Many people become Obsessed with Appearance Essay

Many people become Obsessed with Appearance - Essay Example Obsession with appearance is often referred to as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) or imagined ugliness in which an individual begins to notice flaws in their body design, such as facial features or body structure, until these thoughts become a long-term obsession (Phillips, Didie, Feusner and Wilhelm, 1112). Obsession generally involves a relatively harmless belief, based often on the aforementioned media influences including celebrity worship and plastic surgery-related media, which turns into a lasting fixation on the perceived problems and can lead to disastrous social consequences such as the inability to function in society. This obsession with appearance can also stem from the natural course of aging in which the skin begins to lose its elasticity, tooth begin to lose their bright white faà §ade, and lines begin to appear on the face around the eyes and mouth. Because society tends to create a portrait of perfection by which most members of society are expected to conform, in which youthful complexions are regarded as being satisfactory and aged appearance unsatisfactory, even older adults can become obsessed with appearance and find difficulty adjusting to social environments. Even though the aging process is a natural outcome of life experiences and decades of exposure to different elements, and many of their older peers share these same facial features, many people find it difficult to cope with the aging process and long for the days when their faces were youthful. These people who become obsessed with appearance are often drawn toward cosmetic surgery as a means to remove these fixations or, fail ing to act on the obsession, they face depressive disorders or have thoughts of suicide. Further, every human being maintains measurable levels of serotonin in their brains, which is a chemical neurotransmitter, which is, from a clinical perspective, highly important in regulating