By Umika Sharma:
“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder”
Well I do not think it is true anymore. You shift to 2012 and the craze for perfection has reached new heights. No, I am not being a cynic, I just happened to come across the latest trend of living Barbies around us. Confused? Allow me to explain. There is this trend in Ukraine, where girls are turning themselves into Barbies by getting dozens of plastic surgeries done and their look is completed with the help of make-up, which takes hours to apply. Travelling from the era of super tight (and uncomfortable) corsets to the era of stick thin supermodel-like figures and now this, people’s definition of beauty is getting scarier with every passing day.
The idea of achieving unrealistic images of oneself is not a new trend but it is now gaining momentum, considering these living Barbie dolls. Sure, as I kid, I found Barbie dolls attractive and had a whole collection of the same, but the idea of turning myself into one never occurred to me. Even today, as a young-adult, I do not consider doing that at all. But well, there are others who have made considerable attempts to look entirely like these dolls. The make-up, the huge and deep eyes, the perfectly sculpted noses and cheeks, the almost non-existent waists and the perfect hair, they have gone to all extents to look like that.
It seems as if inner beauty is a thing of the past. Isn’t this whole trend a little too extreme? I know it is hard to define beauty in exact terms and it depends from person to person. However, defining it only in terms of one’s appearance is also not right. The whole point is that beauty or more specifically external appearance should not be the only consideration, we should think of other things too, like, a person’s overall personality or their sense of humour. Why should beauty be the sole criterion? After coming across the news of these Barbie girls, it seems as if the answer to my previous question is a ‘yes’. Sad but true.
It is disturbing that we are creating unrealistic standards to achieve the perfect external appearance and it holds supremacy over all the other factors. Also, what is even more disturbing is that this trend is highly encouraged. The constant spotlight of the media in a way brings such people to notice and thus, several others like them are created. Perhaps it is just that we have come to the stage of judging a book by its cover and do not even bother to turn to the first page.