The issues with beauty

[undergroundpanther]

the right to being treated as an equal human being,what is beauty and what is a person's worthiness of love or their desirability has been so manipulated in this profit ruled,power obsessed,totally stratified country.Our desires and aversions as human beings are so manipulated from cradle to grave,so marketed,so conditioned and defined FOR us,I find when I observe people and their"tastes" most people cannot tell me what they THEMSELVES truly like(on their own terms) about anything, including what they buy. It appears they only know and accept what they think *should* like or are *supposed* to like,and the market reflects this as"trends".

This I think is part of the reasons why everyone in this nation strives to look so much alike and why standards of beauty are so uniform. Certain"fashions" or ways to be or appear and certain,"lifestyles" are marketed TO us as'choices'.We are limited in our dress,thoughts,ideas,conditioned from birth to fit into a certain range of"appropriate" that "culture" sets FOR us,WE do this conformity in our desires it without THINKING about WHY we are doing it.. And because we never ask WHY we live out these co-conforming ways of making self distinction that is always within a certain range as defined by a culture that already has everything defined to it that it thinks it should be like.
Go outside our culture, I mean totally outside of it and what is beautiful changes.Fat girls are coveted and the skinny girls feel ashamed and ugly.Certain Bedouin cultures admire fat women.Ancient Aztec Indians Loved women with bucked teeth. Beauty sadly, is based in how the people in THAT culture are are manipulated from cradle to grave following in the way their culture defines these'standards' usually invented by people we are taught to hold in esteem over other people.WE internalize this bigotry and try to measure up to what the"role model" tells us we are supposed to want. to be like..

What I wanna know is who or what is the force or idiot manipulating human desire,emotions and belonging to the point of making up all these measuring sticks"standards" "norms" and encouraging people to play that game,This"standard" which is MEANINGLESS outside the culture that too many people IN the culture are conditioned to compete over to measure up to? Why f feel so"privileged" if you measure up to these arbitrary"standards" that have NOTHING to do with how decent of a person you are..? Why should ANYONE be treated as outcast if they don't or can't measure up to it? Who invented this game,who profits from it who is hurt by it and why is this shit deemed OK sane or worthy of being like this??

People, isn't it time to stop being ruled by someone Else's dictates saying to you in a billion ads and insults what you think you should want like or prefer??

[savannahana]

1. thank you for an excellent post

and a great Heinlein quote that's very much to the point.