“ Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.”-Malcolm S Forbes
I believe you’ve ever watched the ‘fair and lovely’ beauty cream advert. It is about a girl who has everything but fair complexions, fell in love with a hot guy in her college but that guy did not give her a fervent glance. Disappointed with the rejection (and even blame her only inadequacy), another girl from nowhere came to her and gave a bottle of whitening cream which has a magic concoction to make her prettier in a week or so. Later, amazed by brand-new beauty, that good looking guy (or better I call him a douche) hooked up with her and everybody happy. That was how the story more or less.
But I found it misleading. It is like brain-wash propaganda to portray if you yearn to get the world’s attention; you need to be white and beautiful. The guys who turn off looking at you will immediately enticed by your (fake) beauty. Actually, this is a real thing happened in India, as reported on 101 east al-Jazeera. In India, real beauty is proving to be skin deep with a massive growth in the sale of skin-whitening creams. India’s obsession with pale skin has created a billion-dollar industry, with predictions it will grow in 2010 by 25 per cent. Endorsed by top Bollywood stars in TV ads, marketers lure consumers with a bewildering supply of products that promote fair skin that they promote with bring romance or a new job after the user becomes markedly fairer. True story, 2 university graduates applied a same job position. The underperforming one got the job while another, who possessed a first class degree, had to blame herself for not being sufficiently appealing (or white enough).
In the other part of Asia, plastic surgery is a compulsory ritual before entering the job market. It has come to be assumed that the South Korean population has the highest rate of going under the knife in pursuit of beauty, recorded 74 procedures per 10 000 per year in 2009 ( statistic according International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery). Asian people nowadays seem don’t care the undue cultural stereotyping anymore and has been brainwashed to feel inadequate as a person for not meeting society’s expectation of attractiveness.
According to Harold S. Kushner in his book,’ How Good Do We Have To Be?’, people hate their bodies, are ashamed of their bodies, because society has taught them that they are evaluated by their appearance. Their looks define who they are. They must fulfill certain standards of beauty to be envied with green. Nearly most people I met amicably, they will express some sort dissatisfaction of themselves; their height, their skin, their protruding teeth, their hair etc.
Believe it or not, entire industries- fashion, cosmetic, whitening cream, perfume, low-calorie foods, best selling diet books, plastic surgery, weight loss clinic – have been built on the foundation of people’s feeling ashamed of their appearance. The advantages taken from our sense of dearth, our sense of being scrutinized and judged as well as our sense of procuring a glorified beauty. This dark humans feelings are yielding a great deal of money to cunning businessmen who secretly exploit our formidable emotion. In recession-plagued Thailand, even the government has recognized the money-making potential of plastic surgery. One could speculate that if all people especially women in the world were to wake up one morning feeling good about themselves, the global economy could possibly collapse.
No wonder when Susan Boyle became an overnight phenomenon, awakening the hopeless soul, mesmerizing less-than-pretty people by saying,” I want to be like an Elaine Paige” confidently (though incoherent with the cynical audiences), she had received a death threat to undo her move from entertainment career. Probably because some big players are afraid of recession when more and more people to know their own intrinsic beauty.
I am not in a position to talk about beautiful. I am also not beautiful according to society standard. I admit that I don’t meet a requirement of perfect masculinity. Let alone I was once called good-for-nothing. But I want to propagate a sacrosanct message that the beauty counts in your heart rather than outward physical achievements.
“Dan (ingatlah) ketika tuhanmu memaklumkan, “Sesungguhnya jika kamu bersyukur , nescaya Aku akan menambah (nikmat) kepadamu , tetapi jika kamu mengingkari (nikmat ku), maka pasti azab ku sangat berat”
Surah Ibrahim 14:7
Every morning I let myself to know that I am enough, not perfect because perfect never enough. I am still learning to a premise of beautiful heart comes from the purest gratification of who we are, what we get and how we are destined to be.
“katakanlah, “Dialah yang menciptakan mu dan menjadikan pendengaran, pengelihatan dan hati nurani bagi kamu. (Tetapi) sedikit sekali kamu bersyukur.
Surah al-Mulk 67:24
It is hard to mould our own beauty against the cult of artificial gamut of the beauty aspect. Me myself try hard to learn that gratitude is the ‘mother board’ in order to capture many great things in live.
Ibnu Abbas RA menyatakan, Rasulullah S.A.W bersabda, “ Ada 4 perkara, barang siapa diberi empat perkara itu ,bererti dia telah diberi kebaikan dunia dan akhirat, yaitu;
-lisan yang selalu berzikir kepada Allah
-kalbu yang selalu bersyukur kepadaNYA
-tubuh yang sabar dalam menghadapi cubaan
-seorang wanita yang mahu dinikahi bukan lantaran takut celaka atau mengharap hartanya
HR Thabrani
Moral Investment Project 