IN EXILE
By
Rev. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Triumph
of appearance: when looking good is more important than being good
Focus on your image, because
image is everything! Those words or at least words to that effect, were
the caption of a famous ad several years ago. I remember being taken
aback by its crass and shallow message, but not many people reacted,
perhaps because the caption is so true to our time.
We are a people obsessed
with appearance, with image, with looking good, with being good-looking.
For us today, by and large, it is more important to look good than to
be good, to look healthy than to be healthy, to say the right things
than to do the right things, to be connected to the right persons than
to be the right persons, and to be perceived as having character than
to actually have character.
This is evident in our obsession
with physical appearance, in the hagiography we accord to our celebrities,
in the importance we give to style and fashion and in our efforts to
be perceived as connected to the right things. Image really is everything!
We see this, for example,
in politics: in public life today image trumps substance. Invariably
we care less about someone’s policies than about his or her appearance
and we elect people to public offices more on the basis of persona than
on intellect and character. In politics today it is more important to
have the right image, to be able to surround yourself with the right
energy, than it is to have substance and character.
The academic world follows
suit. For example, more and more of our universities are giving honorary
degrees to celebrities and justice advocates. There’s nothing
wrong with that, especially in recognizing and honouring men and women
who have given their lives for justice, except that I doubt that the
universities handing out those degrees actually care much about the
poor or that they intellectually endorse what the entertainment and
sports industries (who produce most of these celebrities) are doing.
But the face of a celebrity — a Nelson Mandela, an Angelina Jolie,
a Meryl Streep, a Michael Jordan or a Derek Jeter — looks really
good on the public face of the university giving that degree: Just look
at how caring, energetic, and beautiful we are!
Unfortunately, many of those
same universities are not exactly models of care and justice when dealing
with their own students and employees, but they are very caring in how
they are perceived from the outside. Giving a doctorate to someone who
has given his or her life in the struggle for justice doesn’t
in fact do much for the poor, but it does do something for the institution
honouring him or her.
But before we judge this
too harshly, we should admit that what is happening in the public sphere
is also happening in our private lives. More and more, in our lives,
appearance is what we are most concerned about. For many of us, how
we look is the first thing, the whole thing and the only thing. It’s
not so important that we be good, only that we look good. It is no small
irony that we are so outraged and indignant about how much money our
governments spend on their defence budgets, even as we live in a certain
blissful ignorance of what each of us, personally, spends on our own
defence budgets — cosmetics and fashion.
Sadly we are paying a high
price for this. Our concern to look good is crucifying us. We are growing
ever more dissatisfied with our own bodies, even when they are healthy
and serving us well. A healthy self-image today is more contingent upon
looking good than on actually being healthy. The prevalence of anorexia,
among other things, is a symptom of this and, too often, our dieting
and exercise have less to do with health than with appearance.
Granted, not all of this
is bad. To be concerned about physical appearance is healthy, as are
(most times at least) dieting and exercise. We are meant to look good
and, in fact, we feel better about ourselves when we do look good. It
is a healthy thing to feel good about your body and your health. A healthy
concern about how we look should never be denigrated in the name of
depth or sanctity. Indeed one of the first signs of clinical depression
is lack of concern about appearance.
The same holds true for how
we are perceived from the outside. A good reputation is thing to be
guarded and defended. It is important to look good.
But appearance and reputation
should never replace character, depth and integrity, just as the claim
of substance and character is never an excuse for a shoddy and sloppy
appearance. Today, however, I suggest that we have lost the proper balance
and stand in a certain peril. Of what?
When image is everything,
gradually, without us noticing, appearance begins to look like character,
celebrity begins to look like nobility of soul, and looking good becomes
more important than being good.
Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX. He can be contacted through his website: www.ronrolheiser.com.
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