Our Toxic Obsession With ‘Perfect Beauty’

“She’s so beautiful”… “You are so beautiful”… “Beautiful People”… “Drop Dead Beautiful”…“Beautiful Girl”… “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World”…

These song titles or lyrics come mainly from a webpage titled “100 Best Songs with ‘Beautiful’ in the Title.” While a few of these songs are sarcastic or angry, the vast majority are sincere. That is, they take our obsession with physical beauty seriously and sometimes appear to worship it.

The subject of America’s obsession with beauty is one I’ve frequently discussed with my wise, attractive (but not beauty-obsessed) wife. When we watch TV, we’re often struck by the huge amount of shaming advertising directed at women — especially young women and aging older women.

If the ads are to be believed (which they shouldn’t be), American women must do everything possible to fix, improve, or even completely remake their appearance — constantly — if they want to be accepted and loved.

Decades ago, this American ‘beauty trap’ was focused only on women — but over the last 20 years or so, the same destructive standards have been applied to men, so now we’re seeing many ‘beauty’ ads targeting men as well.

These impossible, ridiculous standards are psychologically and emotionally toxic. That alone is bad enough — but these standards also reveal something deeply wrong and destructive at the very heart of our culture.

It’s this deeper ‘wrongness’ that I want to examine today.

Our inner state of ‘separateness’

Many writers and thinkers have noted the shallowness of American culture and the intense vanity it encourages. Others complain about the ‘commercialization’ of our lives, while still others (including me) indict the entire capitalist system.

But to me, all of these issues or problems are surface symptoms of a much deeper malaise and sickness. To get to the root issue(s) here, it’s helpful to start with a question: WHY are we so heavily focused on external appearances and so perfectionist about ‘beauty’?

If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us would (grudgingly) admit that we focus exclusively on ‘improving’ our external world — including our own appearance — because we don’t have a satisfying connection with our internal world… or the internal world of other people either.

Overall, we’re disconnected from nature, disconnected from others, and ‘stuck’ in an isolating, empty lifestyle we convince ourselves is ‘real life.’

This leaves us stranded in a painful state of ‘separateness.’ Then, to regain a sense of connection, we desperately seek love and intimacy. But for many of us, the sense of separateness and isolation is just too ingrained — so even IN a love relationship, or even during a ‘hot romance,’ we often end up still feeling empty and dissatisfied.

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Of course, such feelings are very unpleasant, verging on intolerable — so what do we usually do? We try to erase them or cover them up. We shift our focus to the outer world and try (and try, and try) to change or ‘improve’ that realm — whether it’s a new relationship, a new car, new lips, a new butt, or a new face.

That is, we keep trying — endlessly — to manipulate and mold the outer world to fit our ‘preferred reality,’ believing this will finally make us happy. But sadly, it doesn’t — ever. Or not for long.

Thus, we wind up on an endless, loveless treadmill to nowhere, like a hamster running on its little metal wheel. We end up trapped in outer appearances, and even less likely to reach — or reach for — deep inner fulfillment.

And this is exactly the way advertisers like it.

‘Improving’ the outer world of our bodies does NOT make us happy

When I say ‘this is the way advertisers like it,’ I’m referring to the known fact that consumerism and advertising depend totally on people NOT being happy or fulfilled. We’re always promised happiness and fulfillment — IF we will just buy the advertised product(s)— but it never works for long, which keeps us ‘stuck’ on the hamster wheel of consumerism.

The underlying psychological mechanism here is what concerns me most. I call it ‘the substitution syndrome,’ and it operates strongly both within us and in the social world around us.

As noted, most of us feel disconnected or ‘separate’ from both our own inner selves and the people around us. We can even say that most of us feel quite separate from nature and ‘God’/the ‘Great Spirit’ as well.

Thus, we’re mired in a scary, unsatisfying state of separateness and discontent — and feel/believe there MUST be some ‘way out,’ some way to feel better and more whole and alive.

Yet we’re out of touch with our inner selves and also the inner selves of others, so all we have to work with, in a sense, is our outer reality: the material world of appearances.

Thus, we end up focusing all our energy and willpower on changing and ‘improving’ this outer world — including our faces and bodies. (Enter… advertising.)

But the huge problem here is: all these outer changes and ‘improvements’ never ‘do it for us’ for long, simply because we’re not dealing with or healing our sense of separateness.

Instead, we keep substituting boatloads of ‘efforting,’ self-manipulation, and outer changes for the much-needed inner connection and real intimacy we crave.

Sadly, and unconscionably, our consumer-driven economy and advertising ‘need us needy’ and unfulfilled — since needy, unfulfilled people are perfect ‘marks’ and can be easily manipulated into buying more and ‘better’ products.

The unhappier we are, the more easily we succumb to the endless promises pushed by advertising.

It really is that simple.

The toxic imperfections of perfectionism

There’s one more important piece to our ‘beauty obsession’: perfectionism.

Once again, if we’re NOT in touch with our deeper selves or deeply in touch with other people, we end up facing a dreadful sense of aloneness — which must be alleviated at any cost. And once again, we’re driven to utilize the ‘substitution syndrome’ to TRY to get what we want and ‘need’ — which, in this case, is peoples’ admiration, approval, and love.

And lo, a ‘perfect’ solution beckons. What could be better for getting and keeping others’ love and approval (we imagine) than making ourselves perfect?

‘If I’m totally perfect,’ our thinking goes, ‘THEN people will see my wonderful perfection — and will be attracted to me and love me.’

There are just two teensy (no, huge) problems with perfectionism. One is that perfection is an unrealistic fever dream, and pursuing it can only lead to utter frustration, self-loathing (for failing to achieve perfection), and ever more intense ‘trying to be perfect.’

We see this problem throughout our society, these days, especially since the rise and dominance of social media sites where teens and even children constantly compare themselves to ‘more perfect’ (and thus more ‘lovable’) others — often with dire emotional results including intense anxiety, deep depression, and even suicide.

The other major problem with perfectionism is that it again — like almost everything in our culture — turns us away from our inner selves and from deep (yet ‘imperfect’) connections with others. It encourages intense vanity and narcissism and makes us ever more ‘self-conscious’ — even self-obsessed. Perfectionism is rightly viewed as an ‘obsession’ because it can eclipse everything else and often turns into an all-consuming, frantic race to ‘get perfect.’

Plus, perfectionists are constantly faced with the crushing reality that, no matter how hard they work to be ‘perfect,’ they are still not loved or approved of in all the glorious ways they imagined(!).

This seeming ‘failure’ then creates — and keeps creating — the dreadful inward condition and emotional pain that keep us running on that endless treadmill, always looking for some new and ‘better’ way to improve ourselves and be ‘worthy’ of love.

It’s utterly maddening, in both senses of the word: it’s infuriating, and it drives us deeply, miserably crazy.

Finding the true meaning of ‘beauty’

Here’s what I’ve concluded: there is no ‘perfect beauty’ — and even if there was, we’d all still be unable to attain it… and even if we attained it, we still wouldn’t be satisfied because we’d still never get all the love and approval we think we ‘deserve’ after all that effort!

Ultimately, the ‘substitution syndrome’ simply doesn’t work, since it never makes us happy for long. Yet, as long as we’re so out of touch with our inner selves, nature, and other people, this kind of perverse substitution is all we know how to do. It truly traps us on an endless, loveless treadmill of unfulfilled needs and emotional longings — and all the tummy tucks, facelifts, lip or butt plumping, ‘wrinkle repair,’ and ‘six-pack’ abs won’t and can’t save us.

And there’s something else worth noting: sometimes the end results of our frantic ‘beautification’ efforts look weird, grotesque, clownish, or all three. Additionally, and importantly, these now-common ‘beautifying’ operations or routines have sometimes — fairly often, in fact — maimed people for life or even killed them.

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You know the old saying ‘True beauty lies within’? In our increasingly toxic, beauty-obsessed culture, we’d all do well to remember that — and find ways to actually experience it, deep in our souls.

The truth is, our souls are crying out for deep reconnection with life: with nature, other people, and also ourselves. But our obsession with outward ‘beauty’ keeps driving us in the opposite direction.

Our souls are calling to us. It’s high time we finally listen.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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