I have written articles about how we need to focus on spiritual growth rather than on losing weight. I have written about how we need to stop shaming women for taking pride in their beauty, and I have written about how the over-valuing of beauty can be traced back all the way to pre-ancient Rome and Greece. Clearly, I have a lot of thoughts on the topic of how we as a society treat physical beauty.

I have a very complicated relationship with the concept of physical beauty and the way society treats it. The idea of being physically beautiful is alluring and lovely, and of course, I like the idea of being beautiful. However, the fact is that beauty has been capitalized upon as a weapon to use against people, especially women, as a way to shame them; either you are too beautiful (and therefore shallow, an attention whore, a slut) or you are not beautiful enough (and therefore you are ugly, you must be sick, why don't you care more about yourself?). The worst part about the whole situation surrounding the way beauty and society interact is that, somehow, beauty has become inextricably linked with how much worth someone has, as though beauty is something that you use as payment for taking up space in the world.

The issue of beauty and worth being connected was first brought to my attention during an assembly about drunk driving at the beginning of my freshman year of highschool. Images of teenagers killed by drunk driving accidents were displayed on a screen, and the presenters gave short eulogies about the teenagers and their short lives. In total, three people were talked about; two girls and one boy. When describing just how tragic their deaths were, the girls were described with words such as "smart", "good student", but the word most often repeated was "beautiful". I remember thinking to myself how strange it was that these two girls were specified as being beautiful above everything else. They were dead and gone; their loss was being grieved by their parents, and it was their looks that were being focused on. Not their kindness, or if they were funny, or if they had great ambitions for after graduation. I remember feeling so disturbed, and not being able to put into words why it bothered me so much. Now I can articulate the questions that arose in my mind and why that wording affects me in the manner that it did. Why was the loss of their beauty being more grieved than the loss of their potential accomplishments or their spirits? Why was their beauty emphasized so much before any other trait? Why did their beauty matter so much? The boy was also described, and we were told where he was going for college and what clubs he was a part of in highschool, and what a good role model he was for his siblings. We were told about who he was as a person, rather than focusing on how tragic the loss of his good looks were.

When I die and someone writes my eulogy, I don't want the first thing that they say about me, the trait that they emphasize the most, to be that I was beautiful. That's not what I want to be remembered for, and it is certainly not what I want to be valued for. My beauty is not what makes me valuable. It is not something that makes me important, or interesting, or worth remembering, or worthy of the value that I have.

Constantly, commercials and ads pop up that showcase women and men with flawless skin, with long limbs and sculpted musculature. They are portrayed as being the "ideal person", with forms and traits to aspire towards for ourselves. We see these people, who are objectively very physically beautiful, and we are told that if we buy this product or support this company or wear this brand, we can look like them as well. Which is all fine, except those same advertisements then go on to say that if you look like this, you will also gain other traits such as ferocity, independance, admirability, etc. Advertisements draw parallels between inner traits of personalities and the way people look, as though our physical attributes are somehow connected to the inner workings of our hearts and minds. This false parallel then goes on to create strands of connection stating that you can change how you are on the inside by changing how you look on the outside. In some cases, this can be true, such as a young person learning how to do makeup and finding a creative outlet for themselves, or someone being severely insecure about something and gaining confidence through the use of a product. However, the idea that someone is emotionally mature or spiritually powerful being linked to how they look is preposterous, and yet it is a concept that is reinforced daily. All of these traits are of the sort that are valued, and there is therefore not only a parallel drawn between looking and behaving in certain ways, but also in looking and being valued in certain ways.

Far too often, our society treats beauty as a contributor to how worthy someone is of their existence. Women especially are subjected to the idea that if they are not attractive enough, they are worth less. This concept that our society has so wholeheartedly latched onto is one of the biggest contributors to issues with self worth, self love, and confidence. Most of the time, someone experiencing such issues is told that the solution is to recognize how they are truly beautiful, and learn to accept their unique individuality as something beautiful to behold. I want to challenge that solution and instead encourage people to question why beauty and worth seem so closely linked, and begin to learn how to separate them. Your worthiness is not contingent on whether or not you are beautiful, and you should never feel obligated to first be beautiful before being valued. Beauty and worth are separate, not tied together, and they should be treated as such.

I am not sure exactly how to go about remedying this issue, but I think that we must start by changing the way that we speak about beauty and self-worth. I think that, instead of encouraging people to force themselves into seeing themselves as beautiful and tying their sense of self-love to how physically appealing they are to other people, we encourage them to ask why that is so important. I think we must encourage our children to chase after dreams of becoming geniuses and helping others, instead of growing up to be physically beautiful people. I think we must introduce and describe each other as funny and kind and honest before we say that they are pretty. I think we must learn how to separate aspects of our character from aspects of our physical features, and I believe that that starts with how we speak about each other. I believe that we have a long journey ahead of us, but I believe it is one that can only end in people's lives and sense of self-worth and self-love growing to new heights. I believe that we will see something wonderful in each other.