Challenging Attitudes

What is Beauty?

Discrimination … The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines it as: "Unfavourable treatment based on prejudice, especially regarding race, colour or sex".

To this definition we can now add to the list ageism, weightism and finally lookism.

The way you look does not effect who you are on the inside, and your capabilities as a person in the workplace or elsewhere.

When seeking friendship and companionship, people look for personality and compatability, therefore prejudice over your looks should not enter the realms of life in the final argument.

So, why should discrimination occur?

I find it alarming that we live in a society where looks are of greater importance than that which makes the person as a whole.

The rise of cosmetic surgery in the UK is frightening and vulgar.

The face is precious and you shouldn't want to put it to the knife, unless for proper medical reasons. When you lose your face as I have, albeit temporarily, you appreciate it even more.

We should celebrate our differences, not be critical. It would be a dull world if we were all the same!

"Ugly" as a word should not exist in our lives, it is divisive and unnecessary. All people are beautiful. How we appear to each other is subjective - and we need to remind ourselves of that fact.

Look at the picture at the head of the page again … look beyond the face, and enter by the eyes in the face. She is bright, intelligent and friendly. Think about the person inside the flesh, she's got feelings to … you can quite simply hurt her by tossing her aside.