Caution: Photoshopped beauty can easily fade



Rainer Maria Rilke (Modersohn-Becker)
 



Today’s “mirror, mirror on the wall” quest might end up with a Photoshopped response.  Even the “fairest of them all” these days might have been airbrushed just a bit.

According to the ABC News Medical Unit, retouched photographs of “celebrities and models, who appear forever trim and blemish-free, may affect how children view their own bodies.”  There have even been studies showing a link between manipulated photos and eating disorders.  One proposed solution is that such photos carry warning labels with ratings from “one (minimally

altered) to five (starkly changed).”  Another solution could be for parents to teach their children a variety of perspectives about beauty.

According to Islamic Insights, the Qur’anic verse (32:7) tells us that “all creation is beautiful.”  That being said, Islam also tells us that physical beauty “is just like any other material and perishable trait such as wealth, rank, and occupation.”  These traits have no intrinsic value unless accompanied by “inner beauty (piety and good moral traits).”  Real beauty is defined as only that which “we carry with us in our journey to the hereafter: our good deeds.”

Poet Rainer Maria Rilke waxes eloquently about age-old mythological dragons that turn into beautiful princesses when recognized for who they really are inside.  He then continues with this philosophy:  … perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.  Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

Albert Einstein - whose perceptions of life seemed quite “religious” at times – not only viewed all of “the whole called by us universe” as beautiful, but also as integrally connected.   He, along with many mystics, claimed that humans suffer from “a kind of optical delusion” in which we see ourselves as separated from the rest.  He advised that we free ourselves from this delusional “prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”     

Resources

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/photoshopped-images-carry-warning-labels/story?id=15060113

http://www.islamicinsights.com/religion/religion/our-perception-of-beauty.html

http://www.wisdomquotes.com/topics/beauty/index3.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainer_Maria_Rilke

Copyright December 6, 2011 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved