styles and expressions – but none of it will be for the sake of exploitation and profit making through ego and abuse. And THAT is the major difference.
Visit the desteni I process website and the equal money movement – we are paving the way for the children to come. The new world is on the way, and it is waiting for you.

Don’t miss it’s call, because you will miss yourself.