I complained a bit ago on Facebook about programs on television that focus only on appearance when they promise a "new you" for 2010. Only one person chimed in to support my stance. The rest were silent. I sometimes feel as if I'm shouting into the void about this topic.
When I was younger--much, much younger--the focus was on character development and personality. We were encouraged to develop the traits of patience, kindness, generosity, and selflessness. Articles in magazines (even the teen mags) were about becoming a better person. Novels focused on heroines who made conscious attempts to become better people, more honest and trustworthy, more kind-hearted. It's been years since I've picked up a teen magazine, but I'd be willing to bet that the articles that focus on weight loss, acne control, sexual techniques, and hiding secrets from one's parents dominate. Girls have always been bitches, but it's like our culture is TRAINING them to become bitches now. Beautiful on the outside, of course, but bitches all the same. Rotten to the core, self-centered, narcissistic, manipulative little bitches. What a pity.
Goodness isn't something that a person either has or does not have. People can work constantly at their characters and try to overcome the defects of bad parenting and perhaps other environmental influences, if they wish to. However, if there are no rewards in place for becoming better people, only for becoming prettier people, then what is the pay-off? Heaven or hell? That won't work because, for most of them, they aren't even aware of being nasty selfish creatures. They're exactly like everyone else. I'd say that they are like their friends, but even friendship seems based on appearance and not on character, so it's hard to use the word "friends" and really mean it.
I'm grateful to have been part of the earlier generation, one that still thinks about REAL self-improvement, not just surface polish.
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