If there's one similarity between contemporary society and Victorian England, it's the obnoxious nature of conventional beauty standards. It's almost horrifying to think that 'combat boots' are being popularized as an everyday luxury instead of mourned and hidden away in shame like after the Great War. The same way, those ostentatious dresses and corsets of the 19th century nobles only mocked further the poverty and destitution of annexed countries during the age of English imperialism. Perhaps my complaints regarding these trends seem trivial. Times have changed; despair fades into a new innocence as generations come and go. But what hasn't changed is the falsity of beauty associated with such trends, and the way they try and largely fail to compensate for personal insecurities and inadequacies. There is no better book to exemplify this than Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray--one of my favorites. Across the time periods, people have been using external aesthetic as a means of covering up inner faults, and it would do them well to recognize that the pinnacle of beauty--Beauty--can only be found from inward.
I know what you're thinking: Hey, that's great and all, but I'm pretty sure you shouldn't capitalize improper nouns. (I get this comment quite a bit, actually. I usually respond: Ah. If only you knew Emily Dickinson.) But when I refer to Beauty, I mean the ultimate apotheosis of inner life; the feeling of reconciliation with oneself or a higher power that represents the ultimate unity of all. It comes only with an acceptance of the good and bad of Life in its totality; the resultant emergence of infinite compassion and wisdom is Beauty. I am reminded of the Buddhist image of the Bodhisattva, a mythic figure who sacrifices nirvana in favor of permeating all life with compassion--dripping ambrosia into the depths of Hell, as it is commonly portrayed. Such is Beauty. It's part of the same God-like, transcendent force that captures Love and Courage and the other "verities and truths of the heart."*
But most folks get caught up in appearances, which is somewhat to be expected. It's partly the fault of society for placing so much emphasis on menial trends and corrupting young people to believe that they are not worth anything more than their looks. As it is of the hardest things in the world to break away from the sheltering of society, many are willingly subjected to this harshness because they feel there is no other option. They, not unlike the title character in The Picture of Dorian Gray, want only to be beautiful. They do not choose to see past the surface, towards the inevitability of life and death and the authenticity of the heart and the breathtaking nature of Life in its integrity, no matter how cruel. They conform because they are afraid to be alone, but just like Dorian, they find that conformity isn't ever enough. No matter how much he tries to indulge in the everyday temptations of his life, he finds himself unable to feel in the way that "Sibyl Vane has killed herself for love of you." There is no such tragedy in Dorian's life, nor joy nor pity nor compassion--there is only indifference and temporal pleasure. By the end of the novel, he still does not understand true Beauty. He attempts to destroy the portrait, the "conscience" that kept him awake at night and "marred many moments of joy." However, in destroying his own ethical system in favor of temporary indulgence, he kills himself. There is no one side without the other. In repudiating his inner ethics for external beauty, he destroys all his hope of attaining compassion and wisdom and fulfillment, despite the wrinkle lines that would appear on his forehead. He never learns of Beauty.
Likewise, there are many in the world who remain unsatisfied with their lives because they expect the temporal pleasure of aesthetic beauty to satiate them. I, too, have subjected myself to the idealism of thinking "if only I were two inches taller--if only I received a 90 instead of an 85--if only I were [something]...then that would be enough." It's all false. True contentment can never be defined by quantitative measures--true contentment is the eternity found in between moments of cruel, restrictive time. Real Beauty is only attained through this eternity, this acceptance that all is as it should be, despite the sorrow and despair and transience. It has nothing to do with appearance, but how appearance is perceived. To think that anything other than reconciliation with the verities of the heart could lead to contentment is idealistic at best, and a tragedy Western society as a whole.
*"He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice." -William Faulkner, Nobel Prize Speech. I wholeheartedly recommend that you read the whole thing. It's breathtaking.
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