When beauty becomes a curse

The time was a long time ago, plastic surgery was not done then, and my ward was simply genetically lucky: she was born like that. And she has always been incredibly good, since early childhood.

At the age of 7-8, her mother took her by the hand to the fashion house on Kuznetsky Most – to demonstrate children’s clothes. The family lived hard, my father drank, and my mother did it for financial reasons – they paid well in the House of Models.

The girl recalled with horror and despair how in winter, on Sundays, when the rest of the children were resting from school, she had to drag herself there through all of Moscow by metro and tram …

How, tell me, is this story fundamentally different from situations familiar to us from classical literature, when a beautiful girl is taken by her mother to the panel? Is that the entourage. Because beauty often turns a person into a commodity.

The girl grew up, now not only merchandisers, in front of whom she walked along the catwalk, but also men paid attention to her. Including the wealthy – who wanted to buy it as a luxury accessory.

Once I dropped that she was very beautiful, and she reacted incredibly painfully to this: “What do you mean very beautiful? Am I the prettiest in the world? And if so, what value does this beauty have? Hell was going on in the soul of the beauty, she was tormented, constantly comparing herself with others.

The mask of beauty knocks down the inner “sight”: it is difficult for a person to understand who he really is. Being a talented person, the girl managed not to get any higher education. For financial reasons, she lived with her parents. Dad drank heavily, they did not communicate.

And, probably, the greatest achievement of our therapy with her was not that she got rid of bulimia and depression, but that she managed to save money, move out from her parents, find a good job. And she took up a career, instead of endlessly suffering about her appearance.

She was one of the first patients in my practice with disturbed eating behavior: she went to a fasting clinic in Karelia, periodically ate one buckwheat or vegetables in order to maintain harmony.

Unfortunately, our therapy was interrupted, and I’m not sure that she was able to finally accept the burden of her beauty. But at some point you have to accept one more thing – your own aging. Beauty is a gift, winning the lottery, but you will surely squander it. This is not a talent that can be saved and increased.

The body as a brand

The modern story about the consumer attitude to beauty or reverent branding of oneself begins with the feeling that “I, the way I am, am not good.” And things do not just perform a practical function, but they report something about me. And the body is a representation of me. Well, if it is toned, athletic, muscular, with hypertrophied signs of sex – silicone breasts, large artificial lips …

Until the 1970s in America, the basic idea of ​​advertising for any product was that the neighbor has something better than you. The neighbor wears a more fashionable coat or the neighbor drives a cooler car. Sales techniques were built on this competition.

When the American world was flooded with jaded people with high purchasing power, advertising stopped working. Then a brilliant marketing strategy appeared, which is still used today and helps to sell any product: medicines, products, cosmetics, cars.

It’s about not being good enough to meet certain standards.

The idea that something is wrong with your body creates great bodily anxiety and a need to achieve the ideal, to be accepted. The result is ever-juvenile statistics on eating disorders and body image.

Why do I need this body?

So what to do? In any incomprehensible situation, one must “go to the base”: remember why the body was originally given to us. It is perfect, the only instrument the brain has to operate in the world.

Remember “Professor Dowell’s Head”? A very revealing story about how dependent even an absolutely brilliant person becomes when his body is taken away from him.

It turns out that we miss the mark all the time: we value the mind as a tool capable of creating, we value beauty for aesthetic appeal, but at the same time we do not respect the tool itself, which is given to us by nature.

It seems to me that it is time to remember: the body was not given to serve the gaze of other people. Bodily “commodity science” does not lead to good.

I lead intuitive eating groups where we talk about body image. There are definitely women who say: “I take care of myself for myself!” And I always have a question: really?

When you start to dig deeper, it turns out: “… so that others like me, so that they would be pleased to look at me.” And she is obliged to observe what, according to everyone, a woman is obliged to do: shave her legs, style her hair, do not take out the trash without makeup.

Demonic or divine

People often reason like this: if I am allowed to eat everything, I will eat sweets from morning to evening and will not be able to go through the door. If I’m allowed not to wash, I won’t. It turns out that the body is a demonic disgusting entity, which just give free rein, and it will get fat, lie on the sofa, not wash and smell bad …

This idea is popular among today’s young people who love presentations. A typical product of selfie culture: “look, here I have beautiful food, and here I am beautiful, but here I am in the gym” …

We know from classical psychiatry that when a person ceases to follow basic hygiene rules, this indicates a mental disorder, an illness. Even in animals, grooming behavior is the first sign of health.

People suffering from schizophrenia stop washing – they are not up to it. People suffering from clinical depression also do not wash – they have no strength. And an ordinary normal person, if the social requirement to be beautiful is removed from him, will not stop washing.

But he will stop working on his appearance under the slogan “others should like me.” And will act in the direction of “I want to please myself.” And it’s nice to take a shower. Brush your teeth too.

Get out from inside out

Beauty standards are a derivative of time, society, economic conditions. We find ourselves in a world of abundance that we don’t know what to do with. And, like children who are bombarded with toys, we get tired of things very quickly and want new ones.

“I can afford a lot of things” is a compulsive attempt to give “I” some special value. But after a few years of abundance, people realize that it adds nothing to the feeling of happiness.

Whether you have one dress or ten, it has little effect on how you feel. What really affects the sense of self is the feeling that you can afford this dress.

So is the value of life – in the end it arises from the ability to create something. What will be left after me? Music or a painting, a school built or a hospital, or something very small. See how carefully some of us cultivate our garden, even though they don’t need to eat from their garden.

The point is to transfer the interest from within to the outside. Following standards ceases to be the meaning of life when I accept my body as it is. It ceases to be the center of the universe when I cease to perceive it as a translator.

And then my energy is released, because the constant excessive concern for the beauty of the body ceases to excite me. I was given a body, I operate on it in the world to make the world a better place. It is what gives meaning to our lives.

I dream of a world where beautiful people are as pleasant to look at as beautiful scenery. In which beauty will not endow people with either superfluous rights or superfluous obligations.

The ancient Greeks understood that beauty at some point becomes a curse and a source of contention – I’m talking about Helen and the Trojan War. Beauty becomes a blessing when we let go of it and get the opportunity to enjoy it as a fact of reality. And when we monetize or try to decide who owns Elena, a war begins.

And when we try to increase the volume of our own beauty in order to increase our significance in the world, the story of damnation begins.