Insecurity and American Idol

Americans are self-conscious idiots. Every weight-loss commercial and hair ad reminds us of our flaws. Young girls look at magazines and think they're fat. Older guys look at Viagra commercials and conclude that if they can't get it up, they should just get out. And even if we aren't complete dupes of the advertising moguls, we can't help but absorb the deadening message: you are what you eat/wear/drive/live in. And it is nowhere more apparent that today's youth are absorbing the message than when you watch the audition opener on American Idol.

These poor kids--who fly to whatever city the star-studded judges alight on, wait for hours and hours to get their numbers, then wait hours more to get into a 90-second audition that will most likely spew them out just as Jesus said he would spew out the lukewarm churches--these poor kids, after absorbing years of consumerist messages, have duded themselves up to the nines to impress THE CELEBRITIES. And they look HORRIBLE. I don't know if it's the lens on the camera, or the lights, or what. But when you see America's youth lined up like Holsteins at a cattle show, it ain't pretty.

I call this the Wal-Mart phenomenon. Ever gone into a Wal-Mart and shaken your head at how ugly America is getting? I love to watch old movies because at least those films portray a nation with a sense of dignity. And they didn't have streaky hair or anti-aging highlighting foundation or enough black eye makeup to give a mime nightmares. And I'm not saying there aren't people who would be attractive if they weren't so AWARE of themselves. It gives me the creeps to see a teenage girl trying to look like a Britney Spears clone (at Mass!) when she would be better off wiping most of that stuff off. This is not to say that I have the franchise on natural good looks. But I like to think I know how much is enough and how much will make people stare.

What's behind all this frazzled fakery? Am I just getting old? Is it that I've given up on my thighs and am now absorbing insecurities about my securities? Because that's what the grand ol' machine of the economy does, folks. Its job is to sell fear. And if people aren't buying enough, its job is to sell more. Fears about my looks, fears about my money, fears about my health, my house, my kids, my job, and my personal favorite: OUR NATION'S FUTURE. And since all these fears have mainly to do with ME, I am so wrapped up in them that I don't care about anything else. I don't care about the rise of militant nationalism, or economic coercion, or families that walk days in search of food, or people who are killed because they were on the wrong side of a border. Instead, I care about the expense ratio that might rob our retirement fund of an extra $15,000 thirty years in the future.

I'm not crying conspiracy. There's no cigarette-smoking man in some back room of Congress pulling strings. I just don't believe that. But I do believe in sin. I think it's sin that makes people look ugly. And I'm not talking about people who weren't blessed with symmetrical features--I mean everyone. We all have an ugliness about us that makes us, on a bad, rainy, crappy day, think that everyone and everything else is ugly. The Britney Spears girl is ugly. The rapist guy on the news is ugly. Nick and Jessica on the cover of the tabloids are ugly. And when I look at myself in the mirror, I realize that I'm no different.

What's the antidote to all this ugliness? I'm amazed that the decorative masks people used to wear haven't come back into fashion, because there are days when I sure feel like wearing one. I think the ugliness should remind us that true beauty--which is only hinted at in rain-washed hills and gauzy clouds and the soft fuzz on a baby's cheek--will never be found on this earth. Our soul longs for it, and our inspirations and desires clearly indicate that, since we are capable of imagining it, it must be found somewhere. This has been called an argument for the existence of God. And the argument is compelling, provided we don't confine our notion of beauty to what is found on this earth, and in the aisles of the drugstore.