Beauty and the beast: When our obsession with looks gets out of hand

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“At 50, everyone has the face he deserves,” wrote George Orwell. 

Cultural and social forces seem to play a role – including social media platforms which spread beauty ideals, and filters and apps like Facetune, which can digitally modify appearances. These edited and filtered pictures create an alternative reality, and along with it, unrealistic expectations about how people should look and what can anatomically be done by plastic surgeons.

To be sure, beauty is a form of power – the power to attract a partner, the power to kick-start a career, and the power to propel one up the social ladder. 

South Korea holds the record for the highest ratio of cosmetic procedures per capita in the world (parents gift their children cosmetic surgery when they graduate from high school).

The Korean wave of pop culture (called hallyu) has promulgated a beauty ideal that is embraced by both sexes within and beyond Korea, and many are resorting to cosmetic surgery to achieve that elfin, anime-like look of their K-pop idols.

The other side of this pretty privilege is lookism, which is a form of bigotry with its prejudice and discrimination against the unattractive.

The reality is that most people are not beautiful, and physical beauty that is endowed by nature is something that we can’t control. Discriminating against people for something they cannot control (like race and gender) is patently wrong.

Qn: To what extent are people judged more by their physical appearance than by their abilities? (Cam. 2017)