Throughout this world there are many binary oppositions. There are oppositions that range from female to male, earth to sky, youth to age, chaos to order, and beautiful to ugly. We can even find binary opposites in our own history and stories, even all the way back to Greek mythology. The binary opposite I find most interesting is beautiful vs. ugly

One of my favorite stories that compares someone beautiful and someone considered repulsive is the story of Beauty and the Beast. This story shows the opposites but also proves that looks are not everything. That personality is more important than beauty. Belle is scared at first of the Beast but then gets to know him and how he became this way. She later on falls in love him. In the end when the spell breaks and the Beast reverts to his true, more handsome form, Belle still loves him. Now Belle is able to see the beauty of the Beast on the outside as well as on the inside.

I think this story is a great example on how people should act towards each other. We need to learn that beauty on the outside is not even compared to the true beauty a person has within themselves. To learn to love the real person on the inside.

One negative impact on the binary of beautiful vs. ugly is the impact it has on young girls. For many years social media has been a horrible outlet for girls to deal with. They have to constantly deal with seeing images of what other people believe to be "beautiful." Girls then also worry about how many likes they receive on their own images and if they are considered beautiful or not.

Through the many different venues of mass media, girls are bombarded with visual images of super thin models with perfect complexions. They see these images and strive to be nothing but the same, when this is very unrealistic. Most, if not all social media is edited to look better. It is not what people truly look like. This is a horrible thing to make young girls think is the ideal vision of beauty. All girls/women are beautiful in their own way.

Another way that we view beauty vs. ugliness is stories about personality. One example of this would be the story of The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy meets and befriends the Scarecrow, who wants a brain, the Tinman, who desires a heart, and the Cowardly Lion, who is in need of courage.

In this story the evil, green witch is just as ugly on the outside as on the inside. She tries to stop Dorothy and her friends from achieving happiness. Dorothy and the good witch are seen as beautiful. They have good, pure personalities and are also seen as beautiful on the outside.

The beautiful vs. ugly binary is one of the most common in this world. To not let the binary effect us we must see past looks. To look past any sort of ugliness and see within to the true beauty. To see nothing but beauty in this world. Like the quote underneath says, "Beauty and ugliness surrounds us, we decide what we see."

Works Cited