Skin Deep

Here's another passage I have encounter in my daily online browsing. It goes something like this:

“A tiger dies and leaves its skin; a man dies and leaves his name.”


According to this proverb, we are different from beasts in that our most important
aspects are what’s inside the skin, rather than the skin itself. This proverb urges
us to strive to do something more meaningful so that our names evoke positive images.
But nowadays it seems as though what our “names” stand for have been
becoming increasingly shallow, hardly going past the skin itself.

Lookism – “discrimination or prejudice against people based on their appearances”

Is our society guilty of lookism? There was news about a twenty-year-old
young woman who took her own life, leaving a note explaining how she had been hurt by those who teased her for being “fat.” Since she graduated from high school,
she had had trouble finding employment because of her appearance and had
been increasingly stressed about her looks.

There is a joke that says, “You may be forgiven for having a bad heart or personality, but you cannot be forgiven for being ugly.” But this is no joke. With the spread of lookism, the way people judge beauty itself is changing. It is sad to know that some people do not bother to look beyond a person’s physical appearance anymore. We easily judge people base on looks. No longer would
other factors such as manners, demeanor, and personality interfere with such judgments.