Beauty and Butter: A New Paradigm for Aging and the Wisdom of the Lamas
“…With an appropriated lesson from the lamas, we may be able to recast the relationship between our self-conscious concept of aging and the artificial enhancements tied to celebrity.”
During each Lantern Festival, the 15th day of the first month on the Chinese lunar calendar, Tibetan Buddhist lama artists create ornate and intricate sculptures made of yak butter. These butter sculptures typically take months to create, and due to the low melting point of butter, many monks choose to complete the sculpture in a very cold room. When completed, the lively and vivid butter statues are displayed under a sky of lanterns as part of the festivities. (According to Chinese tradition, at the very beginning of a new year, when there is a bright full moon hanging in the sky, there should be thousands of colorful lanterns hung out for people to appreciate. Imagine how beautiful that would be to see!) When the festival is over, the butter sculptures are melted down and the butter is discarded.
Aside from the striking artistry of these sculptures, these butter statues are meant to represent ‘impermanence.’ Impermanence is an important tenet of Buddhist philosophy, and the butter sculptures are a reminder of the ephemeral nature of life. Nurture your life, live it vibrantly, and then, when it is time, you let your life melt away.
This idea of impermanence is also useful for our own exploration of adulthood. As we all know, adulthood is inescapable. Inevitably, we will grow older. But, in our western culture which places a high cultural value on beauty, it is aging (and the inevitable conclusion to aging) that is one of the hardest aspects of being “an adult.”
Scantily clad celebrities infiltrate the covers of our magazines, our television shows, our movies, and our own collective consciousness. Thanks to Photoshop, celebrities in photographs are seen without a wrinkle, a blemish, or an ounce of fat. Thanks to plastic surgery, you too can opt to get any number of invasive and non-invasive procedures that will help you ward off the visible signs of aging! (…)
In Anthony Elliot’s article entitled “I Want to Look Like That!: Cosmetic Surgery and Celebrity Culture”, Elliot finds a strong correlation between the power of celebrity culture and the rising popularity of cosmetic surgery. Elliot posits that celebrity bodies become key sites of identification, imitation, and desire. We must agree: the cultural fascination with celebrity beauty has become an inescapable national obsession. Did Pippa Middleton pad her butt for the royal wedding? Did JWow get more plastic surgery or just lose weight? Is it really just good “face cream” that Martha Stewart has been wearing all these years? Did Giselle have liposuction after giving birth to her child? Are Scarlett Johansson’s breasts real? Did Sarah Jessica Parker have her famous mole removed?
As we grow up, we nurture our own beauty (whatever that means to each of us), just as the lamas spent many months nurturing, shaping, then coloring each butter flower, leaf, face, animal, mountain, river, and tree. As we watch ourselves age, we wait for our inevitable melting façade. As time goes on, we note that our shapes are not as pert and formed as they once were and that our colors aren’t quite as bright. But, we think of the butter sculptures and remember that aging should not be feared, but rather, celebrated. Aging is one of the most important components to the festival of our Life.
In due time, the sun begins to melt down all of our shapes and colors, sometimes a slow melt with the morning sun, and sometimes all at once in a biting heat. When the sun finally sets for the night, we are gone. We are left as only a pool of melted rainbow colors, in just one singular form — truly a beautiful end.
And those friends and family who live on and who once greatly admired us know that we have lived well, and the brightly colored lanterns of every new year will continue to illuminate the living memories of our buttered past.
[Photo credits, as the photos appear: mariachily, hanz007, and TingChang, all via Flickr.]
6 Responses to “Beauty and Butter: A New Paradigm for Aging and the Wisdom of the Lamas”
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I looooooved this post Mara!!! What a wonderful analogy you came up with. I am studying Gender Psychology right now and we are discussing this topic at the moment, the idea of beauty being dictated by pop/celebrity culture and how obsessive we are about the quest of eternal youth. Loved it!
_Sara
Sara, that sounds interesting!!! Send me any articles that might be good topics for discussion on Welcome to Adulthood! This is a theme that I think we should really explore. Orrrr, write a guest blog!!
I absolutely love this post! What a great message and wonderful way to put aging into perspective. Thank you for writing this.
Thank you for reading!
turning 30 forced me to think about age, body image etc. many of my friends (including my husband) have been DREADING turning 30. i L-O-V-E-D it. i love getting older. i wouldn’t trade one year, one wrinkle (already acquired or soon-to-be-noticed) or one life lesson for a tighter rear end or a year back on the clock. the older i get the more my friends mean to me, the more i enjoy the really simple things money can’t buy and fewer and fewer people can really argue with me…because i’m older and wiser
. honestly, i wouldn’t trade one day of the warmth and comfort i feel in my life for the stress and pressure celebrities feel every day. i guess to feel comfortable in your skin you have to know what’s underneath it…a heart, a soul, hopefully a good sized head on your shoulders.
on a different note…i really love butter. your post broke my heart for all the yak butter that gets wasted. i’ve never had yak butter, but i feel like it must be delicious and could be used to make something after it melts?! no?!
I agree, Sarah. I love being older. I feel like I really know myself well, and that I am proud of the person I have grown up to be. I love your comment. I think my favorite part was when you wrote, “The older i get the more my friends mean to me, the more i enjoy the really simple things money can’t buy and fewer and fewer people can really argue with me…” You should think about guest blogging! You are poetic and wise — just the kind of author perfect for Welcome to Adulthood!