“Back in my day…”- the stereotypical grandfather speech. Everyone has heard some version or another of it; but if you think about those stories of how the times have changed, it is actually very interesting. We are making history as we go along; every action we make changes our world. For example, slavery has been outlawed, everything is racially integrated, women can vote, dwarves have their own TV show, the list goes on an on.

Society changes every day, and those little changes add up to big ones over time. Throughout the past 50 years, our society has morphed into one that focuses on beauty first, everything else second. In fact, looking good is often a theme on popular television shows, in movies and it has become the prime focus of thousands of magazines worldwide. The world wants to look beautiful.

Advertisers show off their “age-defying” products. Every other day, there is a new commercial for some type of wrinkle-shedding lotion or age-defying cream. People want to looking younger, otherwise these products would have no market and would have disapeared long ago. Age no longer means wisdom; age means getting older and uglier. People now feel that when they get older, they are slipping out of the mainstream- they don’t look like they did before, and therefore can no longer do things they used to be able to. We feel that we can mask our weaknesses internally by fixing the external ones and this is simply not true.

Weight-loss is an extremely common one. Every night, I see ads boasting “Extremely Fast Weight Loss” or “Premium Hoodia Formula”. Where are people pulling this crap from? Extremely fast weight loss is so dangerous and destructive to the human body… and Hoodia, where did that come from? Of course, the advertisers are catering to a specific market… people that feel they are not up to standards, people that aren’t satisfied with the way they look because society says they don’t look right.

This is especially common for girls… magazines showcase their seemingly perfect models, dressed in skin-tight clothing so you can see their ribs, faces unblemeshed, even, tan. This is what the media says girls should be; but, simply put, this is impossible. Magazines airbrush their models before the photoshoots and after the photoshoots (digitally) and custom make the clothing. Models starve themselves to the point where their health becomes compromised. These images are pressed onto the public day after day, trends are set, and soon, 14 year-old girls who are already underweight are dieting.

Although not limited to girls, it is much less common for boys to feel pressured to look “right.” Guys are emotionally less open and hardshelled. Models are commonly referred to as “Pretty Boys” because of the lengths they go to to look good. Boys and men, however, are pressured in a different sense. Boys attract the opposite (or same) gender by having desireable qualities (other than beauty), such as muscles. Sans some, most boys have worked out or tried to work out to get muscles that look like those of athletes. Of course, some succeed, but others just don’t have luck.

When a boy does try to look good, it is often seen in a negative sense. He is seen as unmanly or girlish. Guys who do their hair, or wear slick clothes, or who even seem to do something like take care of their skin, are stereotyped as gay. They must be gay because they care about what their hair looks like, or they aren’t wearing athletic shorts and a t-shirt. This is the opposite of with girls.

Clothes stores such as Abercrombie and Fitch or American Eagle exist for the teenage demographic. They style their clothes to what they think looks good and teenagers agree with these styles. Stores like these then become popular and have a wide fanbase while other, less hip stores slowly sink in business. They can then raise their prices because people have nowhere else to go for such great clothes, and soon, they control what people where by what they say looks good.

But is all this bad?

With all the influence people have pushed against them, freewill has shrunk. There will always be those people who just don’t care, and I salute them because they represent a dying breed. People are living longer today than they ever have before, and this creates those opportunities for those anti-aging products. Food is becoming “faster” and more unhealthy, creating space for those weight-loss products on the shelves. We have created the world we live in. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and acting on these reactions causes society to move forward–it creates evolution of the human species. So can it all be bad? Well that is a hard question to answer. The human race has come a long way, and 50 years isn’t a long time to be looking at, so who knows what the future has in store for us, or what we have in store for the future. Taking a step back from it all, I have to say that losing weight or looking younger isn’t bad, it’s just a fad* and fads pass.

Note:Although I would like to say that I am one of those people who don’t conform to society, I would be lying if I told you that. Yes, I care what I look like. I’m not about to use anti-age cream or lose lots of weight, but I pay attention to what I wear, and I make sure I look good before I walk out into the world. Society is a harsh place that judges you every second you are a part of it, and I don’t want to be judged badly. So call me a conformist, and you’d be right, because sometimes thats what it takes to get the job done.

*Back during WWII, it was considered good to be heavy because it meant that your family had money- interesting?