“Facing the Facts�?: the Effect of Physical Attractiveness on Society Essay Example

Is beauty only skin deep? Furthermore, is the beauty truly in the eye of the beholder? Many people hold these time-tested axioms to be true; however, modern research has dispelled much of the credibility of these sayings. How others perceive and rate the desirability of a person’s physical features, i.e. their physical attractiveness, plays an enormous role in the formation of relationships and opportunities to climb the socio-economic ladder. The effect of physical attractiveness reaches across cultures and plunges into every age group. Diseases such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, which tend to effect young girls, can be attributed to their desire to enhance their physical features. Older people do not escape the vortex of desire for physical beauty either, seeing that they engage in face lifts and botox injections for their physical enhancement. Physical Attractiveness has been the cornerstone of several markets, including the fitness, cosmetic, and fashion industries. This could be explained by the vast advantages of being physically attractive. Physically attractive people are preferred over others, receive higher acclaim from colleagues, and obtain more job opportunities; especially in the modeling industry. Most of these unmerited rewards are based on false assumptions by modern society. One such erroneous assumption that society holds is that physically attractive people are more intelligent than lesser attractive people! Physically attractive people are also assumed to be more successful. Though there is no correlation between physically attractiveness and success, it is fair to say that people with more desirable physical attributes are given advantages that others are not. By having physically attractive features, one administers a positive influence on the attitudes of observers, which facilitates the creation of new relationships and job opportunities. The definition of beauty, or physical attractiveness for that matter, lies solely in