The Act of Being Pretty

Beauty, in a lot of ways, confuses me. There are so many people we, as a society, percieve as beautiful, and yet when you walk down the street these people aren't around. The Brad Pitts and Britney Spears' of the world are all sitting in California or New York somewhere while the rest of us wait in line at the grocery store, flipping through People. I want to know why we all stand outside looking at the stars, with wishes in our hearts to be somewhere else, somebody else. We may never express these wishes- maybe we never jump on a fast train to the west coast, and maybe we don't go to the hair salon to update our look- but every one of us wants to be more than we are. Is it inherent in humans to be unsatisfied? As babies, do we sit in our diapers wanting to be a better baby? Of course we do. When we're infants we learn so many things- walking, talking, sitting, standing- because these are things we see and hear around us, and we want to emulate the people we see doing them. So it's no wonder to me that the 12 year old girl goes on a diet or that the 15 year old boy works out every day for muscles like Moss. Maybe one day the Catherine Zeta-Jones' and Josh Hartnett's will give way to what we say is more "normal" standards. But that wouldn't necessarily be a good thing, either. Because then instead of pushing ourselves to be star-quality, we'd push ourselves to be standard, normal, plain. If we were able to achieve these things, than advancement in the world would stop until the tides of fashion and fame changed again.