the essence of beauty

One of the things we discussed in class this past week was Emily Prager’s piece titled “Our Barbies, Ourselves.” While I agree that Barbie portrays a twisted ideal of women, I believe that she is also representative of a society that has become increasingly obsessed with external beauty. Unlike what the makers of Barbie would have us believe, our body does not define who we are. Inner beauty, the beauty of the soul, is what truly matters. It is an illumination of the heart that manifests itself in one’s strength of character and unwavering moral standards. Think about it. A person with a beautiful face may succeed in appealing to your peripheral sense of enjoyment for only so long, but a person with pleasing character will captivate your heart for a lifetime.

This idea brings to mind a poem by John Keats titled “La Belle Dame sans merci,” in which he describes the encounter between a knight and a mysterious elfin beauty. At first, the lady’s “long” hair, “light” step, and “wild” eyes enthrall him and he eagerly follows her to her “elfin grot.” Because the soldier is so caught up with her external beauty, he fails to realize that her enigmatic smile actually conceals a heart of stone. As a result, once the lady has successfully trapped him in her cave, she swiftly delivers the knight to his chilling end.

This is similar to what Prager suggests in the last line of her piece: Barbie has “trapped” us in the need to conform to others’ ideals of superficial beauty, such that we become oblivious to what really matters. In order to escape, we can embrace the freedom of rising above petty societal beauty standards and develop our character, for the nurturing of inner beauty is what makes us a true human being.