|
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Visuality
Once upon a time, a very beautiful and kind-hearted girl named Cinderella lived with her stepmother and two ugly stepsisters. They were jealous of Cinderella's beauty and mistreated her badly, making her do all the housework in the house in a bid to make her ugly. One day, the prince discovered the beautiful Cinderella and fell in love with her and brought her to his palace to live happily ever after. The two ugly stepsisters got nothing in the end as they were jealous and mean to Cinderella.
-----------------
I was just thinking about the general superficiality of humans whilst i had my first tutorial in social work today--we were sposed to be analysing our group members on whether they are visual, kinesthetic or auditory people. To put it in layman's terms, we were sposed to analyse if these people are mostly inclined towards the physical images in looking at things and people, or rely more on physical actions and sensations, or rely on the tone and nuances in a person's speech. As my group was discussing and analysing this, we started debating on the topic that actually humans are mostly visual, whether they admit it or not. People are always more inclined to beautiful things and people. We find pleasure in the company of good-looking people, and in a room of unknown strangers, our eyes would tend to roam, seeking out the people most pleasing to our eyes, usually suave, or cute and pretty, or who we claim to be charismatic people. I remember in a Literature feminism course I had taken before, my lecturer pointed this out to us before, using the examples of fairytales to illustrate this point. In fairytales, the beautiful princess always get the happy ending whereas the ugly and jealous stepsisters, stepmother or witch get bad endings, and the lecturer pointed out to us that the mean-hearted people are usually the ugly ones, despite their resourcefulness and hard work to try to earn their rewards. It appears that the classic exemplary female must appear to be weak and helpless, and wait for their prince to rescue them, whilst resourcefulness in a female is deemed to be bad and to be punished. A woman should never appear more resourceful than a man, else she is deemed to be ugly and mean-hearted.
My point here is, no matter at what stage of our life, we may claim to have grown up, and that beauty is skin-deep and all, but really how true is that? Why are there still reports and articles of distressed people who poured their feelings of frustration over their inability to get jobs because they are told outright that they are overweight, not pretty enough, etc? and the worst is, females usually had it harder. it is almost as if females are bound to suffer under the curse of having to be pretty or face a relentless unforgiving soc'y. Why else would females always have to be the ones upkeeping their physical images under the fairy-princess stereotype? Even in the classic tale of Hunchback of Notre-Dame, the ugly hunchback received pity from the beautiful gypsy, Esmerelda, but since when have you seen pity being shown to witches and stepsisters in Cinderella and Snow White..
Even as we were doing the analysis today, i was watching me group members, and realise that the guys tend to gravitate towards a very spunky-and-pretty-enough girl in my group, hanging on to what she says ( and i must say she has some very interesting experiences) and asking her questions, even hanging on to talk to her after class. And then later on, when I was walking with this girl and her friend, we started talking about who is the cutest guy in the tutorial class. hmmm. even in my previous job experiences, I remember a guy colleague who told me very honestly that no matter what a guy says, he would always be a physical and visual creature. If he tells you that an okay-looking or ugly girl is not ugly, or not bad, he is lying to you or pretending to be nice. I was thinking what a jerk statement was that at that point in time, but in time, through more observations, i start to realise the truth in such a statement. Even a girl who we anaylsed to be visual today told me very honestly that she is indeed a visual person, and she does care if her other half is cute or not. There is nothing to be blamed in these 2 people, because as time goes by, i start to realise that they are just being more honest than the ordinary crowd in pointing this universal fact out.
i remember how in the past, when I went on crash diets, intensive exercise programs and pills in a bid to get the ideal slim figure, how my friends got angry and worried for me. there were a couple who understood why I did what i did, but many were worried for my health, and indeed I was very touched and chastised by their concern and in time, when my body started to suffer the after-effects of my mistreatment of it, i started to realise and appreciate why my friends were so worried, and try to love myself more, and yet, there is still that innate desire in me to want to get just that bit slimmer, to look nice for once and to be able to buy and wear pretty clothes that I never was able to wear before.
i know now how the world is trying to do away with the image of "Twiggy"-ness, the ideal stick-thin model of girls and trying to celebrate the lush curves of a female. But unless you have the out-of-the-world, spunky and cute attitude of Bridget Jones, Samsoon or Oprah, how are you gonna be able to fit into the world? and the above mentioned people werent even all that fat. Yeah, they looked abit plump, but they dun really have tummies that were sticking out or super flabby bye-bye arms or elephant thighs. If you are a pimply, obese, quiet and weird gal, can u find a place in this society, no matter how much God loves u? I remembered related incidents of how ugly fat or who the-whole-school/class-deems-to-be-weird kids are always the subject of taunting and bullying... and how the belle of the class always received much attention and presents jus cos she's pretty. thats as blatant as visuality can go i guess. Even when our ways in showing this become more refined as we grow up, the underlying msg still exists.
And even if the average nice guy says he dun mind a girl who dun look pretty enough, the girl still has to fall under the slim, fragile, needs-to-be-protected, sweet-looking classic female category even if she is a plain jane. Ok maybe I am really being cynical, but it's because I really haven't met s1 who told me he actually likes lush curves on a female.
I am starting to sound indignant i think, when i shun be. Actually i dun deny that I fall under this category myself. Why would I always being toking about eye candy eh? there is no such thing as eye shit rite? sighz... maybe I should just ponder more on this and read up more on this phenomenon.. why are humans born physical creatures? then I'll have a better take on this.
Shu Ling Estrella @ 9:24 PM ~*~ |
**~~**~*~*~~*~*~~*~*~*~**~~*~*~*~*~~**~~**
|
|
|
