JAWing On – Life on Okinawa

I was watching a program on the psychology of beauty on CNN today. Joan Rivers was the chosen Queen of “reality” advice. I’ve taken Psych 101 and am familiar with the statistics of the reality of beauty. But, as most people are aware of, humans tend not be ruled only by the encoded behaviors that have been passed down through the generations. True there is a statistically proven attraction to symmetrical images, including those of humans. Also true, at least statistically, those who possess higher symmetries are at an advantage. But to say that a society is doing a disservice by trying to instill a sense of being, I don’t buy that. Every day an untold sum of money is spent on people trying to get “an edge”. Promoting the belief that the outer person is more important than what a person’s behaviors indicate is leading to nothing more than trouble. I’m not a person who follows the tabloids, or any other fad for that matter. Maybe part of the trouble of society in this day is that they are always looking for the immediate payoff. And if everything is about beauty, than why were so many people such big fans of George Burns, Jessica Tandy, and look at Art Linkletter! (The man is 93 and still as astute and entertaining in his observations as he was 40 years ago.) And what about Oprah? Do you really think that she has made it so far by falling back on the typical image of beauty? She’s so popular because she is a smart everyday person that people can connect to without feeling that they have to degrade who they are as person. Let’s face it, the reason many men dislike Jon Bon Jovi is because he is a threat with all his talent and looks. And women like him because he is one of those lucky people who didn’t let that interfere with being a down to earth person. I think to say that people should go under the knife to remain physically attractive to the opposite sex is nothing more than a superficial sellout to the pressures of modern business. Very few of us are lucky enough to have it all, but the key should be how to accentuate the strengths, not annihilate the perceived weaknesses, of each person