Placing to much emphasis on physical attractiveness can cause some problems.

Overemphasis on Physical Attractiveness can be harmfulIn today's society a lot of emphasis is placed on physical attractiveness. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be attractive, but how we achieve this goal can cause some problems. Recently a 12 year old male shot and killed a classmate and then turned the gun on himself after being teased about his obesity. Being overweight is seen as an undesirable trait in our society. In addition to this problem, people who are not young and attractive are often ostracized to some degree. Elderly folk are affected also in some ways because of losing some of their attractive qualities and sometimes feel left out or shunned by others. Problems have occurred not only for the elderly and obese, who are getting the negative feedback, but this mindset affects young people, particularly the young females in today's society. Trying to stay thin and keep from growing old is a goal of many young people.Today we will examine the young female, who has become overly concerned with her weight. This person has many times become so concerned with this area that she has a distorted view of her own physical image. She has actually become ill. She at times exhibits the following characteristics: 1) intense fear of obesity2) disturbance of body image and weight loss of at least 15 % of body weight with no known physical illiness that could adequately explain the weight loss.This condition usually affects the adolescent girl in some serious ways. This person actually begins to eat less and feesl she is still overeating. Each time she examines herself in the mirror, the image is not mirrored. She sees herself fatter. She may talk a great deal about food, spend a significant amount of time preparing food for others and yet be extremely compulsive about her own diet. The diagnosis for this person is Anorexia Nevosa. The death rate for anorexics is 3 to 25 %.This problem knows no certain social class. I am reminded of Karen Carpenter, the rich, famous, extremely talented young popsinger, who died from a heart attack, which we were told was brought on by anorexia nervosa. One bit of interesting information concerning this illiness points out that this eating disorder is related to societal affluence. For example, in countries where food is scare, most persons do not have the luxury of overeating to the point of obesity or gaining attention through refusing to eat. These people, who literally starve themselves to death, often require hospitalization for psychiatric and medical treatment in order to get their weight back to the normal level. This distortion of their self image is not altogether their fault.Mass media shares some of the blame. Television has placed a huge emphasis on thin, beautiful females, displayed in all kindgs of commericals from soft drinks to automobiles. Throughout our society, this is reinforced over and over again. Newspapers, magazines, and all sorts of brochures seem to accent this image.However, there is a cost inovled in accenting this imagne. This lifestyle has a profound effect on those young, immature, impressionable minds. This way of life is sold to our teenagers and leaves them with the impression that they are not worthwhile unless they are thin and beautiful. Emphasis needs to be placed or redirected on things that are really important. We all will loose our beauty in a few years. It is ever so fleeting. More accent needs to be made in developing our minds and having good relationships and loving and caring about people. We need to develop from the inside out.Everyone needs to realize that we all reach the point in life where attractiveness fades into yesterday regardless of what phsyical beauty we have had. A song by Johnny Cash from the 60s entitled the Caretaker symbolizes quite well our lost youth. One line in the song states, "Once I was a young man, dashing with the girls, Now I'm just an old man, I've lost my handsome curls."Well, we eventually lose some of our attractive physical qualities, but we can still be beautiful people on the inside. I feel that we should make every attempt to be well rounded in our total development as a person, and if we do this, having to feel that we must be thin and beautiful will somehow become less important and we will be much happier.