1. Brooke Hundley
Senior Seminar
The Betrayal of Beauty
“What’s it like to be beautiful?” I remember asking my mother this question (one
of many I’m sure that day as I was known for being quite the inquisitive child) as I gazed
at the newest sugary treat in the grocery aisle. To which she replied, “It means you get to
wear anything you want, you get to have a lot of money, and everyone loves you,” as she
pulled me through the seemingly endless array of goodies. For the rest of the day I was
set, forget being a doctor or a teacher or a mom or any of the other assorted jobs my 4-
year-old brain dreamed up, when I grew up I was going to be beautiful.
Somewhere along the way that 4-year-old’s dream became a sad sense of reality
when beauty was discovered as something to be achieved through whatever means
necessary, a socially-pressured, seemingly unattainable goal preventing each of us from
appreciating the splendor in everyday situations. Looking back over the course of one’s
life, one is likely to find that the most mesmerizing moments, those moments in which
life seems to stand still like a frozen image in time and all of one’s troubles lose their
significance momentarily, were those in which one truly appreciated the work of nature
for what is, not what it could be. Whether it’s a child taking his first steps, a boy off on
an imaginative adventure with his loyal canine companion, two teenagers experiencing
their first real kiss, or simply the feeling of home one experiences with the savory smell
of freshly baked cookies, beauty lies in these exciting moments we wish to hold on to.
As generations grow older and the media becomes the American “tween’s” new best
friend, one can often lose sight of the simplicity of beauty in our everyday lives and
instead be sufficiently sucked into an artificial idea of beauty sold in a neatly packaged
form by our local advertiser. It is this beauty we often describe as a series of physically
humanistic and feminine images. From having soft skin and long hair, to big lips and

2. Brooke Hundley
Senior Seminar
bigger breasts, the female body is broken down piece by piece as if on an examination
table, each part defined by a standard of “beautiful” or simply put not “beautiful enough.”
And if we’re ever unclear about our opinions of what is beautiful, the media is right there
to give us a reassuring pat/shove in the right direction. Tear open the latest edition of
Cosmopolitan and it will take you 10 pages of advertising to get to the first page of
content. Along the way however you will be sure to find image after image of beauty
sold in the newest perfume bottle, the longest-lasting rejuvenation cream, or the most
alluring mascara. When did beauty stop describing breath-taking sights such as the view
from the Grand Canyon or life-changing events such as the birth of a litter of puppies and
start being sold to us in the form of size zero models with abnormally large breasts and
the strongest bottle of liquor? Never once we do stop to judge a child’s first walk as
inadequately perfect or criticize a blooming flower for unsymmetrical petals. So why do
we spend so much concentration and dollars on judging the imperfections of other
humans? Imperfections that only leave us striving to become an unrealistic dreamed up
image rather than focusing on the uniqueness each of us has to offer?
As children we live in an utter state of appreciation for everything around us. As
I think back to my years as a preschool Sunday school teacher I remember fondly starting
each class with a round of show and tell. The items for display would run the gamut
from a wilting dandelion picked along the way to a ladybug patrolling a mighty leaf to a
chewed up Frisbee from a rousing game of fetch. Each child saw the significance and
appreciation for the smallest things in life, the beauty in simply living and enjoying the
world around them. After watching the film “Mean Girls,” I wonder as the years will
progress how long before society removes this simple pure admiration the children have

3. Brooke Hundley
Senior Seminar
for the world around them and instead replaces it with the pressure to be the skinniest or
the most muscular, wear the most fashionable clothes, and be “accepted” into society’s
clearly defined lines of beauty. Will they be graced with just enough good looks to join
in with their own version of the “Plastics,” forever working to maintain a level of
acceptance by the likes of girls like Regina George or a level of adoration and respect as
a football star like Aaron Samuels? Or will they find an inner acceptance that they must
struggle to maintain as an outsider among their cookie cutter peers like the characters
Janis and Damian? I wonder if they do manage to make it beyond the terrible awkward
teenage years of fighting to fit in, if they will be forever more chasing an idealized idea of
perfection. Succumbing to a life of dying to achieve that dream husband/wife, dream
wedding, dream car, dream job, dream life…and in the process miss out on all the little
pieces of beauty to be found in each and every day aside from materials goods and
magazine covers. Suppose any of them are able to achieve their dream body with the
“wonders” of plastic surgery or gain the loving affection of that seemingly perfect person,
what happens when the “illusion” as Andrew Cohen describes it in his work “The
Promise of Perfection” wears off? When other areas of the body start to sag or that
“perfect” person has annoying habits. When disillusionment sets in, will they see it as a
new challenge to take on, or will they enter into an endless cycle of “wanting to possess”
people or objects due to “the power of our desire to create an illusion of perfection” if we
are able to possess these things (Cohen)?
I was asked the other day why selling this counterfeit version of beauty was so
successful especially with regards to our young women. To me it seemed like an almost
obvious result of the world in which we live in. As I’ve grown older I’ve watched “play

4. Brooke Hundley
Senior Seminar
dates” with friends turn into online games over the Internet. I’ve seen knocking on doors
to see if anyone’s home as the best way to reach a friend, to 9-year-olds with cell phones.
I’ve watched sweet and seemingly innocent boy bands corner the CD market only to be
replaced by scantily clad women and sexually explicit lyrics. In today’s world children
are so far separated from one another that the idea of a little girl even being best friends
with a boy seems far-fetched. Yet how are the sexes supposed to learn about each other
if we can’t talk and socialize with each other on a friendship basis at a young age? Naomi
Wolf describes this state of isolation and unwanted outside influence in her work “The
Beauty Myth.” Relating today’s disconnection to “an environment in which men and
women rarely get to talk together honestly in a public setting about what each really
desires.” Deprived of spending time openly communicating with their peers young
women turn outside their social groups to new sources of information to get the latest
inside scoop in the form “wise advice, tested by experience, of an admirable older female
relative,” speaking out to them from the magazine rack (Wolf). It is these “wise” sources
of information that prevent our young women from hearing the honest truth that men like
all sizes and shapes and personalities of women, and instead utilize advertising dollars to
convince them that if they want to experience love and affection from the opposite sex
they must fit into skinny jeans and a tube top.
The movie “Gia” is a perfect example of the fight for our young women in this
society against the pressures to be beautiful. I’ve heard many times that America’s
families are in danger right now as our parents work longer hours, our kids are left on
their own and the media in turn has begun to raise them. Without the love and attention
at home, young girls like Gia turn to their parental guardians: the media, to give them a

5. Brooke Hundley
Senior Seminar
lesson on how to get ahead in life. Lessons that led to nothing more than a damaging
struggle to be accepted and loved through any means necessary as can be seen by the
tragic death of young Gia and her battles with addiction and fighting for affection. David
D. Burns, explores the life of a perfectionist in his work “The Perfectionist’s Script for
Self-Defeat.” In it he details perfectionism as a way of “dealing with feelings of
insecurity and uncertainty that result from growing up in an unloving household.” Our
young women are turning to a life of trying to be so perfectly beautiful that they in turn
become so imperfectly broken inside, encountering severe self-punishment anytime the
slightest mistake is made. From eating disorders to cutting to severe cases of depression
it isn’t so much our families that are in danger, but our young women that are taking the
brunt of this disconnection of human interaction, fighting to find a place where attaining
the completely fabricated image of beauty on paper will give them all the love and
affection and security they never received in life.
Why not live in a world where a man is just as beautiful for coming home at the
end of a hard day and helping to cook and prepare his kids for bed as he is for spending
countless hours in the gym perfecting his lean body? Why not support women that tackle
a job and a family with words of encouragement instead of provoking them to feel
insufficient without the newest anti-wrinkle cream or the most effective detergent? Why
not use our media to encourage family outings, open communication, and an unwavering
support for achieving one’s goals? Because extra time with the family, a child’s hug, a
wife’s loving kiss, aren’t things that can be sold in multiples by a manufacturer, but
rather are unique products of life. Our media has conducted countless research on the
consumer’s mind and realized that there is more money to be made out of feeding our

6. Brooke Hundley
Senior Seminar
insecurities than in rewarding our strengths. So instead of having a country of confident
over-achievers unconcerned with material possessions, we live in a society where one is
constantly trying to fit a mold of perfection, where one never feels as successful,
beautiful, powerful, or just plain happy as those on television who have the newest car or
the clearest skin. Wouldn’t our men rather have women who are confident and proud of
whom they are rather than insecure and needing constant reassurance? Wouldn’t our
women rather have men who are supportive and fun rather than constantly trying to
appear successful and afraid to show emotion? How great would our world be if our
advertisers weren’t rewarded for the rare cases in which they effectively represent
minorities or show a variety of men and women in all shapes and sizes, but were
expected to portray the real make-up of our world in every advertisement?
We may never completely do away with wanting a shiny new car, a cute new
outfit, or even the best smelling cleaning product, but if we could redefine our wants and
put aside our media defined definitions of beautiful, then maybe we could stop to
appreciate the beauty all around us. A state of being described as “the greatest challenge
for the ego and the personality (Cohen).” Perhaps it is difficult and demanding, but
collectively it might also be healthy and encouraging. It’s the simple things in life that
get us through the day, the touch of another, a smile, a laugh; rewards that cannot be
bought or sold, traded or re-gifted. Moments that stay with us, change us, teach us and
reward us. It is these gifts of nature, these simple humanistic qualities that are the true
definitions of beauty. If only our advertisers could find success in selling the beauty
prevalent in each and every one of us rather than a beauty that’s only skin deep.

7. Brooke Hundley
Senior Seminar
Works Cited
Burns, David D. “The Perfectionist’s Script for Self-Defeat.” Psychology Today
(November 1980): 36-52.
Cohen, Andrew. “The Promise of Perfection.” What Is Enlightenment
(Spring/Summer 1998): 21-29.
Gia. Prod. James D. Brubaker, Dir. Michael Cristofer, Perf. Angelina Jolie.
DVD. Citadel Entertainment, 1998.
Mean Girls. Prod. Lorne Michaels, Dir. Mark Waters, Perf. Lindsey Lohan,
Rachel McAdams. DVD. Paramount Pictures, 2004.
Wolf, Naomi. “The Beauty Myth.” Perennial (1991): 58-85.