Losing your beautiful face

Are you able put a price on beauty?

The program followed the life of Katie Piper, a budding model and aspiring TV presenter, a year after she suffered a horrific attack. Katie’s attacker threw sulphuric acid into her face, blinding her in one eye and leaving her face burned beyond recognition. Since her attack she has had over thirty operations to try and reconstruct her face.

Last week I spent three hours in the hairdressers. Who knew it could take so long to get your hair done? But people spend far longer and much more money on their looks than ever before, and this obsession is spreading into the younger generation too. It’s understandable that people like to look nice or go for a change in appearance every so often, but is the way we look an integral part of our identity? Do our looks make us who we are or influence how we lead our lives?

With a rise in reality TV shows such as America’s Next Top Model and Beauty and the Geek, it’s amazing how much importance is placed on looks alone, particularly with women. Those who participate in these shows are undoubtedly blessed with good looks, but this seems to dictate all their life ambitions and even their interactions with other people; everything centres on the perfect appearance. Everyone has different aspirations and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be a model, a TV presenter or any other career that requires some form of beauty. However, programmes like these do seem to reinforce a stereotype that someone is either a “beauty” or a “geek” depending how they look or behave. Why can’t somebody be both?

Stories such as Katie’s shows how fragile beauty and looks are, and the bravery with which she faced her ordeal is inspiring. For people whose lives are their looks, what happens when this is suddenly taken away? It never ceases to amaze me how deeply the importance of appearance is engraved into our modern society - to the extent that it is possible to lose your identity and a sense of who you are - if your beauty is threatened.

It is worrying that this mentality and these expectations of what celebrities or beautiful people should look like can affect how we choose to lead our lives. Fashion icon Kate Moss was recently criticised for admitting that one of her mottos was “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”, in a recent interview. This sparked concerns that these types of comments glamourise being a size zero. Ms. Moss is entitled to her personal belief, but what’s worrying is that thousands of young girls will take that on board and could risk suffering from anorexia or other eating disorders in an attempt to mimic the skinny look.

Katie’s experience epitomises the cliché that “mind over matter” can prevail as she works to piece her life back together. In the end her bravery and will to persevere outshines what’s on the outside, and I hope she inspires people to see that life doesn’t have to be dictated by how you look.

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