Pursuing immaculate and perfect skin can be a sign of the desertion from the notion that we can live with sicknesses. It seems that the almost manic obsession with rejecting your disease and desperately pursuing health has seeped into our culture. The thought of living with diseases can be polarizing, intense, ambitious, and unrestrainable. I can imagine people running toward health, believing that it’s at the top while sickness is at the bottom. It is a jog towards a mirage: perfect health.

There seems to be, from the point of view of Japanese culture, a delusory attachment towards “youth” and “the perfect body” in Western culture. Eastern culture emphasizes the idea that aging is a natural biological process and that going against it can cause health problems. However, as long as Western culture dominates, this obsession will persist, and people will continue to gravitate towards Schwarzenegger like physiques. Although I won’t say that this is a bad thing, it could be dangerous to develop an extreme fixation to get “the perfect body”. Just like “the perfect body” or “eternal youth”, “perfect skin” is a mirage.