I think that the only way to gain self-confidence is to start from the inside out.
Definitely. You can be the most gorgeous person in the world, have an amazing figure (by most standards), have gorgeous hair and a perfect complextion; but it does not mean a thing if you don't feel good anyway. People looking at such a person would perhaps find that hard to understand or have much sympathy over, but no matter what you look like it's still possible to feel pretty awful about yourself.
In my experience, although I often feel great about myself there are times when I am incredibly insecure about going somewhere; and it's usually when something I ate the day before gave me a slight stomach ache or something really stupid like that... You just have that "out of synch with your own body" feeling, know what I mean? Anyway, although I see myself in the mirror and I know I look fine, in the past I'll have asked someone 20 times, "Are you sure I look okay?" (Stereotype, I know!). And the answer of that person doesn't actually make a difference to me one way or the other, so I guess it's nothing more than a reflexive impulse to the whole "feeling out of sorts with my body" thing, like a verbal nervous twitch (
edit- or psychologically, the mirror itself tells you something different from how you are feeling momentarily, so you look to glance in the more 'human' mirror of another person's objective opinion, as it seems both your physical self and the non-human, literal mirror in front of you is lying. Sorry this thought is almost touching on the topic of which types of information source we personally gravitate to and why... interesting...). Why is this? Do I feel that there is something utterly offensive about my person, that the outside world cannot possibly see? No. It's just that at times like that I might suddenly be accutely aware of how I physically feel in a negative way, and that can't help but affect me mentally a bit. On the outside a person might look petit perhaps, but on the inside they feel like they're dragging around a sack of lead! And when you can actually feel that -even if you don't look that way at all- it generally makes you feel very uncomfortable, heavy, and ultimately a bit self-conscious. It's true for a 98lb person or a 300lb one... maybe more true for a 300lb one, but you get the picture. This is also true for people with beautiful faces and good-looking skin... It doesn't matter how
perfect it looks if you live some place where the sun makes you feel to dry or you work a job that makes you feel run down and tired- you are going to feel
just the same as if it's saggy and wrinkly!
So I guess what I'd want is for them to design the body that eliminates these annoying feelings, and keeps only the good parts regardless of what you look like (you always feel fresh-faced, lighter and wonderful)!
Seriously, I don't think plastic surgery is the ultimate answer though. I wouldn't criticise or condemn most people for having it done because it is a choice that is available to them, but I don't like the way companies can prey on people's insecurities. You should change yourself if you are that unhappy with yourself and it's getting in the way, but you should do it yourself if you ever want to genuinely feel better, and you should do it through hard work either physically (looking after yourself properly) or mentally (re-thinking the way you think about yourself and re-assessing what's important). I think you get more from it- a sense of achievement, pride on having conquered something, a sense evolution. Of course, some things are understandable that someone might need to take something extra to help with (i.e. bad and painful acne), and there are times when plastic surgery is a real blessing to somebody who has had something quite bad happen to them (i.e. if you were in a car crash or fire and were disfigured really badly, and desperately want to go back to looking how you did before).
if someone thinks you don't look good or your body is weird or something like that, you can just go get a replacement chasis and it, quite possibly, could have a positive effect on how you view yourself
! I'd feel terrible for anyone that was so controlled by what other people said about their body or looks that they felt compelled to live by it! It would mean they had such low esteem, the poor person... It might make them feel like they fit in on the outside, but once again I think it'd only be skin-deep in a lot of cases. And it's clear that if they changed themself for that reason, then other people will probably continue to have control over them. So they could really be singled out and made to feel bad for any reason that other people were cunning enough to "find" and turn into a "problem"- the way they talk, their family, their interests... even being too beautiful. You might feel better about changing your appearance to the perceived whims of the masses, but ultimately would you ever feel happy about what you are unless you then
kept changing at everyone else's (perceived) beck and call, like some puppet of an unreasonable and unworthy controller?
I guess I'm just kind of thinking out loud, but I think that cyborg bodies would have an interesting effect on body image. Maybe you could even buy a model body that looked like your favorite movie star... Scary.
Jeni, personally I would not be interested in a cyborg body in the traditional sense. I would much rather have something that was pratically as biological as a regular human body and was grown to look almost exactly the same as I do now, but which was just 'polished' a bit... I mean, a biological-based human body that had a reinforced
immune system, that
aged better and
lasted longer. A body whose digestive system worked perfectly (within reasonable use) and never gave me any problems (no more feeling bloated after eating a mere sandwich, for the wheat allergy sufferers out there). A body that doesn't even have the chance of getting cancer or anything else bad, because the cells have been so thoroughly conditioned and treated before creation that nothing like that could happen (they'd have to work out what makes these diseases tick first of all, I suppose). A body where the skin was more resilient to moisture gain or loss and didn't get annoying or painful irritations like eczema (sp?) or simple rashes. A body I could choose to have the child-bearing function absent from (or present I guess, if you were an infertile person or a guy who wanted to be able to carry his own child), without needing to be taking pills or having surgery, if that's what I want (and no periods- I bet a lot of women would be glad about that! Although it's really okay unless you're one of those people that suffer with theirs, I guess). And of course, a body where a little excercise goes a long way, thanks to improvements in the muscle and lung growth department- I want to still work for it, but when I go for a really good workout I'd want it to make me even stronger. Basically, I want an interesting body of my own crafting, that above all feels good and is uber-healthy, but is still me; that still looks like me.
[edit - of course I'm not ungrateful for what I have; I'm merely fantacizing about what being human could be like in a more scientifically idealized world. Of course if you looked at it a certain way, I think expecting some kind of slightly more down-to-earth type of perfection on demand is a bit selfish and even lazy if your not the one willing to dedicate themselves to pursuing the science behind it. Maybe it's no different to the surgery of today- expecting things to happen for you just because you want them and have the money to change them without really doing much. I don't know; I'm not trying to be insensitive about people being emotionally driven from desperation to change themselves, either. You can't really know how someone feels in that situation, if you're not coming from their experiences I guess]
PS. If everybody looked like movie stars that would suck to me! Individually some of them might be nice-looking, but when you look at that crowd as a whole it gets lost in a sea of plastic... Actually, the thing is that when actors and actresses are being normal people doing normal things, most of them really look just like normal people, blemishes, wrinkles and all. They only look the way we see them once they've had tonnes of make-up applied, spent hours being dressed by professional dressers, had cameras and photographers take their pictures in just the right way... Some magazines are pretty low, the way they'll take pictures of someone famous shopping for food at their local supermarket or whatever in their normal lives, and it'll be a really unflattering picture where the magazine is remarking, "Look how she/he has changed!" or something cruel... No, that's just how people look in their normal lives, with no preparation and an unflattering camera.