Satire by Sadie Tremblay

A Modest Proposal

Every day, girls and women are constantly bombarded by the media’s interpretation of how they should look, how they should act, how they should be. The media’s image of beauty has become something to obsess over, an impossible standard to reach for and fixate upon. The idea that a person is not enough for everyone else because of the way they look is becoming more and more popular, almost every teenage girl cannot help but let their uncreative minds be consumed by knowing that, in today’s society, they will never be pretty. Older women who can think of no better solution to their insecurities than overpriced wrinkle cream and useless beauty products are forced to look back on their glory days to see a beautiful image of themselves. Instead of doing something that will actually serve a purpose in the long run, every single one of these members of this mentality will waste their time and money on elucidations that will do nothing for them.

Being that I myself am very submerged in this cultural self esteem crisis, I am well aware of this problem’s gravity and of what needs to be done. I’ve grown up in a culture that tells everyone with a general unhappiness with their appearance that there is no better explanation to this problem that is more effective than makeup, tight clothes, diet plans, and plastic surgery. A recent physiological study was published that polled patients of prominent plastic surgeons in Northern California. Eighty-four percent of patients said that they wished that there was some kind of a way out of these drastic treatments, if there was something that they could have done early on that could save them all the time, money, and pain that treatments that they undergo now. These people represent the millions of others all across the country that feel the same way, wishing that there was some way out of the harsh routine that we all go through to fit into the definition of beautiful. I am well aware, not only of the problem, but also of how all these women feel during the course of their daily lives of inadequacy, though I can hardly sympathize because I am the only one at this point to have reached a workable conclusion on how to compound this widespread issue. So, being that I have a suggestion to solve this matter, a means of understanding the self-hating and insufficiency of the general female public, I believe that once my plan to eradicate this problem is implemented, physical self esteem issues among American women will be a brief blip in the history books.

The first step of my solution involves identifying exactly what image women strive for when they want to change their appearance. What do they see on television that makes them want to change? What is it that they think makes them desirable to men? What is it about themselves that they can’t stand to put up with, but won’t do anything about? The fact that so many women are unhappy with their appearances is not only damaging their own lives, but also affecting the lives of future generations of women who will in turn be unhappy with the way they look. So, I devised a composite image of what society tells us is beautiful. This picture of the perfect woman consists of uniform hair color, soft facial features, a slender figure, and various other details that are considered rudimentary to a woman’s good looks.

In order to make my theoretical resolution a reality, large amounts of careful planning, government spending, scientific research and development, and, as with all things that are considered progressive, time. But, I feel that all of this is worth eliminating this dilemma, since so much money and scientific research is wasted on beauty products. Animal testing is done for new eye make ups and hair products, when the need for that is nonexistent. Marketing and financing is done for hair products, make up, anti-aging treatments, plastic surgery, when none of it is at all necessary. Under my plan, though it will be expensive, the cost to benefit ratio is perfectly in balance, taking into account the hundreds of millions of dollars that will be saved.

After developing a concept of beauty, the next step is working to achieve this amongst all female members of the country. For certain women that have reached a point in their physical development and have aged to the point where they are no longer useable in the manner of eradicating the problem they are somewhat of a lost cause. But for younger women, children, and infants, there is still time to save them from feeling inadequate. This will involve, in some cases, extensive plastic surgery, genetic testing, and more. But, this is only temporary, since in a matter of a few years, genetic research will be ready to implement and can be used to edit the personal appearance of a person as they grow. This process can begin immediately after birth and will only consist of a series of examinations and injections to minorly manipulate the growth and development of the child. As she grows, the treatments she had undergone as a small child will allow her to fit into the new criteria of beauty.

When a whole generation of girls are made to be genetically similar to each other, when they eventually reproduce, their children will need less and less treatment. There will still be some need for genetic alteration considering the amount of DNA and physical traits carried on by the father, but this will be even simpler to correct than it was to do for these children’s mothers. After about five cycles of generations, the injections to modify the female children will be practically negligible.

As and added benefit to this plan, women will also all age at approximately the same time to the same degree, since the chemical treatments will not only effect their appearance, but also their general health. The treatments can be changed as scientific discoveries are made, so when certain immunizations are invented as well as existing ones, they can be included in the treatments. This will prevent many diseases and ailments early on, promoting better health among the next generation. Aging will occur at around the same time for all women treated because the chemicals used in the injections will keep cells in the body from degeneration for almost exactly sixty-two years, nearly to the day. At around this time in their lives, all women will experience the beginnings of cell death, causing their hair to grey and thin at the same rate of every other woman, and their skin to wrinkle with everyone else, and their shoulders to hunch, and their bodies to begin to loose their youthful vibrancy, and everything else that worries a woman will happen along with all of their peers at the same rate and time in life as them.

Another positive advantage would be that, over time, after generations of the treatments are used for quite some time, not only will women be uniform, but men will begin to be as well. Because of the genetic alterations made to their mothers and their mother’s mothers, and so on, their genes will no longer be diluted with external physical traits. Their minds, intelligence levels, and personalities will not, however, be at all effected by the treatments. So, even though people may look the same, they will each still remain very much their won person. This way, no one will discriminate over looks and appearance, all decisions made about a person will be solely based on the real substance of their self. They will form relationships based on interests, personality traits, intelligence, and everything that makes them individual.

Women will no longer concern themselves with harsh treatments and expensive empty promises from beauty product companies to live up to standards that they already meet. No woman will look in the mirror in the morning and see something that she wants to change if there is nothing to change. There will be no image in society that needs to be lived up to if it already is. Everyone will be healthy and happy with they way they look and the way their significant others look at them. People will be more open to finding someone to spend the rest of their lives with someone because of their personality, because looks will be entirely negligible.

It will never be questioned that one person is impossible to distinguish from another. No woman will ever look at herself and think about how it would be nice if, maybe for once, she was noticed for the way she wears her hair that day, or the color of her eyes, or the way that she looks like no one else anyone has ever seen. No man will look at the woman he loves and think that he would love her more if there was something about her that he could see from just looking, to differentiate between her and everyone else. No child will grow up in their carbon copy world thinking that they aren’t special because they are all the same at first glance. This will never happen because we all want to be what we can’t be. Every woman wants to be blonde-haired, blue eyed, skinny, tall, tan, beautiful, perfect. And every man wants to have that. Because, in this world, original is never good enough, having hair that is like no one else’s when the light hits it, or being the right size for you and who you are, or having the prettiest brown eyes that someone who loves you has ever seen, all of that will never mean anything if everyone doesn’t see you as beautiful. It will always be easier to change the way everyone looks than change they way they see each other. It’s impossible to show the world that beauty is not defined by they way you look, and that there will always be someone who sees you as beautiful. So we should just all give up on convincing girls and women that they are beautiful by paying attention to their personalities and what they are like on the inside. We shouldn’t even consider promoting individuality, and being beautiful because you’re different, instead of making the world we live in into a bad episode of 90210. And at the end of the day, being seen like everyone else is so much better than being seen as someone who isn’t good enough, no matter how beautiful you really are.