At the moment I am annoyed by beautiful people

As I am sitting here and watching the Academy Awards, I cannot help but think about something that was mentioned in the show "the human face" that I watched on PBS a few years back and saw a bit of it again this week. They were talking about beauty and the golden triangle and one very interesting fact was mentioned. It used to be that when we had relative small and constant social circles around us and no mass media, there would be few 'perfect' people - in the sense of beauty - that we ever would encounter. But with movies, television, magazines and other mass media, beautiful faces surround us everywhere. The problem is that this becomes a norm, a norm that normal people can actually not reach and therefore is rather absurd. This leads to most people feeling inadequate and people go to great length to try to be more beautiful, well at least on the outside. I am very happy that my children so far do not seem to waste even on tiny thought on this, even though there are a lot of children around them who think fashion and fame are very important topics.

I have made a very conscious effort to never show my children any kind of unhappiness that I feel in respect to whatever shortcoming is feel I have regarding my looks. I was raised with a mother that was always dieting, always wanted me to do the same and was who was successfully instilling in me the conviction of being ugly. It was very important to not do this to my children. Of course there is nothing wrong with beauty, beauty is beautiful, what can I say, but when did it become a virtue, something that we need to reward and aspire to? Why is it a value placed about things like integrity, intelligence or creativity? I am actually getting to the point where the multitude of beautiful people is getting annoying. I simply cannot stand the fuss about models, the pretty faces trying to sell you beauty products, the huge interest in what these beautiful people are up to. Why is this so important? I think this is one of the reasons I am so drawn to british television shows, which seem so wonderfully normal and real. Interestingly, while I watch the Academy Awards, it seems that all the people behind the camera just look like very normal people as well, I like that. Well, gotta go back to the show and see how many Oscars 'Slumdog Millionaire' can sweep. What a wonderful movie!