On Symmetry

My deepest apologies to anyone who reads for not posting more regularly.

Today I'd like to talk about physical symmetry - the balance of beauty.

Let me start off by saying that personally, I admire people with a little something "wrong" with them, a something a little "off" or some little "peculiarity." Or, hell, some big "peculiarity." (I am not, of course, saying that any body is better than another - I'm simply stating my personal view.)

I am not saying any of this to brag; I'm just saying this for all of you who have ever felt that there's something unpleasant, weird, funny, about you physically, something wrong with you, that you have too much of one thing or too little of something else - I want you to know that people like me exist.

But to move beyond the personal: there is nothing intrinsically good about physical beauty, defined any way you like. We all know that some form of beauty is what everybody from Gustave Eiffel to Jimmy Choo have striven and strive for. In reality, though, it is just a small facet of any person's being, and it only defines personality in so far as it affects self-esteem, positively or negatively. It does not make people nicer, kinder, gentler, or better in any way at all. Beauty is a relative social construct, our "Western" definition of which we have internalized through worship of ancient Greece.

One fact which I take as proof positive of the above statement is that every society - historical and modern - has had its own, distinct standards of beauty. This discrepancy in definition indicates to me that all "beauty" could defined as something else in another culture.

People (I am speaking of Americans here) tend to get so caught up in the tornado of changing fads and fashions that we cannot see that none of it means a damn thing. And the other main problem is that so many of these beauty standards are simply impossible for so many people and when they don't realize this inherent impossibility, they feel guilt because they continually "fail" to change themselves to meet idiotic standards of acceptability.

In reality, what needs to change is the way we look at the physical self.

Instead of spending our money and mental and emotional energy on vaginal plastic surgery, we should concentrate on sexual education; instead of working out to lose weight, we should focus on health for its own sake; instead of teaching young girls, boys, and kids in between that they should change their exterior, we must teach them to look inside themselves and others when something in their lives feels wrong. We as a society need to reevaluate our priorities. This has to happen immediately, so that these impossible standards don't keep hurting the people we love. And it starts with all of you.