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1 Pages 360 Words

Singaporeans seem to be fixated on the quest for outer beauty. This can be seen by the influx of beauty centres and their adverstisements in our media today.

These advertisements invariably involve celebrities or real life success stories extolling the virtues of their individual products. These products promise flat tummies, bigger breasts and toned bodies for the females and six packs and a V figure for males. The celebrities, with their perfect figures conjure an image of perfection for the common Singaporean to aspire to be like them while the real life success stories strive to persuade us that a vision of perfection that is not unattainable for the commonest of us.

However, the increasing trends of slimming and facial advertisements that can be seen in our society today bring with it several negative points. What these advertisements do not state is that the celebrities do much more than just consuming the said product, often having to starve themselves on diets, for their above-mentioned perfect figures. Also left unstated is the fact that the real life success stories make up only a very small percentage of all consumers and the astronomical sums spent in achieving them.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg. What is most appalling is that the social expectations for the sexes have changed over the years as fat and ugly people seem to be deemed generally unacceptable and undesirable now. For instance, women with good looks and busty figures are probably considered beautiful for the general public but may not necessarily be true as a woman’s beauty could also be portrayed innately and the way they present themselves to others. Similarly for the men, inner beauty such as having a good character and substance seem to tell others that they are beautiful in the man’s sense as well rather than just having six packs and a V-shaped body alone. Thus, the general public should not be easily influenced by the social expe...