Perception (What is your idea of perception?)

Source:The New Paper ( Friday, 5 September 2008) without or within beauty

What is your idea of beauty? Inner beauty or external appearance?

This week I came across an article about defining beauty. Basically, this article interview two women who have different views of beauty which one supports on inner beauty and another one supports on external appearance.

For Ms Charmaine Choo, 21, she feels that her external appearance is crucial to her life; she feels that first impressions count the most which is persistence of first impression in communication. To her, she thinks that if you are well-dressed, people will think you have self-discipline which she based on personal construct (psychological). Example that she give for first impression was relationship; she feels that when guys first see you, they don’t care about your character, only your looks which is figure that we focus our attention on. So guys, are it true?

Personally, I feel that we should not base on how the guys looked at us; we should be ourselves and have our own characteristic.
For her, she define beauty is to have silk hair and big eyes with long eye lashes, while I believe the weight/size of the body also count. I believed these selections can be influences by our past experience, environment, social network and mass media. In Ms choo case, her beauty inspirations come from the movies, where she notices what the stars wear and how they are made up and also from people watching at Orchard Road which are all influenced by the environment she lived in and the mass media.

However, some may think inner beauty is more important than physical appearance as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Ms Lim May Ann, 28; who enter a plain photo (which had no make up and her hair was not styled) to a Beauty Redefined photo competition (where the organizers are looking for creative interpretations of beauty, not the “anorexic” sort, as depicted in movies and fashion magazines), claims that the traditional idea of beauty seen in stick-thin models with long, endless leg and nice body like 36C-cup chest and 19-inch waist which are the perception we have for a long time is ridiculous which I think so too. For Ms Lim, beauty is not what is on the surface, it’s what’s within, as what she said, and “There are different types of beauty. Standards of beauty shift through the years, and in this age where modern society is flatulent with excess, being thin is beauty because it is scare.” which are personal constructs (physical), this are also influenced by the social network. For her, children are beautiful because they are always living in the moment and are always enjoying themselves wholeheartedly.


Additionally, the most important message that this article want to rise was the health issues, it was to let Singaporean realize that a healthy, natural body is a beautiful body. In my opinion, I feel that the problem stems from the images presented in the media as young people are being bombarded every day with digitally-altered photographs and advertising that make them feel that being pretty or handsome are the most important things and this lead to sickness like eating disorders, beauty treatments and depression among women because of negative body image. I believed this is the issue we need to concern about nowadays.