There are a lot of things going on in my life right now; I have exams to revise for, summer plans to make, I am consistently ill so am trying to control that, I have aspirations for a life after university that I need to work towards. In terms of revision, I feel the stress is getting a bit much and I find myself procrastinating, a lot. This, I cannot help and it does not help matters that I am tired and therefore struggle to concentrate. What I have found interesting recently is reading. Not just for my course, but for pleasure. Notably, I have been reading news articles, because I am an intellectual daaaahling and must keep up to date with the goings on in the world. A number of things have struck me lately that I wish to address, and as I haven't blogged in a while, I thought I would share one of them with you (whoever YOU are);
Recently, there was a show on called 'Meet the Romans with Mary Beard'. It was a wonderful, informative programme on the real people of ancient Rome. Not the upper class that we focus on, but the poor people; those who lived in the slums; the multiculturalism; the dangers and size of the city and Empire and so on. But that's not what I will focus on. Following the programme's airing, the infamous Samantha Brick (who you may remember wrote an awkward article about how attractive she is and that people hate her because of it, which caused lots of hate to be thrown her way as she is not, really, that attractive at all. She is rather plain, actually) wrote an article deeming Mary Beard, a Cambridge Professor, to be too ugly for TV. Not only is that incredibly hypocritical coming from Samantha Brick, who just seems to be a nasty, dislikeable person, but also incredibly unnecessary and harsh.
It made me think about our perceptions on beauty (which I previously wrote about in 2010, HERE). Who has the right to tell someone that they can't be on television because they aren't ascetically pleasing enough. For starters, there are many people on television who are far more unattractive than Mary Beard. I can think of loads, who I won't name, because I don't CARE if they are ugly or not. Secondly, it should not be about the looks, it should be about what talent this person has. Mary Beard is clearly very intelligent and the passion she has for her subject is evident in the way she presents herself on camera; she is funny, silly, enthusiastic and makes it understandable and easy to watch, even though you're getting tonnes of information! It should be about personality, not looks (as I echo the popular term, 'Don't judge a book by its cover').
Our society seems to be all about looking a certain way and if someone doesn't adhere to that, we shun them. With all the celebrity magazines around, it's hard to get away from this. They are always picking on people who appear to have gained a bit of weight, or have gone outside without make-up (SHOCK HORROR), or wore bad clothes, or lost TOO MUCH weight and so on. It seems like no one can do anything right nowadays. If we aren't too fat, then we are too thin. If we aren't what society deems to be 'beautiful', we are placed in the 'ugly' category. We can be too tall, too short, too smart, too dumb. If someone in the public eye does anything, people will immediately comment on it.
Some people have been going against our preconceptions of beauty recently, however the majority appear to be men. For example, Benedict Cumberbatch has become an 'unlikely' sex symbol recently (deemed the Sun newspaper's sexiest man). For years, this man has been scrutinised for his appearance, yet following the popularity of Sherlock and his evident high intelligence, women (and men) worldwide have become obsessed with him. They even have a name, The Cumberbitches (YES, I am one of them, and I am not ashamed). The power of the internet can create unlikely sex symbols and Cumberbatch is only one of them (although he's attractive even if loads say he isn't, I don't care). These sex symbols are deemed so because of their intellect, charisma and so on, not their looks (Russell Brand may not be really attractive, but women everywhere fancy him because of his outrageousness). Now, I could go on for ages about this, but I have written too much already. You see my point though, one should not be judged 'too ugly' for television, especially when bringing such knowledge to the world.
In short: Our society is messed up and we need to all take a good, hard look at ourselves. We need to change our ridiculous concepts of beauty, because mostly, they aren't beautiful, but instead unattainable ideals that would seem ridiculous 50 + years ago.
