"Shake your booties boys and girls for all the BEAUTY IN THE WORLD"

Today I was held back by an interviewee for almost half an hour, during which we talked about pretty much everything from the company to children to what kids should major in college.  Of course the interview was for a sales position (how else could all the applicants have been so talkative?), but our conversation was lively and interesting in that we discussed some of the fundamentals of beauty, or at least aesthetics.

He made interesting points, about how when you think of aesthetics in Los Angeles, often you think of Beverly Hills (where we were at the moment) as the hub of vanity.  So when you, or your children (he is older than I), live here, you will either be molded by the dominant values of your environment, or you will be a victim of them. The question most bloggers raise is: how do we change the concept of beauty in our culture? But I think culture develops slow over time, it cannot be changed overnight, and telling beautiful people they are shallow is probably not the best way to introduce less-popular images as "acceptable".

For example, if you wanted to preach about how we should promote "plumpness" in our culture to diminish the number of girls and boys with eating disorders, the correct way is probably not to tell skinny people that they are too skinny. Why? Because now we are against skinny people and many skinny people are skinny because they are born so, not because they choose to be skinny. It's discrimination with the tables turned.

Instead, plump people should be featured as beautiful, without too much airbrushing, and then little by little celebrities might realize that if they gained some weight they would look a lot more youthful and "wholesome" (always pleasant to look at wholesome people). In fact, the interviewee was saying that as long as you are "good to look at" it doesn't matter if you are not the perfect size, and I think many men think this way. I think it's mostly women who are obsessed with being skinnier than some other woman, or am I wrong? Do men think this way too, towards other men? You know the thought, thank gawd my thighs are not as fat as hers, or her face might be prettier but I'm skinnier (or do you?)  So we ended up agreeing that beauty is being "good to look at", pleasant to look at, and proportionally wholesome. We agreed that skinny-like-starving-refugees is a bad look, while being plumper, in a proportional way, is totally okay. What do you think?

I mean our company comes into the picture when people are obese to the point where it is harmful to their health, and you would be surprised how many problems go away with a little weight loss...but other than health concerns the interviewee raised a few interesting points on how socially unacceptable obesity is, especially in LA.

As mentioned, LA is where Hollywood is, we have celebrities, wannabe celebrities, models, actors, etc. walking our streets looking fabulous. He said entire Southern California is concerned with aesthetics (more than in other places), and, well, did you watch OC? I watched like five episodes and all I remember are beautiful people, looking tanned and skinny, laying on the beach or surfing while seemingly having all the time in the world to party--sound familiar? California girls? California dreamin'? You think all of that is going to go away just by changing our minds? I don't think so. Even if 20% of Californians decided to relinquish certain trends, guess what? The rest of the world is going to expect them. The rest of the world is going to look at a Californian and be like, why aren't you blonde, skinny, and tanned? And yes, perhaps it is the media coverage that we blame, but you know what's funny about the media? They only broadcast what sells, so if surveys show that people like seeing beautiful skinny on people on screen, that's what they'll broadcast. Remember Rosanne's show? She was funny 20 years ago, wonder why she's not on anymore? Because our culture has shifted since then. Wait for the next wave people!

Or what do you think?