Reading Uglies made me realize that some form of this story could be in our societal future. I mean beauty is sooo overemphasized in America's society and I believe it is because, sex and beauty sells a lot merchandise in America. We are a capitalist society, and the beauty industry is a multibillion-dollar industry. I mean flip thru a Glamour magazine and you will see that the magazine is over 70% ads and 30% actual articles. Even many TV show such as The Read World are making their reality show contestants say an ad such as "we are getting the challenge texted to us on our awesome T-mobile side kick," when they are in the middle of the scene. The genius and sadness in all this is that we as consumers are weak and have to have the latest I-phone, $300 UGGs and $17 dollar hairspray to make ourselves feel like we are attractive and worth something. Also retailers and advertisers know our weakness and use it to make models even more pretty through airbrushing and weaves and they market more expensive products to the general public so that kids who are seen wearing these are supposed to “look expensive.” Some interesting facts for you to know are that UGGs only cost $20 dollars in Australia until an American company bought them and did some minor alterations and now they cost $200-300 dollars. Also here is a video of how much time and alterations go into making a model look “pretty” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcFlxSlOKNI
Please comment and for the record I don’t hate UGGs, or people who wear them! :-)
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I agree that we are heading in the direction that Uglies did. The definition of beauty according to the media is so very narrow that most people really don't fit into it. So in order for people to feel better about themselves they buy products that will make their lips look fuller and their butts look bigger/smaller. Not to mention the growing plastic surgery trend. People always say go ahead and get it done if you need it to make you feel better about yourself, but I think that if it weren't for today's narrow vision of beauty then not very many people would feel they needed it. The author in an interview he did said that a friend of his always had a big nose and felt pressure to get a nose job, but the fact she didn't set her apart and made her even more beautiful. If the media could take on the view that differences are beautiful and give our society multiple ways to be beautiful I think people would end up feeling a lot better about themselves. You can see Scott Westerfeld's interview at http://www.scottwesterfeld.com/books/uglies.htm.
I think that in some way or another when Scott Westerfeld wrote this in the back of his mind he was thinking of how our world could turn out. It is so true that people who are more attractive are going to have a better chance of getting somewhere compared to someone who is poor and not so attractive. The media gets the best of us and makes us think that beauty is the only way. I agree with you that beauty sells and that when you flip through a magazine ads take over most of the magazine. Media makes us really look at ourselves in a different way. Media makes you think that being skinny and beautiful are the only people out there who can really make it. I love that you posted the video of the dove photo shoot where they start with someone with no make up and then by the end she looks like a whole different person. That has always been a favorite of mine and it is also so true. Airbrushing and fixing the photo itself before it is used in the advertisement is what is done majority of the time. I have to admit even I do it. Before I add pictures on facebook or print them off I will edit them to how I like them. People only see the results and never see the bfore picture. The world isn't made up of only the models and celebrities you see on television. I wish everyone had the chance to see the dove photo shoot because it is a great example of what is done to make someone look pretty and it isn't always the right thing to do.
I liked what you wrote, and as i was reading through your post and the two comments I realized how backwards everything was. Lets think about this, and I want to preface this by saying that this just applies to a majority of people, and not to everyone.
What i was thinking about as i read this, when you were talking about the 300$ uggs and the $17 hairspray making a person feel like they have worth is how, for the most part, it seems that the people we assign the most worth to are the people that shouldn't have it. Heres what i'm saying: We can agree that the people that are "beautiful" have a much easier time in life, they are given more opportunities, they are not beaten down as much along the way, the just plain don't necessarily have to work as hard. When i think about it i think about the dynamic of a highschool. The jocks and the cheerleaders, (again, dealing with general observations, not all people fall into this category) are usually very popular and well liked and never have to really fight for anything. They get leniency in class and surround themselves with others like them. Then you have the others, the ones that may not be that attractive, or may not want to be a cheerleader, and they are forced to prove themselves over and over again, and most of them do. They are forced to get good grades, or become more socially refined. So then when I blow that up to our society level, we have supermodels, and movie stars, and rappers, and we are assigning them a great deal of value, and they are given all of the privileges. A pretty person that isn't very smart might get a job over an ugly genius, all because we have beauty precedence over most anything else. You can see it in Reality tv. Those shows have some of the dumbest people i've ever seen on them, but because they are all attractive, people will watch those shows over everything else. Its completely messed up
It was interesting when Lindsay K talked about how she did two donation stands for Katrina and she made more money when she was done up than when she was all scrubby. How backwards is that.
Our world is one that constantly judges on physical appearances. They say that first impressions are important, but not all first impressions actually deal with an interaction between two people. Frequently, our first judgements of people are on their appearance, before they even open their moth or extend their hand.
We, females, cannot blame the pressure of looking beautiful and the importance of labels when it comes to clothes or shoes on guys. We perpetuate this aspect of our society by talking about girls behind their backs when they are wearing knock-off Uggs or when their roots are showing. We have created a world where we need to keep up with everyone else, if not even "one-up" them. While guys (although they might try to deny it) are very judgmental and critical of girls, their judgments are more often about the physical appearance/figure of a girl, not the brand of jeans she is wearing or the kind of purse she's carrying. Still, we females often try to convince ourselves that when we buy the newest mascara or cut our hair we are attempting to win over the male population.
Whether you define our society's preoccupation of "beauty" as a materialistic obsession with labels, or the instinctive response to look in the mirror before we walk out the door, we do live in a world where what's on the outside is (at least when we meet people for the first time) more important than what's on the inside.
I wanted to comment on this post because I found it really interesting. I agree totally with you. My literature response group was actually talking about how our society is kind of heading in the direction of the "Uglies" society. Our society these days is so concentrated on beauty and material things. People try to live up to standards of models in ads, which is nearly impossible because of airbrushing and plastic surgery like you said. You brought up how magazines contain mostly ads and you are so right. It's crazy how much people are made to feel like they NEED to be pretty and NEED to buy certain, expensive things. While I know our minds are not totally taken over like people's minds are in "Uglies"; I believe that peoples minds in our society today are manipulated in a similar way. People are forced into believing they need to look a certain way and buy certain products to get to that way. It's also really interesting that you said that UGGS were originally $20 in Australia!! I wonder how much worse things can get in the future than they already are now. I'm not saying that looking nice and doing make up is a bad thing, but the media and people are taking things way out of hand.
So I was in Macy's the other day and I went to the make-up counter to buy some mascara, when the sales lady approached me and tried to sell me some cover-up for the dark circles under my eyes. I remember being surprised and insulted that this woman felt she had the right to tell me what make up I could use for the "imperfections" on my face; however after reading this blog post and all of the responses, it made me realize that the sales person at Macys was simply repeating what our society encourages and enforces on a daily basis.
Magazine ads and music videos portray essentially "redone" men and women as perfect objects of beauty. However rarely ever does an outsider have the opportunity to see how much work goes into making a model look "beautiful" to the standardss of American society. We see a necessity to have 20 different make up counters at a department store and over 100 different dietary supplements available at local pharmacies--as if being skinny and full of make-up are necessary "prescriptions" given out hourly by our culture.
I personally will never understand how in order to be beautiful we have to possess a perfect body and flawless features. It is not only unrealistic, but to me it is the exact opposite of true beauty because we are removing uniqueness and replacing it with common features that will still never be good enough for a magazine not to retouch and reconstruct.
I think that the book Uglies puts the emphasize there is on beauty in a great perspective, because it is new and different. Many people in society place such a huge emphasis on looking perfect and dressing perfect and acting perfect that we sometimes forget that in the end, it really does not matter. When you die, no one really remembers you for the clothes you wore or how perfect your hair looked everyday, but for the person that you were and how you treated other people. You are remembered for the person that you are and not for the materialistic things that you owned. Uglies is a great book to read because it makes you realize that beauty is not everything, and that it can be truly dangerous. The way that society revolves around looking perfect is a bad thing, and we need to all just remember that life is about the kind of person that you are, not about the way you look.
After reading Uglies, I found that the message being addressed was very true to what we face in our society today.
I found it very interesting to find that Uggs were originally $20 in Australia and then, surprise surprise, increased in price once an American company bought them. Our society does put a HUGE emphasis on the idea that money can buy you happiness, but we've seen in movies, books, or from friends & family members that this doesn't always tend to be the case. I'm not saying money doesn’t have a helping hand in life, but honestly, trying to achieve a status or a look that you aren't will get tiring after awhile. Fashion and the perception of beauty is always changing, so by the time you achieve what you thought was socially accepted as beautiful, chances are society has already changed into the next "BIG" thing or look that makes you skinny, prettier, etc.
I really like that you also posted the Dove commercial. As an Advertising major and a Women's Studies minor, my goal is to help bring more awareness to the issue of how young girls and women have diminishing self-esteem due to advertising. My goal is to try to help reduce objectifying women and decreasing the emphasis on unattainable beauty while embracing girls’ natural beauty and talents. I truly think this issue is a sad realization that we need to face as an individual and as a society.
I also found some interesting statics dealing with girls’ self-esteem:
70% of girls ages 15-17 aren't even bothering to participate in
normal every day activities due to a lack of self-worth
Today's beauty & ideals create appearance anxiety for 86.9% of all
teenage-aged girls.
Its funny because I actually put the link to that video in my blog comment from last week. I completely agree that this world is heading in the same direction as the book Uglies did. It is sad how distorted Americas view of beauty has become. At first glance it seems as though this book is sending a positive message to the readers; physical attractiveness is not important, it’s what is on the inside that counts. However, after reading interviews and reviews, readers are able to make other connections they did not think about before. This might include ideas about the uniqueness of each individual mind, or that following what everyone else is doing may not always be the best idea.
I also believe that our society is headed in the direction that the Uglies society fell into. I believe the futuristic society Westerfeld creates, encourages individuals to give in to conformity, and to “all look the same” is similar to today’s society in many ways. The media screams at us to look like Hollywood models, drive luxurious vehicles, and live rich and famous lives. These are absurd projections of what society is, and should be. The media tells us what to watch, how to act, what to buy, and who to care about. I do not think this is good for society, however i do not see our culture turning any other direction. Sex sells.
As an advertising major student, it is funny to agree with you. It is ugly to work study an industry whose main purpose is to create or trigger needs in people. Marketing and advertising creates a appetizing culture that people want to be part of, people want to get eh latest products because they want to be known. They want to be liked by others as well as accepted in society. People think that by buying products that is going to make them prettier, they are going to have a better social acceptance.
Of course the media makes people feel ugly, after all the retouching and the extreme engineering that goes on behind the production of an advertising to make it attractive, it is unreachable perfection that is crated. That’s the sad part. This glamour portrayed by the media, is not reachable. There is an advertisement made by Dove that is called to mind to show how ugly advertising can be (here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hibyAJOSW8U). It is true beauty what should be portrayed.
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