Does Having a Perfect Body Make Us Happy?
A look at materialistic lifestyles, long term love, cosmetic surgery and dieting and how popular beliefs are shown to be misconceptions.
Materialism
At the age of thirty-two, I cried when my boyfriend of four years asked me to get some bacon at the local shop. Strange right?
Years of buying the best TVs, furniture, and clothes, international holidays and long weekends in Spain and Portugal, being successful and having it all had conspired to depress me. The bacon was the last straw.
I’d achieved everything I’d desired and realised it meant nothing.
You know all that stuff you buy? A twenty-year study by Nickerson et al (2003) showed that a materialistic lifestyle does not make you happy and, in fact, has a detrimental impact on your mental health.
Love
You’d think that love, being in love, would make you happier. The Lucas et al (2003) study discovered that the honeymoon period is indeed true, as experienced by married German women but, as we know, that intoxicating pheromonal desire doesn’t last. Their life satisfaction returned to pre-marriage levels after one to two years.
