Is It Really A Pretty Face?

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Today, young people watching TV, surfing the internet or visiting public areas like malls, outlets and plazas are constantly exposed to posters, pictures or videos featuring people with seemingly perfect faces, perfect bodies and perfect complexions. Young children and even toddlers and babies are exposed to cartoon characters with pretty symmetrical faces with beautiful albeit disproportional bodies that are humanly impossible, voluptuous curves and with extremely slender waists.
With Images of beauty abound in our society, parents need to not only acknowledge the fact that the images are everywhere and to explain to their children the importance of physical appearance in our society. Even though parents want to avoid appearing superficial and prefer to live in an ideal world, where physical appearance is not a primary factory in judging others, the truth is, human beings seem to be hardwired to prefer beauty. This was demonstrated in a study where babies that were only a few days old could clearly tell between attractive and unattractive. “Psychologist Alan Slater of Exeter University showed pictures rated by adults as being more or less attractive to babies which were, on average, 2 and a half days old and found that babies invariably stared longer at faces which adults had rated as more attractive. Babies are born with an eye for beauty. Infants only hours old will choose to stare at an attractive face rather than an unattractive one” (Parker).
Children are going to recognize the importance of looks sooner or later, and parents might as well bring the subject up, so it can be discussed so the children can understand the information on looks with a caring adult and not have to figure out everything on their own. For example...

... middle of paper ...

...ust be there for their kids, be positive and to be the number one person their kid would want to go to if they needed any advice or help so that their child wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands and have their mental selves enslaved to society’s standards to just “fit in.”

Works Cited
Deans, Emily, MD. "Evolutionary Psychiatry." Psychology Today.
11 Dec. 2011. Web. 11 Apr. 2014.
Parker, Randall. "Babies Prefer To Stare At Beautiful Faces." FuturePundit.
Biological Mind, 7 Sept. 2004. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.
Peters, Ruth A., Ph.D. "Teaching Kids What Attractive Really Means" Today
Today, 9 July 2007. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.
Thompson, Derek. "The Financial Benefits of Being Beautiful." The Atlantic.
Atlantic Media Company, 11 Jan. 2014. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.
Tucker, Abigail. "How Much Is Being Attractive Worth?" Smithsonian.
Smithsonian Magazine, Nov. 2012. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.

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