The Myth of Beautiful People
Her skin is hairless and without blemishes: no pimples on this beauty queen. Body contours are perfect; eyes and teeth sparkle. Her hair is immaculate; not a strand out of place. Everything is flawless. Welcome to the world of Scitex.
Scitex is a brand name which has become a catchall term for computer 
retouching systems. According to Mary Tanner writing in the New York Times Magazine, almost every commercial photograph now contains some computer-generated enhancement, changes so subtle and artful that most people believe they are real. Says Tanner, "Even though we know by now that the computer can altar images--can even splice together the photograph of two people who have never actually met, posing them in a city neither of them has ever been in--we can't help giving credence to the end product."
I agree with Tanner; modern commercials have caused us to subscribe to what I call the myth of beautiful people, a myth that says one can be perfect--physically, emotionally, and circumstantially.
Clearly these smiling successful people, who pass our way daily via the television screen and magazine, have no lack of money for paying their bills, no invalid mother in a nursing home, no lost job or career, no struggling marriage, no estranged children, no serious illness, no addiction to alcohol or nicotine, no weight problem, no chronic aches or pains, no bouts with depression--none of the real struggles faced by real people.
And there are consequences to accepting the illusion. I'm convinced the myth of beautiful people has caused modern Americans, especially midlifers, to struggle with unnecessary shame. According to Dick Keyes in Beyond Identity, "Shame is what you experience when you suddenly realize that you have fallen short of your models."
Too often in our commercial-saturated society we adopt these "beautiful people" for models, a decision destined for disappointment. All we have to do is experience one imperfection--and in a normal life there are many--and we feel shame.
"Something must be wrong with me," we say; "normal people don't experience these things." But normal people do; in fact, heroic people do. In fact, truly beautiful people do.
In Amusing Ourselves To Death Neil Postman reminds us that there are no extant photographs of a smiling Abraham Lincoln. A man who experienced many personal tragedies, not to mention the strain of a nation at war with itself, the midlife Lincoln was given to long bouts of depression.
One wonders if the 19th century political packagers had possessed the technology of their 20th century counterparts, would they have airbrushed the character lines from Lincoln's face? Would they have hidden his personal tragedies from the public? Would they have created a Scitex Lincoln? If so, they would have destroyed the beauty of one of this nation's truly beautiful people.
For the truly beautiful are not made perfect by the computer, but by successfully navigating the real struggles of a real world. And those with blemishes--be they physical or emotional--have no cause for shame. These tell us only that we are truly alive, and in some cases (like the scars on a war veteran), that we have fought and won some hard battles.
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