Beauty OR the Beast

Beauty is a many faceted thing...Sometimes I think beauty is a two sided coin, a two headed snake. Beautiful people seem to have it all; the eyes and heart of the opposite sex, salespeople rushing to your every need, always getting the extra half inch of everything. Why? Simply because they are beautiful-a slice of heaven, a flagrant display rather haughty even with well meaning intentions. Beauty invades the space and makes people sit up and notice. It is an ephemeral thing winking its multi faceted eyes at you on 4 inch built in stilettos.

What with today's gluttonous consumerism glorifying physical beauty which has become an enigma, a much sought after quality that gives you the edge in the endless human rat race towards getting the most of everything. TV adds prostitute beauty in bottles of Chanel perfume and "Get at the nearest store" denim "cut to flatter figure and bring out its beauty". Some of this inane hogwash even cross into hypocritical territory by claiming that Beauty is what comes within whilst turning to the next page, the fantabulous flotsam ends by implying raw beauty, the inner beauty is available at every woman's fingertips as long as she buys their product, which they claim is NOT a product but an extension of oneself, how one portrays oneself to the whole world- would you run away from the stage when a smooth as peanut butter performance is being promised you, handed over on a velvet cushion by uniformed servants?

Sometimes I think of beautiful people, those famous flawless stars from Hollywood and even the pretty girl next door that escapes a speeding ticket merely by blinking those heavy batted lashes throwing the unsuspecting officer off guard, causing the brain to fire a thousand neurons giving stupendous excuses for letting "the poor lass" off...You get my point. "Friends" suck up to beautiful people hanging around them like bees to honey because they get to grovel in the reflection of perfection, it rubs off some well worn glitter on them who could never look at a mirror without spotting a flaw. To such hangers-on, beauty is a lucid reality and anyone possessing it should be put on a pedestal. If they are lucky they might get a bit of the magic that's working for her wouldn't they?

When people think of frogs getting dissected in cold, ramshackle laboratories in high schools, most of them are plagued by feelings of revulsion and for the emphatic ones, sorrow and pity and finally refusal in the form of rebellion against the dissection. Whatever it is, it is not a pleasant sight-I mean beholding a pregnant frog get dissected over a lamp, the place dotted with lots of curious, appalled teenage observers and participants. Rapid gasping is ignored until the frog slowly dies...Then observations, measurements, comparisons and analyses are jotted down on unfeeling sheets of homework paper.

Call me mad but I actually see a striking (though disturbing similarity) between the life of those beautiful starlets and divas and the poor unfortunate frogs with their insides splayed out for study and "learning". The terrible scalpel of media frenzy and public intrusion invited by their glamour statuses rips apart the thin flesh of their lives in a cold, vertical line right down the middle. Some of those beautiful people, confused, branded it a mid life crisis. Others called it " Lack of privacy", yet others " intrusion", " pressure of the public eye"...You name it they give it different names but the concept that bears fruition to these names is the same as that of the unfortunate frog getting dissected in the laboratory. At first the frog revels in the strange, new, surroundings in tune with its heightened senses that all point towards its “specialness” because everybody seemed to be interested in it; everybody was apparently mesmerized by it. Yes, indeed it was special when the dissection starts on the anaesthesized frog akin to when the glaring globules of public interest swing full circle to the cleanly butchered pieces of their lives put on the shiny metal pedestal of public scrutiny for all to see.

When I think in terms of this, it really makes me wonder whether beauty really is a blessing or a bane...Us creatures in shallower waters know not that at high tide we shall be swept away. This happens every day but sadly the fallacy of human memory is apparent throughout the winding course of its turbulent history. Beauty is a many faceted thing: the truth is, the media portrays and exploits only one incomplete portion of it, the material version.