Posted: February 17th, 2022

Beauty and Other Deep Superficial Desires

In our prosperous society, we will be mentioned to have all the pieces: our work isn’t backbreaking. The truth is, working situations are good, and many people attempt to do good work. Expertise has superior to date that we live longer and higher lives. Now we have come to deal with many social ills, resembling poverty and social types of oppression, like racism. However greater than ever, we Individuals appear extra and extra sad and unhappy.

What accounts for the disparity between the relative consolation and affluence of our lives, and the inversely proportional pleasure we absorb residing our lives?

In his essay “The Progress of Paradox,” Greg Easterbrook argues common discontent and alienation in our tradition as we speak come to us as a result of our lives are crammed with decisions (a glut of decisions) however have little that means. Easterbrook appears to undertake a view of human beings as naturally pessimistic (if left to their very own gadgets), and urges Individuals to be extra optimistic and to return to searching for extra transcendent experiences which might be at present supplied by the cornucopia of intercourse and violence that passes for American tradition.
Easterbrook is a self-avowed Christian, so speak of pursuing transcendence is code for spiritual religion, however could also be forgiven this given the work that he places into making his arguments by means of proof. Simply because, as he places it, tens of millions of Individuals can afford to spend some huge cash on vainness induced cosmetic surgery, resembling “the navel touch-up” (Easterbrook, 402) doesn’t imply that that is how our assets ought to or may greatest be spent.
We must always as an alternative end up appreciable assets and wealth to making an attempt to make a distinction on the planet of the much less advantaged peoples of the world; this is likely to be price whereas and extra fulfilling than the alternatives we appear to be making as an alternative. The place Easterbrook interprets the rise of elective cosmetic surgery as a superficial and meaningless exercise, an indication of our devolution into decadence, Naomi Wolf, however, sees the wonder trade’s practices as filled with that means.
For a lady who considers getting cosmetic surgery, the Question Assignment isn’t a superficial or vacuous one. She writes: “The wonder fantasy is all the time really prescribing conduct and not look” (Wolf, 489). Beauty is rarely pores and skin deep; that’s, one cause why a girl would possibly wish to be lovely is as a result of her exterior look is taken to be an indication of her price and of her inside personhood. A stupendous lady is considered a superb lady, one who’s disciplined and whose life is in proportion.
That is evidenced in work that’s executed with ladies (and more and more extra and extra males) who are suffering from consuming issues. These people report that, for then, their consuming issues are about management, about displaying the world that they’ve nice self-discipline and are inherently good, disciplined, and virtuous within the significantly American protestant work ethic (See Bordo under, whom I learn for one more class).
The place Easterbrook fails to see beneath the floor of the cosmetic surgery craze, Naomi wolf reveals us that it’s behaviors which might be the intention, not merely look. The gendered Assessment is vital as a result of we are able to start to Question Assignment why it’s ladies’s preoccupation with picture that’s taken because the chief instance of frivolous vacuity, when absolutely males’s funding is the pornography trade will be learn as a way more morally objectionable follow.
In any case, all of those practices will be taken collectively and learn as indicators, as symbols by which tradition communicates a code of acceptability to its members. In line with widespread semiotics professor and cultural critic Jack Solomon: “America is a nation of fantasizers, usually preferring the signal to the substance and simply enthralled by a veritable Fantasy Island of business illusions” (Solomon, 413). What Solomon describes is an America nearer to that imagined by Easterbrook, however minus the normativity.
That’s, Solomon sees that means in each little signal or image in tradition. Both all is floor play of that means with out depth, or all these indicators level to a depth past the instantly obvious. In line with this viewpoint, the issue of our tradition isn’t that we’ve got misplaced contact with some transcendent being (learn: God), however that we choose to not be on communion with something grander than a pair of Ferragamo footwear or a Ferrari automotive. We love our standing symbols and our wealth, and the dazzling show satisfies us, if just for a short time.
We’re a nation of dreamers and we’ll imagine on this dream of prosperity for so long as we probably can. Bibliography Bordo, Susan. (2004) “Studying the slender physique. ” Insufferable Weight. Berkeley and Los Angeles: College of California Press. Easterbrook, Greg. (2003) The Progress Paradox. New York: Random Home. Solomon, Jack. (1990) The Signal Of Our Instances. New York: HarperCollins. Wolf, Naomi. (2002) The Beauty Delusion. New York: Harper Perennial.

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