Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 25, 1995)
Commentary Wednesday, January 25,1995 Page 5 Quest for beauty found within Appearance is literally how we appear in front of others. The famous saying, “the first impres sion is the last,” holds true for all times. How often do we recollect having met a person in the past and remark that we were struck by his or her pleasant appearance, charm and charisma? A charismatic personality is a combination of poise, good looks, intellect and identity. Success of personality is the result of continu ous study, hard work and persever ance. Over the centuries, the idea of beauty and personality has been subject to the fluctuation of fashion as much as individual perception. There was a time when beauty was thought to be found in per fectly proportioned faces and bodies that were voluptuous rather than angular. Periods when faces were ornately made up or left ethereally pale, when freckles were scorned or hair adorned, when women painted, powdered and patched — ducklings striving to be swans. • Today, beauty is more than a by product of cosmetics. It lies deeper within the skin, emanating from the inner awareness and acceptance of one’s own innate qualities and values. Concentrating on how to maximize one’s good points and diminish one’s faults is more constructive. Poise is tBe aspect of our personality relating to how we walk, sit, talk, greet and carry ourselves. People with poise are described as elegant, sophisticated well-groomed. Poise is self cultivated and entirely in our own hands. Yousuf Bashir Confidence is the aspect of personality molded over a period of time, usually years. If we hold the assumption that each one of us has many hidden talents and that most of us go through our lives undis covered, we may begin to look for our potential talents. Self-confi dence and success can help one to improve his or her self-image and self-esteem. When we believe nothing can come between us and eventual success, we begin to exude a personality we did not know we possessed. We endeavor, and ours becomes a success story quoted from person to person. Physical fitness is an important link in the personality chain; in fact, it plays a key role. A healthy body leads to a healthy mind. If one is not happy with one’s own self, it is more likely that he or she may not be self-confident. Down goes the self-esteem along with this. We also must learn to master our own minds. If we let our minds wander, our thoughts tend to take control over us, resulting in hours of futile thinking, which causes creativity. And it is true that “an empty mind is the devil’s work shop.” So we must learn to master our thoughts and not let our thoughts become our masters. Self-pity is a very strong negative emotion and a favorite with most self-indulgent humans who have a lot of free time on their hands. We must treat both triumph and disaster as imposters. Never be impressed by either. The path towards love is through lust, and beauty is the doorway to it. I am a believer of “lust at first sight” instead of “love at first sight.” It is necessary to take care of your beauty. Skin is the mirror of your body, and hair is your crown ing glory. If we neglect our appearance and even our intellec tual development, this is the time to take stock and begin reversing the decline. Perhaps very integral to our concept of self is identity. One must think of the importance of one’s identity. We do not realize that we are complete individuals in ourselves. Identity recognition comes from achieving something through one’s own self. Last but not least, and to me the most important, is to have a sense of humor, or else life would become unbearable. Nature, in her wisdom, gave human beings the gift of laughter as a way of sur mounting misfortune. Laughter is indeed the best medicine. To be able to laugh at one’s self is probably one of the major secrets of peace and well-being. Self acceptance is the key to self esteem. Bashir is a senior food science major and a Daily Nebraskan colnmnist UNL policy worth listening to “It is the policy of the Univer sity of Nebraska-Lincoln not to discriminate on the basis of sex, age, race, color, religion, marital status, veteran’s status, national or ethnic origin or sexual orientation.” I’m sure you’ve seen this caption at the bottom of signs on the university’s bathroom walls, near your Health Aide’s room or in some student or faculty handbook. But have you ever really thought about the weight of its meaning? This policy is the affirmative action guideline that the University of Nebraska has followed since the late ’60s. Maybe you didn’t know we even had an affirmative action policy, or perhaps it was something you knew was out there, but you didn’t realize you were reading it every time you walked into the bathroom. Affirmative action is a difficult issue for most students to have a strong opinion about because most of us haven’t been, or don’t realize we’ve been, affected by it. But the fact is that we’ve been affected by this simple, one sentence policy since the day we entered this university. Within these few words, the university has encouraged its students to observe, with reasonable effort, that UNL is a diverse learning environment. That is something students need in order to be prepared for the real world. If immigration, birth rates and other various population factors continue to go as they have been, by the year 2000, 85 percent of the people entering the work force will be either women or minorities. That doesn’t mean that the people in executive positions will be women and minorities or that \ there will be more equality in the higher positions. But it does mean Lara Duda that the reality of competition and survival will be based on how well you adapt to a more diversely competitive situation. When I first noticed the little blurb at the bottom of a Stress Management Workshop flyer, it seemed odd to me that the univer sity had to actually make a visual statement that it didn’t discrimi nate. I thought that by the ’90s such policies would be assumed. Certainly I should hope no profes sor or doctor at UNL would refuse to help a student because of their race, gender or sexual orientation. In that sense, views of discrimi nation, overall, have progressed since affirmative action guidelines were first implemented. However, I recently read about an anti-affirmative action move ment at the University of Califor nia-Berkeley that wants to overturn programs that give minorities and women any preferential treatment for college admissions, jobs, promotions and government contracts. It’s called the California Affirmative Action Initiative, and it’s headed by two white, balding scholars who look older than 40. Besides the fact that I was immediately suspicious when I saw a picture of the men, their conser vative appearances also made their arguments not very surprising. They believe, in a nutshell, that • affirmative action guidelines promote reverse discrimination and preferential treatment. First of all, the term “preferen tial treatment” was bothersome because it had such negative connotations. I know that, at least at our university, there’s no law saying that even if a person isn’t qualified, he or she should still be given preference for a position because of race or gender. Only if two people are equally qualified do you need to consider whether race or sex could benefit the situation by adding more diversity. What scared me about the initiative is if the only guideline is not to discriminate against any individual, then it’s as if we’re going back to square one. Haven’t we learned that humans are innately biased? We have a natural tendency to relate more to someone of the same race or gender. It makes sense. But on the other hand, people tend not to think of the big picture or consider the necessity for diverse representation in such a quickly diversifying nation. I don’t think our nation is to the point yet where we can tear up our written guidelines and depend on our own human goodness to perform in a nondiscriminatory manner. It amazes me to think how such a simple sentence, which so many of us read without any extra thought, can bear the weight of every individual character and his or her freedom in this country. I bet if we typed the little blurb on the bottom of our syllabus instead of fliers that remind us how stressed we are, people would be more apt to think about its meaning. Dada Is a junior news-editorial and En glish majorand a Dally Nebraskan colnmnlst Only jurors escape the O.J. overload Damn, I wish I were on that jury. It’s not that I want to be away from my family for six months. It’s not that I want the notoriety. It’s not that I want the macad amia nuts in the hotel minibar. What I want is to be seques tered. The way I figure it, the jury only has to live with this gawdforsaken trial eight hours a day. The rest of us are going to bed with you-know-who and waking up with you-know-who. Somewhere in the seven months between the murders and the trial, I became aversive, allergic, anorexic to the story. Now I start hyperventilating if I see the initials. Can’t watch it, can’t listen to it, can’t read it, can’t drink it, can’t bear it. Can’t get away from it. The case is like a force of nature. Close your eyes and your ears and it just seeps in through your pores. It’s like sharing the neighborhood air around Chernobyl. Here I am in our nation s capital, riding up to the Hill to talk about welfare reform, and a local radio talk-show host is wondering what the L.A. prosecutor is going to wear to court. I’m in another cab on Pennsylvania Avenue reading about the balanced-budget amendment, and the driver is psychobabbling about why people kill for love. , I’m in bed later, channel surfing and suddenly I’m drowning in you-know-which citrus. I go from Larry King to Geraldo to CNN to E.T. to Court TV and there HE is, on 13 channels at the same time. This morning, I sit at my computer, eager to do combat with the House biologist, Newt Gingrich, who’s saying that women in the trenches get monthly “infections” and the men are “little piglets.” But I am being stalked by die man, the trial, the coverage. There was an ABC poll a couple of weeks ago that said 84 percent of the American public had OD’ed on you-know-which initials. There were people getting green at the sight of Kato Kaelin and people longing to spraypaint the next white Bronco on the street. The media mon grels say they’re watching anyway. How, pray, can you get away from it? But if I were only a juror, oh how different life would be. If I were a juror, I’d get my newspa pers pre-edited, trial-free and cut up like paper dolls. The head lines like “HE BEAT ME AS I Ellen Goodman CRAWLED” would be in the recycle bin. If I were a juror, they’d put a bag over my head when I walked by the newsstand so I wouldn’t see the Newsweek, Spy, Exam iner, Globe cover stories of you know-which former football player and which “bombshell” that was set to explode in the courtroom. If I were a juror, they’d put a block on my television so I wouldn’t hear a word of you know-which former Hertz adman. All I could watch would be Cary Grant on AMC and the seven dwarfs on Disney. Dopey, Sleepy and Bashful would be such a nice change of pace from Bailey, Cochran and Shapiro. Of course I would have to pay attention to what was happening in the courtroom. But I would be sheltered from the titanic battle of the legal egos. I’d also have to concentrate on the evidence. But I would be blissfully protected from the cottage industry of commenta tors speculating chi the redeem ing social value of the coverage, especially their own roles. I wouldn’t be solemnly, soberly and self-servingly told that this trial was REALLY about celebrities or spouse abuse or ' money or pathological liars or race relations. Left to my own devices, spending a mere eight hours a day on you-know-who, I might be naively lulled into believing that more important things were going on outside the courtroom than inside. Like, say earth quakes and wars. Devoid of interviews with the neighbors of the people who knew the family dog’s veterinar ian, I might come to the conclu sion that this case was about murder. I might even — al though this is a stretch — think my job was to help decide whether or not this man commit ted two murders. Best of all, I would have hours every evening happily sequestered without hearing the name O.J. Simpson. Uh oh. I said it. I think I’m getting hives. (C) 1995 The Boston Globe Newspaper Company gjg Cykfsp^W^ cfentocracy, J Hifc in "T‘ -' ^ Mike Luckovich