By Şeref İşler
It was four weeks ago now that I wrote my first column. It was on a morning when I was coming out a night shift, which means I submitted it at five in the morning. Sleepless nights are a chance to really ponder: I always found the silence of that time ideal to work out things in my mind.
One such thought that crossed my mind on a sleepless Saturday night after passing through Angel and then accidentally watching reality television once home was this: Just how superficial have we become? It is no longer a question of “are we” but more so one of “how much”.
No one can deny just how broad a question this is.
Truth is, many of us are perfectly aware of how superficial society has become, yet not many of us are willing to address it. It is a trend now for people to comment bluntly on an individual’s physical appearance, clothes, brands, smell and just about everything that really should not matter. And just in case no one said this before, let me reiterate: this is wrong.
Truth is, I’ve been there. I’m still there in fact. Some things I do in my life, I do to please others – or rather so that others will leave me alone. I am willing to admit that. When I met up with some people in Turkey I hadn’t seen in two or three years, their first comment was: “well you’re fat.” Yes, I had put on weight – because of all the medication I had to take for a serious illness. But that was not the important part. The important part was the fact that I had become unattractive.
When I told some of my other friends about the comments, their advice (as I’m sure is the advice some of my readers would have) was to find new friends, because they are clearly not accepting me as myself. Yet I keep on hearing about people being judged for their weight or some other nonsense. Some companies are even trying to play off that feeling and promoting diet pills, the medicinal value of which could be questioned.
So obviously we have a problem.
We have channelled so much of this “if you are not anorexic, you will die lonely” or “if you are not wearing this brand of clothing, the roof will collapse on your head” ideology that it’s now become a serious disease. And it is affecting all segments of society and every interaction.
The image we set in the mind of younger generations, where the importance placed on clothes, musical taste, physical appearance and other petty things are overplayed, is simply horrendous. Adults should be perfectly aware that when on the receiving end of this, insecurity festers in one’s mind, eventually overpowering all sense of logic, self-confidence and respect. Yet we chose to ignore this. And it goes on to affect kids, causing ever younger minds to experience “insecurity”. Once this superficialness gets hold of a crowd to turn it into a mob, it is suffocating for anyone who dares be themselves. And all genuine efforts to foster independence and uniqueness are then lost.
I am scaring myself as I write this, because I am seeing clearly that even as an adult, I’ve let this pattern of thought get to me. And what’s even more scary is the fact that I can’t seem to be able to shake it off: The reason why I leave the gym aching to the bone in the process of trying to lose weight is not for any reason other than to stop my weight coming up in conversations. And every time I see I haven’t lost any weight, I sigh at the thought of having to force a smile at every joke about how much I must be eating.
Then again, the thought of just how many people must be doing the same or how many parents have to dish out hard earned money for expensive clothes their kids need in order to “fit in” are things that worry me even more.
Everyone in our lives is a mirror. We see the reflection of ourselves in them. And we should not look at the ones that show us in a displeasing light. Yet they are everywhere, and what we need right now is sunlight and some fresh air.
Şeref İşler is a journalist at the BBC World Service’s Turkish section.
