Does Real Beauty Create Ugliness?
How are we doing as educators when it comes to teaching media literacy? It’s a topic of much debate. Most people would agree that there’s a need to teach it, but we don’t always agree on what “it” is. Our social media, deep digital toolbox, and ability to publish quickly and cheaply, help produce hoaxes, infotainment, stunts, and misinformation which can reach larger numbers of people faster than they ever could in the past. Our hypercompetitive media culture places a premium on speed at the expense of accuracy. News is more often hyped than reported. Fact checking creates an inconvenient drag on our desire to publish first. Sites like Twitter and Digg entice users with social capital, paying a premium to those that report most, report first and amplify the sound in the echo chamber.
Add to the mix a marketing industry that operates with little to no oversight and Froot Loops all of a sudden becomes a “smart choice”. Coal becomes a clean product. Coca-cola turns into a great product for hydrating a thirsty body.
A popular video that often makes it into the media-lit teacher’s bag of tricks touches on the important topics of fakery, beauty and self-image. Dove scores some points with this video by getting people (specifically young girls) to think about the meaning of real beauty.
The following video though, brings up some interesting questions: What is real beauty? Is it okay to create ugliness in the name of beauty? Can a product that leads to ugliness also lead to beauty? Is such a product legitimate?
The video, pushes media literacy and our conversations about beauty to new levels. It only has one tenth as many views as the Dove ad, but if used in the context of the ad above, is ten times more powerful. It talks poignantly about the real meaning of beauty, something we’ve allowed Madison Avenue to define.
So, what is real beauty? Who gets to define it? Some marketer? Us? Or maybe something else?
My hunch tells me that real beauty is a sign of life, a sign to us that something is well, that it’s nourishing, that it’s life-affirming. When we see beauty, whether it’s in an act, an attitude, a place or a being, the message is clear: “It’s good for you”. When we see an intact, thriving forest, we recognize, at some level, often unconsciously, that this place is good for life; that it’s sustaining. When we see a polluted river or encounter a selfish act, the opposite is true: “Stay away!”
Studies of physical beauty in humans seem to show that we are innately attuned to signals of genetic health. These signals are displayed by symmetry, by body features like broad shoulders and curvy waist lines which are products of hormonal abundance, signaling overall health and disease resistance. Marketers have latched onto these signals, Photoshopping them to perfection leading to a widespread sense of inadequacy. They masterfully play on our willingness to be physically beautiful, selling their pill, their bar of soap, as a quick fix. The beauty that comes from a positive attitude, a harmonious way of being, a sense of humor, a smile, a selfless act, after all, are often free and do not lend themselves so easily to commercialization.
Some sources:
On symmetry
On facial features
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