If one day every woman woke up and was happy with her self, the cosmetic industry would go out of business. Not just women, but men too. Why do we obsess over our looks so much to the extent that we put on a mask every day to project out to the world? Sometimes we put on a physical mask; sometimes we don our psychological mask. This is our ego, our self-image. Some people identify more as their body, usually just the thin outer layer called the skin. Some people identify as a role, or their status or their position in society.
We walk around with this self image, always struggling to uphold it, turning ourselves into a clapping Seal for everybody, making sure that we look and seem the best way we can – only to go home and take it all off, get in our trackies and finally relax. But in this regard, we are only ever relating to people on a very superficial level. We are relating on the level of appearances, of our body, of our status, of an idea. We have fallen prey to the conditioning that our culture has very successfully imposed on us.
Ever notice how “beauty” for a woman is tall, thin, big breasts and ass, skinny waist, flawless complexion and all of that? Notice how maybe only 1% of females are actually like this, creating a world where everyone strives for something they will never be, only to spend more and more and more on cosmetics and even plastic surgery? Maybe the people a little less identified with their body will identify with fashion. Portraying their self-image through their choice of clothes.
But can we truly look at ourselves in the mirror without the conditioned mind telling us we need to look better, we need to be thinner, we need to colour that bit, straighten that part out, apply this or that? Can we look at ourselves just as we are without culture and the brainwashing being perpetuated through our own mind?
See, our mind is not our own. It is a product of the environment and culture we live in. When our mind sees imperfections and desires for some perfect look, it is cultures voice doing this, not our own. All those years of advertising, watching television, seeing what the “perfect” look or body is has conditioned us to strive for something that is not. -PQ
Comments