Crystal Hann
health WISE
Crystal Han is a freelance writer and artist. She graduated from San José State
University with a BFA in Animation/Illustration and is an aspiring novelist, currently
working on two books.
The Beastly Side of Beauty
I
f beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
then the beholder’s vision is getting
severely myopic nowadays. Now, more
than ever, we are seeing a narrowing view
of what is considered beautiful. Every-
where you turn there is an unrealistic
portrayal of how men and women are
supposed to look. Women are expected to
be tall, thin, light skinned but tan, with
more westernized facial features. The same
expectations apply to men, except they
also need an insane amount of muscle
definition. The problem with this glori-
fied image of beauty is that it has always
been impossible, and our desperation to
achieve it can do more harm than good.
There are many beauty ideals that
we strive for, but the most sought after
is thinness. You don’t have to look very
hard to see an advertisement for a new
weight loss pill, a new diet fad, or a slim-
ming product. The problem with many
weight loss products are that they aren’t
regulated by the FDA. It’s left up to the
manufacturer to prove that the product is
safe, and many manufacturers have been
accused of making false claims about
their products and adding pharmaceutical
ingredients to their supplements or pro-
ducing them under unsafe circumstances.
Some can cause harmful side effects like
increased heart rate, high blood pressure,
kidney problems, and liver damage. Fad
diets that cut out whole food groups to
achieve weight loss don’t do us any favors
either. They may temporarily help us shed
a few pounds, but it’s difficult to maintain
a strict dietary regimen long term. Not to
mention, we miss out on a lot of nutrients
that are essential for our bodies.
Some celebrities have popularized
the use of waist trainers, which are basi-
cally corsets, as a means of looking thin.
Proponents of waist trainers claim that if
you wear it for eight hours a day for up to
six weeks you’ll have a perfect hourglass
70
figure. On the outside, these trainers may
make you appear thinner and have better
posture, but on the inside they can do a
lot of harm. All of that squeezing of your
midsection limits the flow of blood and
oxygen to your organs, not to mention
it makes breathing difficult so you’re at
risk of passing out. Studies have shown
that prolonged use of waist trainers cause
the abdominal muscles to atrophy and
can permanently rearrange your organs.
And after all that struggle, the results
you achieve are only temporary. So really,
it’s a lot of discomfort and health risks
for nothing.
The hidden danger with this obsession
with thinness and all of these methods to
slim down is that they can pave the way
for serious eating disorders like bulimia,
binge eating disorder, and anorexia
nervosa in vulnerable groups, such as
teens and young adults.
Looking young and attractive is anoth-
er big beauty ideal, and many people are
turning to cosmetic surgery to achieve it.
Cosmetic surgery has been popular for a
while, but increasing numbers of young
women are “going under the knife” now.
Many women of normal weight are going
in to trim off an inch of unwanted fat,
to get larger breasts, or to make their
Sources:
“The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry”,
Marketing, marketing-interactive.com/
features/mass-medias-toxic-influence-on-
beauty-standard/
Goudreau, Jenna, “The Hidden Dangers
of Cosmetic Surgery”, Forbes, forbes.
com/sites/jennagoudreau/2011/06/16/
hidden-dangers-of-cosmetic-
surgery/#302980fb7b2b
“Harmful Effects of Diet Pills and Supple-
ments”, Futures Recovery Healthcare,
futuresrecoveryhealthcare.com/knowledge-
center/harmful-effects-diet-pills-supple-
ments/
GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN
august/september 2019
faces look like their favorite movie star’s.
Cosmetic surgery can be tricky, how-
ever. Everything in your body is working
together to create a harmonious whole.
When one part of the body is tampered
with it can throw off your body’s balance
and create a new problem area that needs
“fixing”. For instance, liposuctioning off
that pesky fat on your thighs might draw
more attention to your hips or stomach.
Similarly, altering one facial feature can
sometimes throw off the appearance of
others. This can lead to a vicious cycle of
going in to get more and more “problem
areas” fixed until you’re unrecognizable.
People who get cosmetic surgery
might also wind up disappointed because
the end result doesn’t match the idea
they had in their mind. They imagine
changing their body or face might solve
their problems, like getting more atten-
tion, a promotion, or an attractive partner.
If that doesn’t happen, they feel let down
by reality. It can be especially devastat-
ing if mistakes are made in the procedure
that result in lifelong damages. For a
patient who is already insecure about
their appearance, a botched surgery could
severely impact their psychological well-
being, and their attempts to fix it can be
financially crippling.
There is a fine line between enhancing
or accentuating our features and
completely restructuring ourselves into
different people. We live in a society that
likes to make us feel ashamed of our
bodies, which prompts us to take these
drastic measures. But the more we cater to
this narrow standard of beauty, the more
we lose the things that make us unique.
What the media convinces us are “flaws”
are actually what make us interesting.
The truth is that beauty isn’t defined by a
size, a shape, or a skin color. It’s defined
by how much we can love and accept
ourselves for who we are.
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