http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/01/11/your-letters-death-becomes-her.html
As I read the news on the recent untimely dead of a Venezuelan girl due to unsafe silicon injection and how the country is trapped in a culture of beauty, my heart mourned with sympathy. I could relate her ‘ill-advised action’ to my own and to women all across the globe in general.
We, girls, grow up honestly believing that we have to look like something that come out of fashion magazines, movies, and ads. Even fairy tales portray beauty in such image: Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, and many more. We've seen them exclusively featuring ideally thin, tall, fair skin women as the only happy and desirable ones, zooming in on parts of women’s bodies and pan up and down those parts.
Such is an ideal, by definition, can be met by only a minority of those who strive for it. Yep, beauty may not be skin deep, yet it doesn't stop women from putting their best.
Women are brainwashed by these bombardments that they value beauty more than their personal well-being. Striving to attain the ideal takes great toll either in coffers or personal well-being in the form of physical pain, health problems, medical procedures, psychological effects as well as time and effort.
They empty their coffer on expensive cosmetics and bleaching products. Some frenetically and compulsively implement severely restrictive and nutritionally deficient diets, developing bizarre eating habits to attain certain body weight and shape. Many go as far as to have plastic surgery, breasts implant, lips suction or buttock injection to improve their looks and physical appearance in expense of their health, even their life.
In Indonesia, mushrooming skin care clinics and beauty salons have offered varies of treatments to improve one’s look up to beauty standards. Hospitals also provide cosmetic plastic surgery. These places are sweet nectar for women.
Months ago, as I lay on the patient table, squirming in unimaginable pain while my dermatologist applied chemical substances on my face, I thought how the hell did I get here in the first place?!
The burning sensation was excruciating. Not to mention the feeling of tens of thousands of tiny red ants and creepy scorpions viciously injected their venoms on my face.
Guess what, the answer is simple and matter-of-factly: I want to have a fair skin. But wait! It’s not for the wrong reason as in pursuing beauty culture (ops, is it self-denial?), but due to my skin problem.
Formerly, I didn’t care about the spreading acnes and cysts on my face, leaving the pores of the skin to clog with oil and dead skin. Hey, I am married and my husband is generous enough not to criticize my monstrosity. I said to myself “I am beautiful on the inside”, promoting the wise theory as poor excuse to justify my look lol.
“You are beautiful just the way you are,” My husband said teasingly with a grin from ear to ear.
Hell yes, I love being Shrek-like! (lol)
My fortress fell apart to pieces when people I met at office, bus, train and any other public places asked me with concern. They began hurling me with skin products and promoted certain skin cares for a try. My face would have got a tinge of color if it was white…lol. I had to swallow my pride hard at this commentary and kept flashing my widest grin ever, thanking them with suppressed anger.
In the end, I gave up. I went to the famous skincare clinic that has reputable name with licensed specialist doctors. After years, my acne problem lessened. People stopped annoying me with their campaign of beauty. I lived in peace afterwards: happy and content!
Until one day, my dermatologist asked me whether I would like to try ‘peeling program’ to correct my scarring associated with acne. After some hesitation, I said “Why not? It’s absolutely for health reason! (Is it?)” while looking at the commercial ads promoting the program.
Once again, my serenity turned upside down!
That’s what brought me to that torture chamber. Afterwards, I told my dermatologist; never ever again would I want such ordeal. As long as my grizzly acnes did not come to revisit me, I would be content enoughJ.
Drawing form this personal experience, I don’t advocate women to purse beauty ideals created and maintained by pop culture products. Beauty is nothing but a fleeting nature, defeating by age and time.
How can we race against time that cuts down and destroys all things that are beautiful? Time causes beauty to fade, people to age and life to end.
So, why bother pursuing such ideal only to end up in vain. Is it worth it to trade your life and soul with momentary triumph of being a beauty?
Duh... I choose NO. I don’t want to end up like Dorian Gray or the Venezuelan girl.
Flashing my smile, I hammer the wisdom that inner beauty is a dozen times more important that the artificial one in my bone. It’s a mantra I cling on tightlyJ.
Ehm, sounds too good to be true and naïve, isn’t it? But that’s the hardcore truth.
As Oscar Wilde, the renowned Iris dramatist, novelist and poet, has once admonished us that “It’s beauty which captures your attention; personality captures your heart.
As I read the news on the recent untimely dead of a Venezuelan girl due to unsafe silicon injection and how the country is trapped in a culture of beauty, my heart mourned with sympathy. I could relate her ‘ill-advised action’ to my own and to women all across the globe in general.
We, girls, grow up honestly believing that we have to look like something that come out of fashion magazines, movies, and ads. Even fairy tales portray beauty in such image: Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, and many more. We've seen them exclusively featuring ideally thin, tall, fair skin women as the only happy and desirable ones, zooming in on parts of women’s bodies and pan up and down those parts.
Such is an ideal, by definition, can be met by only a minority of those who strive for it. Yep, beauty may not be skin deep, yet it doesn't stop women from putting their best.
Women are brainwashed by these bombardments that they value beauty more than their personal well-being. Striving to attain the ideal takes great toll either in coffers or personal well-being in the form of physical pain, health problems, medical procedures, psychological effects as well as time and effort.
They empty their coffer on expensive cosmetics and bleaching products. Some frenetically and compulsively implement severely restrictive and nutritionally deficient diets, developing bizarre eating habits to attain certain body weight and shape. Many go as far as to have plastic surgery, breasts implant, lips suction or buttock injection to improve their looks and physical appearance in expense of their health, even their life.
In Indonesia, mushrooming skin care clinics and beauty salons have offered varies of treatments to improve one’s look up to beauty standards. Hospitals also provide cosmetic plastic surgery. These places are sweet nectar for women.
Months ago, as I lay on the patient table, squirming in unimaginable pain while my dermatologist applied chemical substances on my face, I thought how the hell did I get here in the first place?!
The burning sensation was excruciating. Not to mention the feeling of tens of thousands of tiny red ants and creepy scorpions viciously injected their venoms on my face.
Guess what, the answer is simple and matter-of-factly: I want to have a fair skin. But wait! It’s not for the wrong reason as in pursuing beauty culture (ops, is it self-denial?), but due to my skin problem.
Formerly, I didn’t care about the spreading acnes and cysts on my face, leaving the pores of the skin to clog with oil and dead skin. Hey, I am married and my husband is generous enough not to criticize my monstrosity. I said to myself “I am beautiful on the inside”, promoting the wise theory as poor excuse to justify my look lol.
“You are beautiful just the way you are,” My husband said teasingly with a grin from ear to ear.
Hell yes, I love being Shrek-like! (lol)
My fortress fell apart to pieces when people I met at office, bus, train and any other public places asked me with concern. They began hurling me with skin products and promoted certain skin cares for a try. My face would have got a tinge of color if it was white…lol. I had to swallow my pride hard at this commentary and kept flashing my widest grin ever, thanking them with suppressed anger.
In the end, I gave up. I went to the famous skincare clinic that has reputable name with licensed specialist doctors. After years, my acne problem lessened. People stopped annoying me with their campaign of beauty. I lived in peace afterwards: happy and content!
Until one day, my dermatologist asked me whether I would like to try ‘peeling program’ to correct my scarring associated with acne. After some hesitation, I said “Why not? It’s absolutely for health reason! (Is it?)” while looking at the commercial ads promoting the program.
Once again, my serenity turned upside down!
That’s what brought me to that torture chamber. Afterwards, I told my dermatologist; never ever again would I want such ordeal. As long as my grizzly acnes did not come to revisit me, I would be content enoughJ.
Drawing form this personal experience, I don’t advocate women to purse beauty ideals created and maintained by pop culture products. Beauty is nothing but a fleeting nature, defeating by age and time.
How can we race against time that cuts down and destroys all things that are beautiful? Time causes beauty to fade, people to age and life to end.
So, why bother pursuing such ideal only to end up in vain. Is it worth it to trade your life and soul with momentary triumph of being a beauty?
Duh... I choose NO. I don’t want to end up like Dorian Gray or the Venezuelan girl.
Flashing my smile, I hammer the wisdom that inner beauty is a dozen times more important that the artificial one in my bone. It’s a mantra I cling on tightlyJ.
Ehm, sounds too good to be true and naïve, isn’t it? But that’s the hardcore truth.
As Oscar Wilde, the renowned Iris dramatist, novelist and poet, has once admonished us that “It’s beauty which captures your attention; personality captures your heart.
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