I’m shocked — and maybe I was just naive. But I’m embarrassed by it because my son is getting ready to grow up in this world and I’m trying to raise a good man who values and appreciates women and here we have this attack on women in the media that I don’t see a stop happening.
As an aggregate, we Americans don’t much like ourselves. It seems as if we spend our lives trying to be something we’re not- thinner, taller, faster, smarter, richer, etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum- because we can’t accept who we are. We don’t recognize how blessed we are to be what we are and to have what we do…because we’re too busy trying to become something or someone else.
I can speak to this subject with some authority, because I’ve spent a lifetime trying to be smarter, more athletic, thinner, and better looking. Of course, if you ask Erin, she’ll tell you I do pretty well in all those areas. Intellectually, I know she’s right, and I recognize that I’m blessed and very fortunate. So why is it so difficult for me to like what I see when I look in the mirror? Why do I still feel so inadequate and deficient so much of the time? Is it because I’m a writer and…well, writers are supposed to be neurotic, amiright? That generalized combination of dissatisfaction, angst, and rampant insecurity is what (allegedly) powers our creativity, no? Or is it because I internalized early and often the negative messages I received?
I suppose part of it stems from being bullied in elementary and junior high school. When you’re knocked around frequently and told repeatedly that you’re ugly and stupid, it’s hard not to take that message to heart…especially when you’re barely 10 years old. I was browbeaten frequently, and with no corresponding positive message from the adults in my life- or at least one I could perceive as such- it’s not hard to understand why an insecure 10-year-old could believe that he’s in fact ugly and stupid.
This is the point Sandra Bullock is making, that the messages we send really do matter. Whether it’s how we talk to children, how children treat one another, or how advertising creates needs and fuels inadequacies where none need exist, the impact can be both long-lasting and harmful. One need not look long or hard to see this dynamic at work.
She also noted the pressure young girls face in a social media age. “Little girls are having the hardest time with bullying and the Internet,” Bullock said. “Somebody with a very large hand and big voice needs to put a stop to it.”
To lend a hand in this battle, Bullock decided to accept People’s Most Beautiful Woman title so she could offer a different take on what it means to be beautiful. She told the magazine that “real beauty is quiet.”
“Especially in this town, it’s just so hard not to say, ‘Oh, I need to look like that,’” she said. “No, be a good person, be a good mom, do a good job with the lunch, let someone cut in front of you who looks like they’re in a bigger hurry. The people I find most beautiful are the ones who aren’t trying.”
It’s no secret the cosmetics industry is a multi-billion dollar concern that perpetuates itself by convincing women and girls they’re not beautiful just as they are. The message, constantly reinforced by the media, is that they have a problem and need something- their product- to make themselves beautiful and therefore worthy of being viewed favorably by men. Except that Bullock’s absolutely correct- real beauty IS quiet. Real beauty is how you treat someone when you’re having a rough day. It’s how you smile at someone and offer them a hand up when they’re down. It’s how you go out of your way to do something nice for someone without expecting anything in return. It’s about being a good person because that’s who you are.
The cosmetics industry sells its products by devising ever more ingenious ways to convince women that they’re somehow deficient, that they’re lacking that certainly “something” only their product can provide so they may be truly beautiful (and therefore desirable to men). It’s a multi-BILLION dollar industry that runs on the manufactured insecurity of women told incessantly that simply being themselves isn’t enough, that they’re “less than” without the benefits that using a cosmetic product will confer upon them. CALL NOW; OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY!!
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to look good, of course…but unless you begin with the presumption of being enough just as you are, cosmetics are only camouflage. Real beauty begins when you stop trying to be beautiful and stop being yourself.
