My Physical Self
I think our sense of self and identity comes first to the physical attributes that we and others have. The way their hair looks, the clothes that they use, their complexion, skin, face, and many others. We distinguish our friends and family by the stored images in our brains. Our physical self provides a certain degree of uniqueness and belongingness to our society. And by this concept, we develop certain standards and ideals that help shape the way we accept ourselves and others, admire and hate certain appearances, build various stereotypes, and hateful prejudices that molds our morals and principles in numerous unique ways. There is a whole philosophy of aesthetics that we humans hold thus our treatment of physical traits and attributes affect our everyday life.
Me? I would say that I am an average looking guy. My friends, and especially my family would always shoot that I look too thin for my height despite the ‘normal’ status of my body mass index. What’s more, when I’m either with one of my parents, they would always point out that “I strayed far away from the tree” unless when I come with them together. I do admit, I always feel like I look different from my relatives. Moreover, my sense of style does want to go farthest to the current trends, not because I care a lot, but because I do not. The culture behind it doesn’t bother me that much. All with that said, I agree that our objective notions affect our self and identity greatly.
As someone who has anxiety disorders, it changed the way I prepare presenting myself to others. So many factors meander my own assessment. Through development, maturity, and social, it annoys me that this sends people in certain degrees of distress and pressure to alight themselves to the standards set by society. Besides, we cannot regret something that we do not have a choice on. Heredity commands what might one see. I, myself, can handle the remarks that I hear. Fortunately, I was treated, for others, it's a different story. Something puzzling always came to my mind. As someone who admires philosophy immensely, I feel for the people who are going through something physically related. Excluding the part of taking care of our health, we should be able to, as humans, not care about what may seem as accepting to others. True, just saddening that people are experiencing bulimia and other eating disorders because of the standards that we set. Many others too many to mention, problems plaguing our society. Reading through my books or hearing it in my classes sends an unnerving, incomprehensible feeling. I do hope that we could know better.
Our metrics do not apply to every living individual. I sometimes experience this in my everyday commute. It’s where I expose myself to a lot of people. And sometimes, I get to see someone being dragged off their dignity because of their appearance. Be it something the way they talk, look like, its the same unnecessary results. Also, this is most evident in social media platforms. Our notions of a person’s facade reminded me of something that is constant. What of which is change. Because of that, I do hope that this is something of a reality, any of the recourse it may take. May we impart and contribute this change because it relies upon our self.
