Who, asks Amira El-Noshokaty, is the fairest, really? As a chubby child, I found mirrors difficult. I could only bring myself to look in one by seeing a modified version of reality, a fantasy image in which I did not have my few extra pounds. But when I really did lose them -- brief as the experience may have been -- though I was closer than ever to the media image I had delusionally sought out in the mirror, it didn't make me the least bit happier. I came to be a firm believer in the eye of the beholder, so to speak. Between the minority that sees beauty in everyone they meet -- in flowers, the giggles of infants, and the others who don't -- lies the controversial definition of beauty . But listening to the media pay lip service to the blessings of plurality, it annoys me that even as I've learned to find beauty precisely in variety, the space within which beauty is acknowledged in the media has been shrinking, the standards becoming ever more stringent and the norm increasingly like a straightjacket. The dietitian and the plastic surgeon play the lead in the usual narrative of distress, and ordinary beauty -- short of clinical obesity, a birth defect or an accident, surely everyone is beautiful? -- consigned to the realm of the invisible, the inadmissable. Why change, looks instead of attitude towards our body image? Sociologist Sania Saleh, for one ally on the quest for sense and sensibility in a world of codified appearances, believes in spiritual and moral beauty far more than a pretty face or a graceful figure; but the blind adoption of Western values of the body image still bothers her. "Our proverbs," she says, "reflect our beauty standards of the past: 'half of beauty is dark skin', for example. The audiovisual media have narrowed it all down since; sadly commercialised beauty standards of the West, once they are adopted here, lose all sense of perspective. They don't take beauty at face value, but when we imitate them, we take the easy way out. How many Egyptians are naturally blond? Well, look at the number of blond heads of hair around. Actress Soad Nasr [who is still in a coma following a liposuction operation gone wrong] should be a lesson. There is a balance for every bean [as another proverb has it]: every woman will find a man to appreciate her very unique charms, however different. It's the priceless inner beauty that we must try to focus on." Socially, though -- evidenced by Mariam El-Gammal, a 20-something year old who works at a multinational company -- such focus will not always pay off: doted on in her childhood, she was shocked to realise that her plumpness was not as well appreciated outside the house. She has been out of sync ever since: "It started at secondary school where, in contrast to the 'in' girls who were rebellious and trendy, I was studious and wore glasses. My mother always told me beautiful is what beautiful does. But according to the media and everyone around me, it's about time I was hosted on 'Extreme Makeover' or 'Swan'. Unfortunately my 20s coincide with the sexual awakening of the Arab world, a time when satellite TV overflows with plastic dolls for people to compare me with -- everywhere I go..." It is, of course, from a decidedly male perspective that women like El-Gammal suffer; the media started by brainwashing the men, and now even women are panting after physical specifications set by those who decide what we see on TV, in magazines and in malls. whose desires in turn influenced female self perception. The anorexia-inducing standards of the contemporary West seem to sit well with Eastern sexual fixations, spawning a beauty of monstrous hues. "Feeling sexy or fresh, when I look in the mirror, it does not match the physical connotations reflected in the media, eyes and minds of people around me." According to psychologist Walid El-Iraqi, this has as much to do with the materialist values of global capital as anything: image takes precedence over essence, every time. Discussing the well-known psychiatrist Ahmed Okasha's statement that the human race is undemocratic when it comes to physical appearance, El-Iraqi says that, "while this is true, it is not the whole truth." Among his patients, he says, are beautiful women, indeed women who have had plastic surgery in order to look "perfect", who suffer from feeling ugly and undesirable. On to the humanistic pyramid of aims, El-Iraqi explains, beauty is preceded first by basic needs, then security and self realisation. It is to a sense of being rejected by one's parents, of feeling inferior, that the obsession with looks is due: "Unconditional love and acceptance are the key to a healthy perception of oneself; the quest for beauty is in fact a thirst for love which, if satisfied, would lead to the person feeling beautiful regardless of appearance. There are of course more important values with which to define ourselves; the problem is that, socially, looks play a hugely disproportionate role, while ironically the truth is that, in relationships, it is personality and ethics that count the most. But it all comes down to self acceptance," he concludes, "the lack of which results in a range of problems from depression to violence." To have beauty, it would seem, one must also think of others; the rewards of compassion are such that having it can truly transform one's sense of self, dramatically improving self acceptance. Ironically it is in the West -- the origin of the "beauty" mania -- that the moulds are finally breaking: inner beauty and self acceptance are far more highly regarded by the media; a cosmetic brand, Dove, is actively encouraging the young to accept their bodies as they are, channelling funds into programmes to improve self-esteem. Now that this has happened, it can at least be hoped that the East will stop going with the flow and start embracing its own higher values.
