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Alexandria Jones Dempster UNIV 200 5 April 2016 Happiness and Beauty Standards Walt Whitman once wrote, “A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.” One can gather that Whitman values the importance of the ‘little things’ more than the flashiness that other aspects of life can bring; moreover, it is proposed that Whitman would agree that not much is required for one to feel satisfaction, and in turn, happiness. However, society has created standards of beauty that tend to bring unhappiness instead of satisfaction to people, so that begs the question of how beauty standards affect the way that people live and the difficulties they may encounter as a result. I wanted to explore this thought in relation to people from different countries to study the differences that may be encountered when discussing beauty standards, as they are certainly not the same everywhere; furthermore, beauty standards vary from country to country, as well as the levels of happiness encountered by world citizens as a result. Dissatisfaction often leads to change. In South Korea getting plastic surgery is seen as something normal to do when people find dissatisfaction in the way they look; moreover, this brews a culture of accepted superficiality in order to achieve happiness. The beauty practice spans across age groups and is carried out by both men and women, surprisingly only becoming popularized and accepted within the last ten years, according to author Joyce Nishioka of the publication Asianweek. The relatively recent emergence of the trend can be attributed to the integration of Korea into the Western world, the impact of the media altering traditional views when it came to appearance (Nishioka). Dr. Charles Sun-Chull Lee reveals that “the classic” plastic surgery procedure among Koreans is the cosmetic eyelid surgery, it “estimated that 40 percent of the women [from the Asian population] undergo eyelid reshaping, usually to create a crease above the eye that makes it look bigger” (Nishioka). With plastic surgery being such a large phenomenon in South Korea, it can create large amounts of pressure on people who live there to also alter their features in order to have “idol-like” features and to appear more attractive to others, some going as far to reason that South Koreans are seeking out Western features (“South Korea’s Growing Obsession with Cosmetic Surgery”). For example, 19-yearold Christina Lim, who spoke with ABC News correspondent Juju Chang before undergoing plastic surgery, explained to the reporter the normalcy of the procedure. She stated how sometimes after going on vacation, her friends would return with a new face and that that was a normal thing in South Korea; moreover, Lim described that she received hate comments after appearing on Korean television as a translator, people bluntly commenting on her figure, which made her feel the need to take action (“South Korea’s Growing Obsession with Cosmetic Surgery”). This shows the negative influence that plastic surgery can have on self-esteem and one’s feeling of connectedness, which can be taken away completely with the ostracism that can come from a culture so welcoming of plastic surgery. On the other hand, Nishioka writes about Dr. Charles Sun-Chull Lee, a plastic surgeon of Honolulu, who brings up the contending point that "the biggest misconception is that Asians want to look Caucasian” and are unhappy about the features they were born with (Nishioka). According to Nishioka, “it is estimated that half of all Asian women are born with double eyelids and others develop them as they age”, which means that the procedure for attaining double eyelids is not as needed as one may have thought (Nishioka). The reasoning that Dr. Lee provides is that plenty of clients simply want "to look like their friends [with double eyelids]”, showing how plastic surgery can actually lead to a feeling of connectedness and benefit an individual who feels different from others. While the negative effects that plastic surgery can possibly have are much more evident, there still exist positives to a country that values beauty in this way. However, not all people value these “traditional” standards of beauty, as seen in the small rural towns of Mauritania, where the longstanding practice of forcibly fattening young girls continues to thrive. As Claire Soares, a correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor, writes, she compares this process of weight gain to food, writing how “the French word [gavage] describes the process of fattening up geese to produce foie gras”; furthermore, the institutionalized process of force-feeding girls to become large, plump women can by association be visualized as something daunting and somewhat inhumane (Soares 1). This sentiment can also be backed by the fact that the practice is somewhat dying out. Pascale Harter, who has served as a news correspondent for the BBC in Morocco with an extensive knowledge of African culture, mentions in her article, “Mauritania’s ‘wife-fattening’ farm,” a girl named Leila, one force-fed herself as a girl, who says, “that's not how people think now,” in reference to the traditional ideal of fatness as beauty (Harter). She goes on to say that, “traditionally a fat wife was a symbol of wealth. Now we've got another vision, another criteria for beauty”, which presents the reader with the idea that major ideological changes have taken place in Mauritania; more people view force-feeding as unhealthy and unnecessary to be beautiful (Harter). This in relation to happiness can also mean that women no longer need to be fat to be happy in Mauritania; they do not have to play the role as the ‘fat wife’ to achieve high self-worth in their minds. However, the fact still remains that this practice continues to persist today in the smaller areas of Mauritania left untouched by outside ideas where tradition prevails, and in these areas, there is no negative connotation to being overweight. In these areas, women love their “fatness” and couldn’t imagine another way of living; moreover, they find great joy in their bodies, happy that they could achieve what their mothers and grandmothers told them is the most beautiful a woman could be. Fatematou, a large older woman who continues the practice of force-feeding by running a “fat-farm”, notes the aspect of fattening the young girls that pertains to their futures as wives when she states, “They are proud and show off their good size to make men dribble. Don't you think that's good?” (Harter). Fatematou relays the love she has for the girls she helps to fatten by continuing to carry on the tradition, knowing that in the end they will feel so much happiness for a body they will grow to adore. As these girls get older they feel happy with their obesity and use it to get men. They flaunt the size of their bodies proudly, while western society places value on thinness, and even though the government in recent years has been cracking down on the practice, girls still find ways to self-fatten, “[taking] pills, some of them ones you usually give to an animal” (Soares). All in all, with the roots that forcibly fattening girls has in wealth and high class, those women who grow up in the tradition, for the most part see their weight as a positive rather than a negative; moreover, the happiness attained from their weight gain outweighs the risks that come with their beauty goals. In Mauritania, tradition has not lost its effect, despite its obscureness to people outside the country’s borders. In India, one beauty standard appears to outweigh the rest. The desire for fair skin has long existed in the country, people scouring the shelves for beauty products like Fair & Lovely and homemade specialties claiming to lighten one’s pigment. Gawle Rupa of India Abroad shares a personal anecdote of time spent with her family as a young girl in India, citing how “[her] grandmother used to often say… “Don't go out in the sun. You'll get dark”” (Rupa). This shows the older generation’s impact on the way that the youth were conditioned to believe in a certain ideal, one that is for most still unattainable by nature. What this beauty ideal shows, leads one to infer a dissatisfaction in self-image; moreover, It seems that the merge of beauty and health in many of these situations has negative results, and this sentiment is continued in the United States where the world of science clashes with personal health and beauty with the development of Botox. “[The] product of a highly toxic microorganism, Clostridium botulinum”, Botox,