What Makes People Ugly?

Several months ago, I viewed a slide show on MSN that was about a company (I don't remember who) whom had decided to start using real people as models, only they were dubbed "ugly is the new beautiful." I viewed the entire slide show, and the message of "ugly" vs. "beautiful" has stuck with my ever since, and everyonce it a while it rises to the top of my mind and naggs at me.

Nothing about any of the individuals depicted was ugly. More than half were men, several were smiling, and each one was unique, but none were ugly. So why were they labled by the ad company as such?

It's no great secret that the advertisements for various products are the driving force for the definition of "beauty" among American women today. Cosmetics, clothing, cars, hair products, household goods, and jewelry stores are just a few of the industries that flood the market with "beautiful" women, depicting them as the ideal womanly shape. The message is that if women buy their product, we will suddenly be 5 foot 7, with long blonde hair and an ultra lean body, and we'll be over the moon happy all the time.

I know this to be a spurious falsehood, because I've never come out of a department store taller, thinner, with longer hair, and I usually feel tired instead of happy. If I've spent money impuslively, I also feel drained and guilty. So, over the years, I have determined through trial and error that purchasing things doesn't make me beautiful.

What, then, creates this nebulous idea of "beauty?" Am I doomed to "uglyness" because of my genetic makeup, over which I had no control? None of the people in the MSN slideshow had control over their genetic makeup, either, yet they were given the label of "ugly" simply for not looking like the advertiser's ideal.

Life would be a lot easier for advertisers and product producers if everyone was the same. Advertisers and producers alike could find the bottom line that worked and just let the profits role in. Everyone would buy this and that specific product, go to this or that specific restaraunt, live a particular way, look a particular way, act a particular way. Unfortunately, this sameness would probably lead to the extinction of the human race.

Everyone is different because the health of the species depends on it. Genetic diversity is the great key to mammalian sucess (or for that matter, most plant and animal speices on the earth). Have you ever heard the phrase "opposites attract?" It's a genetic truth. People with different genetics often are diven to be attracted to each other, primarily through smell in humans, in order to maximize the genetic diversity of the species.

Each on of us is made unique for a very specific reason. Therefore, it would not be a huge leap to believe that it is the individuality of each person that in fact makes them beautiful. Marketers are scared of this truth, because it would make their jobs harder and their profits would decrease if they have to meet the demands of a heterogeneous population. It is to this end that visual clones are offered as the ideal.

So next time you flip open a magazine and think "I must be ugly because I don't look like this model" stop and think how strong and beautiful being different is. There's no one else in the world who looks like you. You are, literally, one in several billion.