Beauty - A Social Construct?

Explore what beauty is in the modern world with Divya Robinson.

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What is beauty? It is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “a combination of qualities, such as shape, colour, or form that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight.” In today’s world, this has become the unfortunate truth. Some might believe that beauty is dependent on one’s soul, one’s mind, or one’s other inner traits and yet, quite a few of them, on seeing a typically “beautiful” person would call them so, despite knowing barely a thing about them.

As a society, we have come to think of “beauty” as thin waists, low weight, clear skin, perfect hair and so many other superficial characteristics. There’s truly nothing wrong with calling someone beautiful, the problem lies when beauty is conditional. When we start to define beauty with a certain set of physical traits and decide that that is how everyone should be. Beauty isn’t a bad thing, unless people consider it to be the rent you have to pay to live in this world.

Now, while beauty has inspired writers, poets, artists, designers and so many more over the course of these years to create, to dare and to inspire others, this social construct is also one of the main reasons for eating disorders like bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa and binge eating disorder.

Although boys too have body image concerns, more than 90% of people with eating disorders are girls. At any given time, one out of every seven women has or is struggling with an eating disorder. One study a few years ago found that 36% of adolescent girls believed they were overweight, while 59% were trying to lose weight.

An eating disorder is an illness that leads people to overeat, starve themselves, or adopt other unhealthy behaviours surrounding food and body weight. These disorders are not simply bad habits, they interfere with daily life and without proper treatment they can cause serious health problems.

A teen with anorexia refuses to stay at a normal body weight. Someone with bulimia has repeated episodes of binge eating followed by compulsive behaviours such as vomiting or the use of laxatives to rid the body of food. Binge eating is characterized by uncontrolled overeating.

Symptoms of binge eating disorder include feeling out of control when overeating and eating more quickly than usual during a binge. One might eat until one is painfully full, or binge even though one isn’t hungry. Binge eating and then purging, taking laxatives or exercising excessively are symptoms seen in people with bulimia.

People with anorexia go to great lengths to lose weight. Besides eating too little food, they may compulsively exercise; or take diet pills. Essentially, a feature of this disorder is obsessive compulsion about their eating patterns. People may eat very little, but think about food constantly. They may portion their food carefully, eat very small amounts of restricted foods, count calories, or weigh food before eating it. People with this illness may simply move food around the plate without actually eating anything. Though people with anorexia

may be dangerously thin, they still see themselves as fat. They are often extremely critical of themselves. Anorexia may in part develop out of perfectionism when the drive to achieve a "perfect" body spirals out of control.

There are several ways of treating these various eating disorders but quite often, adolescents going through these illnesses do not reach out and thus, do not receive the right kind of help. Instead of trying to figure out a way to get all these teens to let the ones around them know what they are going through, we can try to control a major cause for this – the idea of a “perfect” body.

So many magazines use Photoshop to get rid of that slight bulge in the arms or the stomach and to make the whole body look toned and “perfect.” Most models are thin with small waists and toned stomachs and low weight. Boys are said to look “good” or “handsome” when they are well built, have a six pack or have an athletic structure. A change in how we, as a society, view the construct of “beauty” is extremely necessary and can only be taken as an individual step.

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” and this is just the kind of change that has to be brought on the smallest scale for it to be accepted on a larger one.

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Written By Divya Robinson, Edited By Nandini Nalam