Is our culture becoming more youth and beauty oriented?

Question

I definitely have noticed that we are far more youth and beauty and "thin" oriented than we have ever been in the past. This, in spite of the fact that Americans are older than before (baby boomers are now middle aged) and we are fatter than ever. What will be the consequences for our collective self esteem? Having physical flaws is becoming more and more unaccepted. I think people in our culture are expecting to be able to find partners who are more flawless than ever. For example, a 37 year old man I know said he doesn't like his wife's body! His wife, also 37 bore him 3 children!! What will be the effect? It's interesting that there are more single households than ever before too... is this because our standards are higher than they should be? Comments that I have read here on this question/answer board seem to confirm what I'm saying here. Any thoughts?

Another example: I have a 34 year old male friend who is single, and he fully expects to marry a model - by his own admission. He's currently pursuing an 18 year old brazilian dancer. I suspect he'll be single for a long time!

Answer 1

I totally agree. Our society IS indeed becoming more and more beauty oriented. Go into any high school now, and it's all about how you look and how you dress. People judge you all by the way you look.

You know what I find really interesting...Muslim women wear the head scarf to be modest. They don't show their beauty to every guy on the street and don't want to be used as sex symbols. The scarf tells someone to respect the person for who they are, not how they look. You judge someone for how they act, not how they appear to look. Physical appearance does not determine who you are. I wouldn't want every man on the street to see my body and to look at me in that way. Then they don't treat you respectfully...it's just degrading. The head scarf tells them to respect someone for who they are, not how they look. Same goes with modest, long, loose clothing. It's almost impossible to find non-revealing clothing.

Anyway, so that's my point of view. I completely agree with you on the way people are viewing one another.

=]

Answer 2

I completely agree with you that our standards are much higher now than ever before. And I believe it's because of all the "reality" shows where these women and men look awesome constantly and give viewers a false belief that their gender counterparts should look the same way, when they aren't considering that in order to be that fit, they don't go to work daily, but work out daily with a trainer, not to mention have a hairstylists and makeup team following them around behind the cameras making sure to fix the tiniest flaw. It is really sad this is causing marriages to fail and I wish there were something to do, but I don't see society backpedaling anytime soon. About 5 years ago I was dating a guy who went to a strip club with a friend one night and for months after kept comparing me to the women there, and could hardly touch me after seeing women who were so "perfect". This has been building up for years and I'm sorry to say, I don't think it's going away anytime soon, unless more and more people recognize it as false reality and don't expect it in their everyday lives.

Answer 3

you are very observant about our culture. I think this trend to be perfect is setting people up for an extreme failure in their life or in our society. I don't know if you remember the story of Betty Broderick, who In 1989 killed her husband when he rejected her after twenty years of marriage for a younger woman. When she suspected him of adultery she went and had complete plastic surgery at 36 years of age! And of course it didn't win back her husband. The point I'm making is people feel they have to be perfect to satisfy someone else.

In so many other cultures age is not judged as a bad thing. One of the greatest beauties in the world , Bridget Bardo, is in her seventies and has never had any plastic surgery and allowed herself to age as nature intended. Some people would say she looks terrible I think she looks like a woman who has lived a full life.

It's definitely a problem in terms of dating nowadays . People are looking for the absolute perfect looking person. I think some day robots are going to replace real people for their perfection. What ever happened to looking at someone's heart? I still believe that inner beauty is far more important than what's outside.

Thanks for posting such an interesting question.
Billie77

Answer 4

Speak the truth!!!! (right on)