by Lisa H Warren

Created on: May 14, 2008   Last Updated: May 15, 2008

When it comes to physical beauty there are four cold, hard, facts-of life. Why women often seem to aim for the unrealistic is related to those facts:

1. One woman's "unrealistic" is another woman's "perfection". If you go to any college campus you will find many, many, young women who are absolutely perfect in appearance. These are pretty, young, women, who are fit and well proportioned. Their faces are often without blemishes (and always without fine lines). If they haven't messed it up their hair is gleaming with good health. While that campus may have plenty of young women who don't enjoy that kind of perfection in physical beauty, such perfection is not all that rare.

Young women see those "perfect specimens" around them and want to be perfect too. Older women (particularly those who were once "perfect specimens" themselves) can sometimes have trouble letting go of the self-image they once enjoyed. We live in a society that tells us we don't have to grow old prematurely or even "gracefully" - and, in fact, we shouldn't. Even women who don't care much about society's messages, however, generally prefer to fend off wrinkles and fine lines as long as possible. Even when they know they can't get rid of them, women who choose to try to reduce the appearance of those wrinkles and lines can appear to be "aiming for the unrealistic".

It isn't just on college campuses where physical perfection can be found. It's anywhere there are young women between the ages of about 18 to, in some cases, 40 or so (provided a woman hasn't aged prematurely). Of course, as women get into having babies and sometimes having the stress of child-rearing, keeping a home up, and sometimes working, the demands can detract from their ability to stay perfect looking. Still, the potential is there for many women.

For those people who acknowledge the reality that is such a thing as "physical perfection" it often doesn't seem all that "unrealistic" to aim to achieve such perfection.

2. Physical beauty is not the measure of a person's character or inner beauty, but trying to show that one "cares about her appearance" tells a judgmental world that "at least she bothers to make an effort". Women who don't appear to "bother" are generally thought less of in our society.

Most women don't want to seem as if they "don't care", so they look at their flaws and aim to work on them. There's no point trying to fix what isn't broken; but sometimes trying to fix what is can seem to be aiming for the "unrealistic".

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