“For most people in the real world, their experience of beauty is that it is a moral ideal.”

— Professor Heather Widdows

We live in a world that is obsessed with appearance. Social media filters allow young people to create personal images far removed from reality, plastic surgery “trends” pop up almost seasonally, and we increasingly conflate our self worth with how well we conform to societal beauty standards. For many people, achieving aesthetic beauty is virtuous — consider the guilt that we can feel when we skip the gym, put on a few pounds, or run into an acquaintance while having a bad hair day… or the way that we may judge others for doing the same.

What is the fallout from our current cultural preoccupation with beauty, and how can we uncover a healthier sense of self?

This instalment of the Living Jewishly Podcasts is an episode of Crossing the Sea, a podcast about mental health. In this episode, Dr. Elliott Malamet speaks with Professor Heather Widdows, British philosopher, John Ferguson Professor of Global Ethics at the University of Birmingham in Birmingham, England, and co-writer of the Beauty Demands blog.

This discussion covers the moral and ethical implications of our focus on the external, as well as its effects on our mental health.

“We’ve moved from the cut of the dress to the cut of the breast.”— Professor Heather Widdows

This‌ ‌episode discusses:‌ ‌

• How the digital age has shifted the way that we engage with beauty ideals
• The role that capitalism plays in creating or emphasizing aesthetic “problems”
• Questions regarding individual agency and control around objectification

Highlights:‌ ‌

00:51 Intro

03:18 Beauty as a moral ideal

05:14 Has beauty always been so important?

07:03 Normalization of beauty practices

09:05 Beauty & capitalism

10:52 Origin of beauty standards

12:25 Pretense of diversity

13:53 Women’s individual agency

16:17 Where youth receive beauty ideals

19:34 Dominance of image & being camera-ready

23:33 Control v. objectification

29:32 Living with contradiction

31:32 Beauty & age

34:15 Men & beauty

36:27 Ideal selfhood

39:39 Final takeaway

41:13 Conclusion

Links:‌ ‌

Beauty Demands

https://beautydemands.blogspot.com

The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble To Get Inside Our Heads by Tim Wu

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/234876/the-attention-merchants-by-tim-wu

My Body by Emily Ratajkowski

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250817860/mybody

To get in contact or learn more about Living Jewishly:

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Shalom!