The culprit. photo credit: alibaba.com

In the office today, Mizu (our HR) exclaimed that his nail looked and felt like plastic.  Earlier this week, Marylin had bought one of those nail buffers and insisted on testing and demonstrating it on him.  So now he is stuck with a squeaky clean thumbnail that he may actually make even shinier when he tries to rub the smoothness away.  It’s kind of funny to see the methods he’s been trying to tone it down, from scraping it against thing to rubbing it along the wall or uneven surfaces.  I guess none have worked that well if he’s still so consious of it.

When he made that comment, I found myself saying something along the lines of, “You’ll find that much of beauty is being fake.”  In retrospect, that really rings true to me and was put even more into perspective when I happened upon a TED video about glamour.  Essentially the entire beauty industry and anything else considered glamorous is a front.  It’s not about what’s natural, but what can be hidden, changed, or at least made to appear so.  Sometimes it’s to enhance a certain feature and other times it’s to conceal it, but no matter what the approach, the end goal is to produce something that does not just happen to be so.

Now that’s not all bad, since having better moisturized skin probably hasn’t ever hurt anyone and a little bit of smoothing over of details can boost self-confidence, but sometimes the philosophy can get distorted.  It’s dangerous to talk about this change of appearance artificially, especially for those who are particularly insecure about their looks.  The beauty doctrine preaches things like using makeup to change your appearance rather than having a healthy lifestyle and to the zealots out there, this can be a very unhealthy suggestion.  I find it fascinating that people are always striving for this look (myself included to a small extent) of having better skin or longer lashes or rosier cheeks.

photo credit: cosmetic-candy.com

Similarly, the idea of being glamorous is aiming for an ideal that is just out of reach.  Glamour often encompasses beauty, wealth, and other superficial ways of looking at what is valued in life.  It’s about transcending earthly qualities and having that magical glow.  So honestly, who can achieve that?  But in the desperate pursuit of it, people will drive themselves crazy trying.  Most importantly though, it’s about being at the right place at the right time and sometimes even seeing things from the right angle too.  Glamour doesn’t just happen.  It is meticulously prepared for and carefully recorded in just the right way, otherwise it’s all ruined.

And so, in that simple sentence, I suddenly was able to put into more concrete ideas this distaste I’ve always had for high fashion, glamour, and beauty.  For me, all of that is so fake, so artificial, and so unrealistic that what is natural is thrown to the side.  Have you ever seen a glamorous shot without makeup, technology, or extremely calculated lighting?  Glamour is made and in its most touted form, is probably never present in real life.  That’s what really bothers me.  Does everyone who would like to be more glamorous now need to clamor to get expensive cars or jewelry, put on tons of makeup and fancy clothes, and practice their perfect pout and stare?  It sure seems that way and that is just disgustingly FAKE.