I’m A Barbie Girl In A Barbie World
Have you ever woke up, checked yourself in the mirror, saw those beautiful eyes of yours, the smooth skin, the glowing hair, and your defined body, then, all of a sudden, got a dopamine rush, and that day you became the most productive and happiest of yourself?
Or what about those days that you haven’t slept enough, and you wake up, go to the bathroom, and unintentionally spot yourself in the mirror in passing and realize how ugly you are today, how much water you have under your skin, and how smaller you look muscle-wise, and you become the most dormant and least happy of yourself on that day?
That’s me all the time. These days, my physical status dictates my happiness and productivity more than anything else. When I feel like I’m not so pretty or fit, I feel as if I’m not worthy enough to work hard, so at the end of the day, I may have a good life, career, and good family or partner. I’d say, “I’m not good-looking enough, so what does it matter if I’m, per se, a good writer or a good actor?”
I see all these good-looking actors, singers, and internet celebrities happy and gorgeous in front of the camera and think they weren’t there and weren’t as successful if they weren’t as beautiful. I see a lot of value in the face and the body, but the value inside becomes less and less visible to me. For me, it’s the physicality that dictates everything. And I’m sure, in this era, it’s the same for a lot of other people. If you assume you’re not affected by “physical beauty dictates everything today,” you’re either so fortunate to believe in the goodness of the man or just pretending you’re not affected.
A big sign of people caring so much about their appearance to the extent that it becomes the strongest motivator to keep going is this rapid surge of cosmetic procedures. Think about it: breast augmentation, buttocks enhancement, hair transplant, jaw surgery, rhinoplasty, steroid abuse, limb lengthening (horrifying and painful), penis enlargement ( Read or listen to this article from the New Yorker to see some of the catastrophic consequences of one type of penis enlargement- for some, it led to suicidal thoughts!), and yadda, yadda, yadda.
I don’t say pursuing beauty is necessarily a bad thing. If done well enough, you may see a big boost in your confidence, and as a result, your productivity, but it’s transient, and if obsessed over, it’s very intoxicating.
In the modern world, physical attraction is obsessed over, so much so that it made me, and probably you, feel that we don’t worth trying unless we are unimaginably perfect and spotless.
On social media, you can see how many people mock others for their appearance. You can see how much people praise someone because of their sexy qualities. You can see that we mostly judge people based on how soothing they are to our not-so-kind eyes.
But to have a stable sense of self-content and self-esteem and, overall, a better and easier life, we need to get deeper: we must correct our mindset. We must correct the culture. We can see beauty in its physical shape, for sure. But it shouldn’t be at the forefront of everything. We must find our values- at least a part of them- in our soul, personality, kindness, humor, information, knowledge, friends, and more internal things. And we can pursue physical attraction as a side job.
When we see ourselves more holistically and as a package of internal and external things together, we can become happier and more stable people: we may have a defect in one division (maybe you have hair loss), but we have something so much better in another part (you’re so funny), so we don’t get disappointed since we see ourselves as multi-dimensional. But if we try to compartmentalize ourselves, we overemphasize one division (like facial beauty), and a lack in that division makes us feel worthless because we’ve ignored the other great things we have as a whole.
So you may not be so tall, but you got those gorgeous eyes. You may not have long hair, but you got colossally good writing skills. You may be chubby, but you have abundant knowledge when it comes to movies (though you can lose some weight and become fitter if you want. But again, don’t make a big deal out of it).
So I say let’s be a package. Barbies should be holistic, Brah!
