Physical Appearance Podcast
Speaker 1:
In this podcast you are going to listen to a text about physical attractiveness, but before you listen, let’s explain some of the language you’ll hear that may be new vocabulary for you.
Do you have freckles? Freckles are the small light brown patches that often become more pronounced through exposure to the sun, often found on your nose and cheeks.
And have you come across the word chubby before? This is an adjective to mean plump and rounded so can describe a body shape or part of the body like ‘chubby cheeks’, for example.
If you have a double-chin, you have a roll of fatty flesh below your chin, so it’s as if you have two chins!
A new-born baby has flawless skin, that is that their skin has no imperfections, it’s perfectly smooth.
All women would like to have slender legs. This is an adjective to mean gracefully slim or thin.
A man may feel proud if he has a square jaw which is where the lower jawbone juts out on either side, Brad Pitt is a handsome example of someone with a square jaw. Some women also have them of course!
Not so attractive is a beer belly! A bulge of the stomach often caused by consuming too much beer and tends to happen to men as they get older.
So, let’s listen to the text and study some more of the language afterwards.
Speaker 2:
Have you ever wished you were more physically attractive? If you have, you’re not alone. In today’s beauty-obsessed culture, being good-looking is highly valued. It seems as if honesty or kindness are at best, secondary, at worst, irrelevant. It doesn’t help that we are surrounded by images of perfect beauty. Don’t you just hate it when you open a magazine or turn on the TV and all you see are photoshopped images of handsome men with square jaws, no beer bellies and impossibly skinny women with flawless skin, long slender legs and large breasts? Personally, I’m convinced the fashion media is mainly to blame for our obsession with the 'body beautiful'. Perfect make-up can make most people look gorgeous, and let’s not forget that the actors, models and socialites we want to look like spend a lot of time and money on their appearance. However, as the huge increase in cosmetic surgery unfortunately shows, more and more ‘normal’ people are dissatisfied with their looks and prepared to do anything to improve them.
It’s tempting to think that if only I had a differently shaped nose, a less prominent jaw or less of a double chin, life would be better, but is this really true? Apparently lipoplasty – an operation that gives people plump lips (for that just-kissed look) – is the most common cosmetic procedure in the world (more than 2 million procedures a year), followed by breast implants for women. However, for both sexes, the most common reason for cosmetic surgery is it increases self-confidence. This is probably true, but why can’t we feel confident as we are, with our freckles, our chubby bellies and our big noses?
Feeling confident because of your looks isn’t as bad as being a show-off about them, but it’s a dangerous illusion. Relying on your attractiveness to make you feel better is eventually going to make you unhappy: at 60 nobody looks like they did at 20. If you are used to people looking at you admiringly, how are you going to feel when they ignore you? According to one Beverley Hills’ plastic surgeon, whose clients are some of the world’s most gorgeous people, once these people start to lose their looks, they have nothing left. They wake up one day and realise that there’s no way they’ll ever regain their youth and they feel empty. They see themselves as ugly and are no longer capable of simply saying ‘thanks for the compliment’, their response is always one of disbelief. What a terrible feeling that must be.
Speaker 1:
Now for some questions. The answers are at the end of the podcast.
Apart from slender, did you hear another word which means thin?
And you probably heard ‘square jaw’ in the podcast. Did you hear another way of describing someone’s mandible?
Chubby means ‘fat’. What other word is used in the text to mean ‘fat’?
And finally, did you hear the noun used to describe a person who talks proudly about what they can do, or who they know so that other people will admire them?
Speaker 2:
Pause the podcast now if you want to listen again because the answers are coming up.
Speaker 1:
The other word used to mean thin was ‘skinny’ in the phrase ‘impossibly skinny women’.
Prominent was used to describe a jaw…’a less prominent jaw’.
Apart from chubby you also heard the word plump which also means fat and in the text was used to describe lips.
And did you find the answer to the last question? The noun used to describe a person who talks proudly about what they can do, or who they know so that other people will admire them? A show-off.
Speaker 2:
If you found the answers to all these questions, then you should show off about it! You can also use it as a verb, as you can see here! Well done.
Speaker 1:
Now before we go, it’s time to reflect on the topic. Have a think…
Speaker 2:
Are you happy with your physical appearance or are there things you would change or improve if you could?
Would you ever consider cosmetic surgery?
Do you think being good-looking can help you in life?

For more on this topic, see B2.3 Unit 9