Pain Before Beauty

Pain Before Beauty

Given it some thought, I can only begin to fathom why people would choose beauty over health. It saddens me to know that even now in the 21st century, people lack knowledge of self, and is easily influenced by society or cultural beliefs. Why should one suffer in order to be beautiful? If to be beautiful is to attain a certain kind of happiness, how can one be happy and suffer at the same time? I believe women suffer the most when it comes to the pursuit of beauty. From ages long ago, up until now, the standard for women regarding their appearance have always been held high. We have adopted the notion that a woman’s duty is to always appear her best and care for the house needs and a man’s duty is to work hard and provide financially. It is a way of life that even though is slowly changing; will remain imbedded behind people’s mind for a long time. For many women, their life goals are to find a husband, marry and have children and live happily ever after! They are willing to go through extremes to reach their image of perfection and attain their fairy tale dreams.

In “The Price for Perfection”, by Robin Marantz Henig, she describes briefly some of the practices women have undergone over the years for the sake of becoming more beautiful physically, practices done in order to satisfy their cultural beliefs or to fit in to society’s new fashion fad, or even to find a husband! To think that in the 1920’s women hid their breasts by squashing them as close as possible against the ribcage and binding them with tight elastic to have their chest appear like that of a young boy sounds ludicrous to me. Breasts have to breathe and require nutrition. They are one of few fatty reserve areas on the female body that naturally hold toxic wastes, including fat and mucus. They naturally bulge out on women, and with reason. Through the breast a woman is able to feed her child. Women undergoing these ignorant practices definitely didn’t put these things into...