Do you agree or disagree with the following statement:
Nowadays, people put too much emphasis on personal appearance and fashion.
External appearance and fashion today capture more the attention of people, especially young people. They usually place too much importance on these factors to build good images of themselves as well as assess other people. However, these viewpoints should be reconsidered. People should not insist on appearance and fashion.
To begin with, appearance is not always of the main criterions to value people. Any conclusion about someone’s personality and aptitudes based largely on her/his appearance would be probably biased. How people look is not definitely a perfect reflection of how they behave or work. In fact, many great scientists do not look fashionable because they spend the majority of their time on their research. They are not good at fashion and appearance, but their great contributions to science is definitely unquestionable/ no doubt. In this case, how can their appearance say about their competence and expertise? Appearance should not a core factor when it comes to consider someone’s abilities.
Next, people may suffer a lot when they are too much interested in external appearance. In turn, this suffering can affect adversely on their life. Today, many young people, especially young ladies, resort to plastic surgery to improve their look. They spend too much time and a tremendous amount of money just to make their lips more beautiful or the body well-proportioned. As the result of this, they do not have time for their family, their friends and their career anymore. Seriously, they are likely to get addicted to plastic surgery and may become victims of complications after the surgery. This fact can be typically found within part of young singers in Korea and the U.S. Thus, paying too much attention to appearance in this case cannot help. On the contrary, this even makes things worse.
In conclusion, people should not consider appearance and fashion as main factors to evaluate other people as well as themselves. These factors should be secondary elements to assess someone’s abilities. Furthermore, people can get bad consequences when people, due to their emphasis on appearance and fashion, abuse cosmetic operation just to make their look good.
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TOEFL listening discussions: A conversation between a dorm mother and a resident
