Beauty and eternal youth is everything. Even in a world ravaged by war, famine, poverty, global warming, pollution, substance abuse, human trafficking, and dead babies. Good looks command attention and reverence. Talent, merit, a great personality, and the rest of it is important, of course, but these things are recognised and marketable mostly if they come in a glossy package that looks good enough to eat. This is hardly an evil exclusive to the present age. We have always been a superficial lot, fixated on frills, but have become less apologetic and discreet about our shallow ways.
You know it is the ugly truth because the tech billionaires are spending their ill-begotten squillions on longevity and looking good ad infinitum. Of course, according to their PR people, the intention is noble and uplifting with an altruistic vision to eliminate disease and improve quality of life for the ancient as well as those who merely look like they don’t spend their nights in hyperbaric chambers while availing the benefits of vampire facials and blood transfusions from baby rodents. After all, nobody deserves to suffer through the horrors of aging such as wattle necks, warts, wrinkles, balding, liver spots, menopause, greying, aching joints, recalcitrant bowels, cognitive decline, and the tendency of society to ignore their senior citizens as well as the unfortunate looking or the obese and condemn them to enforced loneliness, irrelevance and not-so-surreptitious scorn.
The second most powerful lobby in the world—the influencers—reinforce this notion by urging people to be the best looking version of themselves and keep squawking about bio-hacking, supplements, fitness routines, cell rejuvenation, and ‘legit’ beauty products that guarantee a more photographic version of you on the morrow provided you are willing to make the investment today and buy truckloads of fat-free collagen and hyaluronic acid with glutathione pudding available in chocolate, passion fruit, and orange blossom flavours. Their feeds feature ads urging women, men, and children to try botox, dermal fillers, laser skin resurfacing, blepharoplasties, Ozempic, packets of powdered puppies, assorted aids and implements from a serial killer’s basement, which the willingly gullible gobble up in the vain hope of looking as ethereal as Aditi Rao Hydari, exquisitely emaciated as Ariana Grande and age-defying as Malaika Arora.
A lot of people are buying into the fallacious argument that if you look effortlessly good, skinny and exude an enviable ‘glow’ you will definitely be treated better and might even make a fortune, meet and keep the love of your life and truly enjoy all that glitters. Most are willing to go to extreme lengths, expend time, money and resources they can scarce afford to look luminous and just wow all the damn time! While a vast majority of cosmetic procedures are performed on women, men are catching up too, both risking invasive and painful surgery that may have damaging, and long-term physical and psychological implications. What emerges is not a pretty picture revealing how we have allowed our insecurities and inanities to get the better of us and degenerated into beastly beings who care only about how strangers view us through filters and refuse to work on how we feel about ourselves or forge real connections that translate into joyful, meaningful ways to experience life with loved ones.
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