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| Beauty, Amen. Name: Brittany P Date: 2005-04-12 17:12:36 Link to this Comment: 14525 |
Brittany Pladek
CSEM Paper #4
Beauty, Amen.
*
My friend Matt puts it bluntly. "I like big, strong men," he says. We're in his room. In one corner stands a cardboard cut-out of Vin Diesel during his wrestling days, all gleaming skin and bulging leather. "Like that." Matt tosses his head over his shoulder, and I wrinkle my nose.
"Ugh. Why?"
He grins. "Because I like muscle!"
Matt also likes older men. He's seventeen, and his current boyfriend---a bodyguard from New York---is twenty-nine. Combine the two traits, and I'd say what Matt actually likes is power. But I don't tell him that. After all, I got up this morning and put in contacts, applied mascara, and daubed blush, and I don't even have a boyfriend.
Matt finishes gelling his hair, then carefully chooses a cyan buttondown that highlights the green flecks in his eyes. When he stands back and asks me, "Well? Do you think he'll like it?" I know exactly who he's talking about. I nod.
I wish I could be so specific.
John Berger was the first to describe what feminist theory has since dubbed the "masculine gaze." 1 Berger posited that women in Western culture have grown so used to being "looked at" by men that they internalize the feeling. "'Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at," Berger explains. And they do it so often and so thoroughly that---even when there are no men present---they're haunted by the scrutiny of masculine eyes. This ever-present observation at least partly explains why I was standing next to Matt wearing makeup, though I had no plans to go anywhere that day where any (heterosexual) male might spot me.
Why makeup, and not my heart on my sleeve? According to Berger, one of the primary features which draws the "masculine gaze" is beauty. Not beauty in the Keats sense, something inner and eternal and ineffable, but beauty in the Kay sense---Mary, that is. Unfortunately for woman, man is not superman. He lacks X-ray vision. (Otherwise my heart on my sleeve might really be decoration enough!) The masculine gaze inspects purely physical appearance---eyes, hair, makeup---then weighs it against the current societal standard. (The latest model: tall, thin, flawless skin). When women internalize this constant surveillance, it roosts in their psyches like some inner, cosmetic Big Brother: he's always watching, so you better look good. And many women obey, even when there are no men around to see them. It doesn't matter. That invisible He is omnipresent, checking out their racks from the backs of their minds.
Meanwhile Matt is buffing his loafers, whistling. His beauty routine is utterly unselfconscious. He doesn't have any feminist hangups.
Point of information: Matt is Wiccan, which is possibly why he doesn't feel so bad about fucking a guy twelve years his senior. Or fucking guys, for that matter. He doesn't have any religious hangups. I, on the other hand, was raised Presbyterian, and cringe even typing the word "fuck." (This is relevant, I promise). Back when I was in Sunday school, my teachers used to corral my classmates and I into circles, then force us to listen to tepid Christian "rock" performed by Pat, our resident rhythm guitarist. I suppose they wanted to inspire us. But the only song that ever inspired me was a Bette Midler tune called "From a Distance." The refrain runs thus:
God is watching us
God is watching us
God is watching us... from a distance.
There, in a nutshell, is the basic Christian mindset. An omnipotent, omnipresent, invisible deity that sees your every move, reads your every thought, and weighs it against an ancient moral standard (with some stretch-room for denominational differences). To paraphrase Bette Midler: God is always watching, so you better be good.
The similarities between the "male gaze's" influence on women and the "God gaze's" influence on Christians are striking; and not, I think, coincidental. After all, God is the ultimate Masculine, the great "He" to which every other "he" defaults. Despite the Church's insistence that the crux of the Trinity never adopts a specific sex, nearly all Christian representations of God are of God the Father. Furthermore, as Carol Gilligan suggests, a key "masculine" attribute is the appearance of power. God is defined by the power He wields; the Lord's prayer concludes, "for Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory---forever." Compared to the Almighty, every human being on earth is "feminine:" the observed, the submissive, the powerless.
Both God and the "male gaze" wield their power shrewdly. Technically, neither have to really wield it at all. They function solely though the belief in their own omnipotence, as experienced by any human in whom that belief resides. And where belief goes, behavior follows. Women, feeling male eyes on their backs, attend to their physical beauty; Christians, feeling God's eyes, attend to their spiritual beauty.
Right, "spiritual beauty." You don't hear it a lot; but isn't that what it is? Again---sadly---we're not exactly talking Keats here. While Christian "spiritual beauty" is generally more benevolent than society's ideals of physical attractiveness (love > a tight ass), it's just as formulaic as Cosmo's "101 Secret Tips for Sexy Skin." Granted, God was a little more gracious than Cosmo. He only published ten tips, and none of them were secret. But God---like the "male gaze"---has a standard. And He's always watching (at least, He's got you convinced He's always watching) to make sure YOU live up to it.
Matt isn't living up to it. I help him button his shirt, then we walk downstairs to my car. He's only seventeen; can't drive yet. I'm giving him a lift to the train station, where he'll hop the 3:30 Amtrack to New York. Pete (that's the bodyguard) pays for his ticket.
Another point of information: Matt was raised Catholic. He converted to Wicca at age fifteen, after deciding that a Mother Goddess might be more understanding of his unrequited passion for Harrison Ford. (Most sects of Wicca worship a female deity: Earth Mother, the Great Goddess, Gaia, etc. It's an ancient, bohemian religion, decentralized, that distributes power equally among all living things.) His family doesn't know, and consequently still brings him to Mass every week, where he fiddles rosaries and concocts acceptable sins for his confessor. Maintaining the facade of Christian spiritual beauty is tough. For example, Matt's sect of Wicca prohibits him from blowing out candles. I don't know what he does on Christmas Eve.
Actually, maintaining any "standard" of beauty is tough, even when you're sincere about it. It can even be dangerous. For example, a few years ago, my mother took a trip to visit one of her high school friends, a tall, pretty brunette named Elaine. During her stay, Elaine's youngest girl (four at the time) came up to her, and, poking her breasts, asked with utter sincerity, "What are those?" Turns out that since leaving school, Elaine had developed anorexia. At five foot six, she weighed only a hundred pounds. Her body had devoured its own breasts for nourishment. And anorexia is just one device in a dungeonful of torture devices, some of them just as medieval as the metaphor implies, designed to help women appease the eyes glued to their backs. Some examples in no particular order: back alley liposuction, breast implants, butt implants, hair implants, hair removal, botched nose jobs.
Strict standards of spiritual beauty can be just as harmful. Though history describes numerous self-inflicted methods of soul beautification (one "u" away from beatification!)---hair shirts, flagellation, fasting, surgical celibacy---the maintenance of spiritual beauty is oftentimes more dangerous to others than it is to the self. Not only that, it's usually on a much larger scale. The Crusades. The Inquisition. The Nazis. Bloody Sunday. Certainly holy wars aren't unique to Christian culture, but that doesn't change the fact that every zealot waging a jihad honestly believes (and it's the belief, remember, that's important!) that his participation will give him a one-up with the Almighty.
Sure, you may reply, but zealots and anorexics don't comprise a huge part of the population. There are always nutjobs that take things too far, right?
I'll respond with a different question: How far is "too far?" Pretend, for a moment, that you're a devout Christian woman. Now tell me this. What did you give up for Lent? And how much money did you spend on makeup this month?
More importantly, what are you getting in return? The reward system is the one key difference between "male gaze" and Christian standards of beauty. 2 God outlines His system very explicitly. Obey His Commandments, love thy neighbor (platonically of course), and attend church at least semi-regularly: congratulations! You get to go to heaven! Disobey the Commandments, scorn thy neighbor (unless he's gay or an atheist), and skip church for the bowling alley: ouch, too bad! Hell for you!
The "male gaze" doesn't have a distinct voice. While there's certainly social stigma associated with rejection of societal beauty standards (just log onto www.uglypeople.com), if you forget your mascara in the morning, no huge male hand will descend to smite you into Dis. On the other hand, nothing inherent in your daily beauty routine guarantees a concrete return. Anna Nicole Smith may plug herself with Trimspa specifically to land a rich geriatric, but for most women, the daily impulse to meet beauty ideals exists hazily independent of any physical reward. In a sense, the male gaze is an enormous bluff---but women rarely call it. Why?
I think the answer involves both Anna Nicole Smith and God. (No joke!) The "male gaze" wasn't always so ephemeral, so internalized. In medieval Europe, all women played the Anna Nicole role. Unless blessed with extraordinary power or lineage (like Elizabeth I), medieval women staked their fortunes on snaring rich husbands. Beauty was an effective trap. But once sprung, it became obsolete. Among Christian women---curse that pesky seventh commandment!---it was even a liability. Married women were (and still are, to some extent) expected to beautify more conservatively than their single counterparts.3 When they didn't, it was a shocker; hence the phrase, "But she's a married woman!"
Matt's boarding the train. I see him off at the platform, wondering vaguely if he has a sparkly thong hidden somewhere in his backpack. Since Matt technically doesn't exist in Christian dogma, he could---if he wanted---dress like a fifty-dollar whore until the day he dies. (Not that he would. Matt's too classy for that.) But he could, because technically he can't marry, and therefore technically there's no commandment seven for him to break. That's God's law, but it's state law too.
Fortunately for modern-day women, survival no longer hangs on securing an advantageous marriage. Likewise, participation in a committed relationship doesn't significantly alter our wardrobe (Victoria Secret's "Boyfriend Jeans" are as skin-tight and hip-hugging as their "Very Sexy" models). However, the compulsion to be beautiful remains, ingrained into us as thoroughly as the Ten Commandments are into Christians. He may not be looking to marry you anymore, but Big Brother is still watching. And since we've rejected the medieval idea of wifely homeliness, His surveillance lasts---and lasts---and lasts. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, Amen.
The train hisses into motion. I spot Matt at a nearby window and raise my hand to wave goodbye.
Beauty is a religion. I know it's been said before, jokingly, but I honestly believe it's true. Beauty is a religion, just like Christianity: complete with God, commandments, priests, and zealots. No Mother Goddess, unfortunately. (Though there is Madonna---she's even called "Madonna," isn't that convenient?) I'd argue that it's the most widely-practiced faith in America today.
Point of information: I'm agnostic, which is the technical term for having no idea. I don't go to church regularly. But when I do, I always wear makeup. Isn't that interesting?
Matt palms one hand at me, some Wicca farewell he found in an Astrology book. Then he waves goodbye more conventionally---not with his hand, but with something pink and sparkly.
Oh, God.
*
1 Berger actually wrote "male," but I substitute "masculine." "Masculine," while not tied expressly to the male sex, collectively describes a number of characteristics which have traditional associations with men. The most important of these is power, because power has played the most instrumental role in establishing the dichotomous, dominant/submissive male-to-female stereotype.
2
I mean in execution, not the ideals themselves. Ideologically, the standards of the "male gaze" and those of the Christian God are near polar opposites. You could write a book on the differences. It's their application that I'm comparing.3
I refer explicitly to Western European tradition, which informs how both Christianity and the "male gaze" operate in Western society today. Other cultures saw things differently: for example, in Heian period Japan, married upper-class women daily underwent extraordinarily rich and complex beauty routines. Which isn't exactly liberating, of course: the difference is that between a plain cage and a gilded one.*
Sources utilized:
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/gilligan.html
http://www.bharatbhasha.com/marriage.php/20178
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/bernardino-2sermons.html
http://www.medieval-life.net/clothing.htm
http://www.geocities.com/ladysveva/clothing/Japanese.html
Our discussion upstairs last Thursday
| Can we remove the Bias? Name: Marissa Pa Date: 2005-04-14 11:49:32 Link to this Comment: 14565 |
I found it rather interesting that this movie was lauded as showing that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that looks don't matter, yet when in class we read the piece on calli, which essentially had the same effects as Hal's hypnosis, many people in the class felt it was unfair and "wrong" to blind someone to the physical beauty of others. There does seem to be a difference, however, at least in believability. In the movie it was an unlikely hypnotism that caused the beauty-blind effect. Yet in the Ted Change piece it was a medical procedure to change brain function. Though this piece was fiction we nowadays have so many different ways to alter the brain with medication and surgical procedures this seems so much more realistic, almost. With all of the concern for political correctness and a race and color blind society, I would have no difficulty picturing some sort of pill or procedure that would turn us into just that, a color/race/beauty blind people.
It's odd though. I am not sure if I entirely see that as a bad thing. While I of course enjoy looking at beauty, including physical beauty, I often feel that life would be easier if that was something I did not have to "deal" with. I all too frequently find myself thinking about physical beauty, be it my own or that of those around me. I find this most prevalent when looking at members of the opposite sex. I do not think that I consider their personalities often enough when perceiving what I "think" they would be like.
I think it is a lot harder than some people think to turn ones mind off to prejudices one has about race, color, gender, or even "little" things like hair color or the number of pimples on someone's face. At a school like Bryn Mawr I feel like people try to like everyone based on internal personalities, but we still have girls who glance over at another table in the dining hall and snicker to their friends about what that person is wearing or what she looks like. In today's society there is little we can do about that, other than to hope and encourage getting to know others in an environment where appearance is not as important, like in a class setting.
Appearances also play a large role in the "real" world, outside the Bryn Mawr bubble. Beautiful women are often paid more, promoted more often, and hold positions of higher authority than those of a less fortunate profile. There is also the experiment we discussed in class that was also included in Survival of the Prettiest, where researchers left identical fake college application essays in an airport, changing only the appearance of the girl photographed. Airport visitors were much more likely to mail in the application of the beautiful girl than the same exact application with the less beautiful picture. What does this say about our society, that we are so biased that even something like a college application is seen as less valuable when belonging to an "ugly" person?
It again seems to me that some sort of calli would level the playing field, allowing society to focus on the more important things in life without being distracted by the physical beauty standards we are so often held up to. Though I was able to see and sometimes agree with the anti-calli sentiments expressed in the Chang article, I found myself wondering if it would be a completely different scenario if it was something that was just taken for granted, in a way, if all people everywhere got calli at birth, for example. In the Chang article it seemed that the majority of the disagreements were based on the discrepancy between those with calli and those without, and whether this difference was fair. But it seems that if physical beauty appreciation (and possible misuse) was never even taken into consideration the societal implications could be worse.
A society born without the ability to see physical beauty in humans would not be able to make any sort of judgment based on looks. These attractiveness inequalities that we are confronted with everyday would cease to exist, perhaps to be replaced by others just as potent, yet let us assume that somehow it would be possible to remove any new alternate. How would this world work? Presumably there would not be the stereotypes that pepper today's world. The discrepancy with the college application? Not even an issue in this world. Men and women would date and fall in love with each other not because they found the symmetry of the other's face beautiful but because their partner was intelligent and funny, missing entirely the bald spot, overbite, and dark purple birthmark mottling their lover's face. Would this then be a "fair" world?
There is a part of me that desperately wants to say "yes." If we rid the world of physical beauty the injustice we see will not be the same. Yet I fear that the world will all too quickly turn upon some other sort of discrimination, perhaps along an intellectual spectrum, perhaps a height spectrum. I worry that the human body is innately formed to rank those around them, this is better than that, this is larger than that, this is more perfect than that. Somehow would we end up with another sort of ideal that is just as detrimental to try and live up to? Even looking at something as seemingly "good" as intelligence, will we end up with people having brain surgery to try and enhance their mental capabilities? Will it be as simple as deaths or addictions to caffeine pills whose goal is to enable the taker to study more hours in the day?
I could take it to the extreme as well, to a society similar to the one outlined in Lois Lowry's The Giver. In this society all facets of life are controlled and they have even developed their own solution to physical differences. Everyone sees the world, literally, in black and white. The community takes those who look different (or even who look too much the same, in the case of identical twins) and "releases" them, killing them to remove their presence in society. The outcome of the book leads the reader to believe this is horrible, taking away the ability of the citizens to make these choices on their own, as they occur without the knowledge of the general public. However is ignorance really not bliss? Why are their worlds seen as so damaged simply because the society has tried to take steps to level the playing field, to make sure "everyone comes out ahead," as we spoke of in class. Though the main character Jonah eventually learns about the "real" world, gaining knowledge of color and seasons and death and music and other things removed from his society, then decides that it is vital for him to share this information with all of those in his community, I wonder if this really helps them at all.
The book ends with Jonah leaving the community, with the understanding that when he gets far enough away all of the memories he has about the "true world" will be exposed to those citizens he left behind. But the author does not go into what damage this would cause the populace. They would be faced with a world similar to ours, where some people look different than others, some are smarter, some are more beautiful. Yet they will be bombarded with this information while lacking the ability we have to deal with that information, to use it or ignore it as we see fit. Could this society go on after such a major revelation? I do not think that it would be able to, or if it did, it would again collapse into a similar demise like the one that somehow ended our current world, forcing the creation of the one described in the novel.
How can we create a world where beauty does not matter? It seems to me that the only viable option would be to take away our abilities to see this physical beauty entirely. If we were never given this sense, we would not even be able to know that something is lacking, and we would still be able to seek out beauty in nature, in music, or in poetry. This sort of world, I believe, would be a fairer and more just place, for all people would be forced to literally wear the blindfold of the justice, enabling them to more fairly balance the scales of right and wrong. Hopefully this would level the playing field, even out the odds, and allow all people to come out ahead in the end.
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| Beauty and Power Name: Rachel Usa Date: 2005-04-14 17:11:53 Link to this Comment: 14568 |
The political and sociological impacts of sensitivity to aesthetics are often portrayed negatively. Society blames oppressive beauty ideals for anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and personal and career discrimination. Nevertheless, we continue to strive for it because there are individuals that are empowered by ¡°beauty bonuses.¡± Who are they, how do they use beauty to pursue power, and what are the effects of the pursuit of beauty on the beauty seeker and the rest of society?
During the second day of my college seminar class we each brought an object that we considered beautiful. The objects that I found most beautiful, and which I remember now, were the objects that had a story. The idea that beautiful experiences require a story is an important, if not universal, observation. There are beautiful experiences without stories, and overgeneralization is often inaccurate. Even so I think Roald Hoffmann¡¯s observation about beauty and power is a useful model: ¡°Beauty is built out of individual pleasure around an object or idea. It may be personal, but gains in strength when it is shared with others (1).¡±
If stories create beauty and beauty creates emotions that are considered powerful and even manipulative, a good storyteller has the potential to gain political and sociological power. This was even played out in the presentations in my beauty seminar class. Susan Levine, a psychoanalyst, utilized anecdotes about her patients to captivate our attention and persuade us that psychoanalysis is beautiful. Mark Lord, a theater director, chose a presentation formatted as the ¡°story of his life¡± in order to discuss his own experience of beauty. Two presentations about beauty from two very different disciplinary perspectives contained stories. Is this a reflection that storytelling and beauty are inseparable and that it is natural to discuss beauty in the format of a story? Or did Mr. Lord and Ms. Levine sense that stories would be the most effective and aesthetically pleasing presentation? Both are likely.
The most prominent storytellers in our society are media personalities, and it wouldn¡¯t be a stretch to claim that they have an enormous amount of power in our society. The television set in the average American household is on for 6 hours and 47 minutes per day (2).Companies pay billions of dollars each year to advertise in newspapers and on television. If the aesthetic appeal of a good story is what drives Americans to watch TV and sit through commercials, to read newspapers, and to browse the web, beauty is the indirect source of many jobs, of much exchange of money, and of the most direct avenue for discussing political opinions and social ideals and impressing these opinions and ideals on the public.
It has struck me that ¡°beautiful¡± is a term that people rarely apply to me and that I rarely apply to myself. I don¡¯t think it is because I am particularly ugly either. On a day I polish my appearance, acquaintances tell me that I look ¡°cute¡± or ¡°nice¡± but rarely ¡°beautiful.¡± ¡°Beautiful¡± is a term reserved for significant others, family, and maybe two or three close friends. Is this because beauty is so powerful a term that it is inappropriate for everyday conversations? Or is a close relationship really necessary for the ¡°beautiful¡± experience? Again I think the answer relates to the power of storytelling. Family members have their story about you; you are a part of their everyday life. Significant others believe you are their ¡°happily ever after;¡± you are their fairy tale. For acquaintances, however, you don¡¯t belong to the story really; you drift in and out of their lives. When an acquaintance calls you ¡°nice¡± or ¡°cute¡± they are not having a beautiful experience; you¡¯ve merely broken their everyday routine by assuming a more major role in their play. The pretty characters always get more lines in the performance.
How do politicians and other figures manipulative this tendency to have aesthetic experiences among family and significant others in order to gain power or appeal? They have two options: they can make themselves seem like one of the family or they can portray themselves as the ¡°happily ever after¡± figure. The power is obtained with help of the media, and we have seen many famous figures pick their character in the play. The politicians often choose the friend or ¡°Uncle Dad¡± character; they kiss babies, promise tax relief that will affect your household, and try to claim family values. Actors and actresses often choose the ¡°fairy tale¡± role. They don¡¯t have the ability to travel the country and become your ¡°friend¡± so they choose the other extreme. They keep far away from the general public because they are maintaining the mystique of the ¡°prince charming.¡± The general effect on the public sphere is a web of deception. The politicians, actors, models, etc. become something that they are not in order to achieve the aesthetic appeal of a well told story. Those who lead less public lives sometimes pursue the personas of actors and models and suffer oppression by beauty ideals as a result. Low self-esteem, anorexia, bulimia, and even suicide are the manifestations of some of these oppressions. Those who are more realistically seeking the aesthetic appeal, particularly as it applies to women, invest in make-up and wardrobes.
Beauty is a subjective term, and I can argue that the current standard permeating political, business, and everyday culture is not beautiful. Who would call a businesswoman with carefully manicured nails, well-done hair, rouged lips, elegant dress-suit, and high heels beautiful? Isn¡¯t her appearance more accurately called ¡°professional?¡± It seems that the ¡°professional appearance¡± is the pursued norm rather than a standard of beauty. Why? Without the storyteller, that is the media, a simpler, more classical standard that is superimposed on the average person appears flaky and unprofessional. There is a double standard. Those that have access to the media utilize it to develop a story and a character, which allows them to pursue the classical beauty as another dimension of their personality. Those that do not have the media and its storytelling influence or some other power foundation cannot pursue beauty without being accused of shallowness; they must rather pursue professionalism. The average person does not have the media-constructed multi-faceted public personality. What is seen is skin deep, and a person who is trying to make their way in the world wants to present their priorities. The businessperson chooses professionalism over beauty because they want their appearance to reflect their value for their jobs. Aesthetic appeal is the luxurious commodity of secondary importance. The politician is in the middle of the spectrum. They have the advantage of a public face, but their priorities are different from that of the actor and model. They want their priority for intellect and their work to be reflected in their appearance; they, like the businessperson, sacrifice ¡°beauty¡± for ¡°professionalism.¡±
Tragically, this has resulted in a masculine undertone in the political and worker world. The feminine touch has all but disappeared. Professionals, those seeking power in politics and elsewhere, are trying to communicate their value for their work over their idealized beauty by accepting the standardized worker image: the bread-winning male. A recent study came out from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis that concluded beautiful people get as much as 5% higher pay per year than the average-looking person, but it is hard to interpret this data. What is the Federal Reserve Bank¡¯s standard of beauty? Is it the ¡°professional¡± look or ¡°classical¡± attractiveness? I think the data would be much more informative if it were interpreted separately for men and women. Men have already established their personas in the political and economic sphere as the lawmakers and breadwinners; history has been their storyteller. In contrast, women don¡¯t have the advantage of a background story constructed by history. They have yet to establish or prove in a historical context that their priorities are their jobs, politics, or power because their stereotypical priorities are homemaking and children. If the female worker or politician pursues the classical beauty instead of the professional appearance, it is assumed, because there is no stereotype to argue otherwise, that the woman is living the less serious role of a part-time worker, full-time mother and homemaker. This does not mean a woman denies her femininity completely nor fails to polishes her appearance with make-up, diets, and suits: that would be unprofessional. The irony is that men are free to pursue classical beauty ideals and achieve the ¡°beauty bonus¡± for their efforts because they don¡¯t have to prove their sex is economically and politically capable. Women, however, have to work harder for the ¡°beauty premium¡± because society has two standards for them which are in many ways conflicted. Women are supposed to be beautiful but productive she-males.
We have seen this reflected in the women who assume power. Hillary Clinton and Madeline Albright have both been accused of masculine personas. Queen Elizabeth I is probably the best example of this assumed masculinity; she assumed masculine characteristics openly in her portraits, manner, and language. In a speech at Tilbury to the English military before the invasion of the Spanish Armada she describes herself: ¡°I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England, too (3).¡± Even the changing wardrobe of American culture reflects the shifted ideal of presentation that highly educated and powerful women pursue. Women wear pants, sport short haircuts, and don more masculine coats. If you walk into clothing store, the men¡¯s and women¡¯s clothing is often identical.
The empowerment of the press, utilization of the storytelling power of the media by actors, models, and politicians to assume ¡°Happily Ever After¡± and ¡°Uncle Dad¡± personas, elevation of professionalism over beauty, and the increasing presence of masculinity in female aesthetic standards are arguably ugly consequences of sensitivity to beauty in society. The press¡¯s overwhelming presence in households, particularly their influence over children, is alarming. The assuming of roles by public figures is superficial and likely deceptive. The sense of loss of beauty in the economic and public sphere is painful. The permeation of male professionalism is breaking down the classical female beauty ideal and replacing it with a maybe more oppressive, maybe more progressive, and maybe more ugly standard.
Sources:
1. Hoffmann, Roald. ¡°Thoughts on Aesthetics and Visualization in Chemistry.¡± Preface.
Issue of Aesthetics and Visualization. Hyle.
2. The Source for Teaching Science.
http://www.csun.edu/~vceed002/health/docs/tv&health.html
3. Women¡¯s Rights Speeches. http://womencentral.net/tilbury-speech.html
| Exploring the social implications of beauty throug Name: Amy Martin Date: 2005-04-14 20:12:28 Link to this Comment: 14571 |
The media network has its idols, but its principal idol is its own style which generates an aura of winning and leaves the rest in darkness. It recognizes neither pity nor pitilessness.
- John Berger
Ever since my early adolescence I've loved women's fashion magazines. Most of the time I am an indiscriminating reader, I flip through the glossy pages without a thought, the bright pictures and funky typography eye candy that is the fluff of my literary interests. To me, the magazines are like watching T.V. - a way to escape the world, some intellectual downtime. Yet, I am not so naïve as to be oblivious to the common perception of the social implications of the women's fashion magazine. It, like all other media, feeds the machine of the Western ideal of feminine beauty. In this essay, I want to examine John Berger's quotes about men, women and the media and their relation to the societal implications of fashion magazines and the concept of female beauty. Are fashion magazines anything more than pedestals that promote the impossible standard of beauty? Is the existence of such a standard evil? Is it ever acceptable to want to fit the standard of beauty? Do women try to live up to these beauty ideals for themselves or for someone else? Is it to acceptable to want to be beautiful for you but not to want to be beautiful to attract someone else?
One of the central ideas of John Berger's book Ways of Seeing is that in our Western visual tradition men are active and women are passive. Our pictorial tradition is dominated by a presupposed male viewer who watches the female subject. She is thus merely an inactive object, existing solely for the male gaze. Berger postulates that women's place in this tradition leaves them to merely watch themselves being looked at. One can argue that such a visual tradition is perpetuated by the women's fashion magazine. For the purposes of this essay I've chosen five women's magazines from the past year. All of the covers feature a smiling, thin, young woman in revealing clothing, despite the month of publication. Each clearly represents the beauty "standard" of our age, a standard which celebrates women who are skinny and who display their fit, but not too muscular, bodies in tight, minimal clothing. The cover models smile coyly out at the viewer. If we interpret such covers through our heteronormative standards, why would women need to be smiling coyly out at other women, scantily clad to sell magazines? Using this heteronormative standard, if women's magazines were created for other women, why couldn't they or wouldn't they have scantily clad men on their covers? Or women dressed in sweaters, fittingly for the December issue? Through pictography alone, women's magazines perpetuate the iconographical tradition of woman as a sexual object on display for a male viewer.
Once one moves from the pictorial objectification of women on the covers of these magazines, one focus is drawn to the text of such covers. The captions continue to impose the idea that there exists a single standard of beauty that exists in the cover model as well as reinforce the heteronormative message of the picture. These headlines often focus on heterosexual sex and relationships and female physical appearance or "beauty". "His secret pleasure points", "Help is here! Great hair on a daily basis", "6 mystery moods guys get into and how to decode "them", "Celeb hair DOS & DON'TS", "Brand- New Makeup The 8 Best Looks for Fall", "The Body Trap What's Keeping You from Losing Lbs?", "How to Get Rid of Bad Breath, Itchy Butt Crack and Other Mortifying Body Bummers" scream some of the headlines of Cosmo, Allure, and Glamour. There is a connection between all three topics of these headlines – their advertisement that women need to buy the magazine in order to better understand the opposite sex, to be more beautiful to the opposite sex, and to be more sexually appealing to the opposite sex. All of which seem to be connected- if you make yourself beautiful by the means we tell you, men will want you. A sum total that is consistently telling the consumer she is not good enough as she is now, that she needs to look at herself and her outward appearance, and take the magazine's tips to modify her existing physical self. Such headlines are inextricably linked with the magazine's cover model because she serves as the poster child who embodies the headlines, who has a hot hairstyle and the brand new makeup for fall, who knows his secret pleasure points.
The message to the target consumer is that she obviously has to undergo self change in order to meet an imaginary beauty ideal that the magazine promotes. Berger's second quote emphasizes the idea of the idol in the media. The fashion magazine's cover girls are such idols, who as symbols of the beauty ideal that the magazines promote, are efficiently the cream of the beauty crop. They are the winners that Berger refers to. In the world of the fashion magazine and its upholding of the beauty standard, physical fulfillment of the standard is winning, and if you too- take the tips the cover model embodies, you can be like her- you can be a winner. In "winning", we see an association between beauty and power, that by being physically attractive, you have a better chance of holding a high place in our social hierarchy.
The paradox inherent in the beauty standard, as parlayed by the magazine, is that it is ever changing. How would Cosmo survive if the "Hot New Hairstyles" were the same month to month, year to year? The instability of the standard, its constant transitions and transformations, make it an unobtainable goal while reinforcing its strength. Since so few ever reach it, the goal is thought to be worthwhile. After all why would anyone want to achieve such standards, if everyone easily could? Thus, we see that the energy inherent in keeping up with this arbitrary standard is exhausting. Yet, perhaps because of the impossibility of achieving such a goal, many women try to keep up with such a standard. We use fashion magazines as our guides to these standards, as the front that informs us about the changes in the standard and how we can convert our natural selves into the new standard.
This year, Glamour had a circulation of 2,509,566 in the United States alone, that's just women who get the magazine delivered, and excludes all the impulse store sales. And those numbers only represent one of the many women's fashion magazines. In buying these magazines, we support the current format of the women's fashion magazine. If one accepts John Berger's ideas and their application to the women's fashion magazine, in buying such magazines we are supporting both the objectification of women and the idea of a singular beauty standard. We support the notion that we have to alter the physicality we were born into and fulfill such a standard. Ironically, we are the society who is setting such standards before ourselves by embracing the idea of the standards through our consumerism of these magazines.
Why? Perhaps the huge sales of such magazines show that there is something inherently pleasurable to us within these magazines, something perhaps even beautiful that brings us to buy them. Societal standards of beauty may not be inherently oppressive. Perhaps women even enjoy such standards. If this is not the reason why women are buying fashion magazines, the other extreme is that they are buying them because they feel pressure to engage in society's idealized standard of beauty. If this is the case, the fashion magazine becomes merely an outlet for the objectification of the female subject to fulfill the male viewer's gaze.
I can't accept the notion that women have become so socialized to a beauty standard that they disagree with that, if they feel the fashion magazine is oppressive, they still continue to buy it to live up to such a standard. Nor do I want to believe that women would only buy women's magazines because they feel such standards will lead them to be attractive to the implied male viewer. I have to question why the desire for some sort of physical beauty is always assumed to be oppressive to women. If one feels that one looks good, one has better self esteem. Yet, ideas of one's own personal physical beauty and sexual attractiveness won't always fit the norms that society has created. The tension between the two ideas of beauty is the painful part. Women can be aware of such a standard, yet chose to adhere to only the parts of it that she chooses, for whatever personal motivation. Stepping beyond Berger, women can be their own viewers and their own objects. We can reclaim beauty as our own, choosing the grooming changes to partake in, in order to please whatever individual standard we have created for ourselves. Since it is impossible to escape society's norms, I acknowledge that such "choices" will always be informed by the standards of culture. Even if we own our own beauty, our notions of beauty are inevitably informed by the societal standards of beauty. It is obviously a challenge to deviate from that which is perceived as "normal" in society. Even if one is aware that few people fit into such standards of beauty.
Within the mandates of the fashion magazine exists the ambiguity of the social implications of beauty. Not only do such magazines serve as dictates of beauty standards that we may choose to accept or reject, that we may call oppressive or creative, we have to consider their roles as a unique space only for women. Glamour's November 2004 issue, the one of "Help is here! Great hair on a daily basis!", also has the headline"50 health secrets, for women only". This issue also includes an editorial on the lack of women running for Congress and an article on women soldiers in Iraq. Although the women's fashion magazine can serve as the embodiment of the oppressive standard of female beauty in our culture, it has enormous potential as a space that tackles the political, cultural and social issues women confront daily in our society. I wonder if covers could feature pictures of Hillary Rodham Clinton in her stodgy business suits with headlines that read "Why Aren't More Women Running for Congress?" Even if the women's magazines of the future included all the junk, whether you find it fun or oppressive, that they currently feature on their covers inside their binding – what would the effect be if they changed the image of the cover model? Even this singular step could begin a tradition that breaks the cycle Berger writes of. This new tradition would promote active women, rather than embracing the portrayal of woman as passive. Perhaps slowly the women's fashion magazine could become a space where the societal implications of beauty had something to do with character rather than simply coy gazes. Would women buy such a magazine? Or do we accept and embrace the current image and issues that the women's fashion magazine projects on their covers?
| Get Over It Name: Annabella Date: 2005-04-14 21:06:52 Link to this Comment: 14572 |
First off, it isn't anything in society that is making these women try to achieve a good rating on this scale of beauty. It is the women themselves that hold unrealistic expectations, and torture themselves to achieve them. As girls, we make the decision to try to understand and measure up to the standard or not. This is a very real choice. Mothers teach the standard to their daughters, what is expected of the girls as women, and how to measure well on the beauty scale. In this way, the mothers perpetuate the standard. The mothers aren't doing this to be mean to their daughters, they are teaching this because it is what they were taught by their mothers, and on and on through the generations until someone stops the insanity. The saddest part of this picture is that no one ever measures up to the standard of beauty that they think society is using. And so it causes them pain in their lives until they give it up.
There are two ways to bring about an end to this. First, and the one I hear most people mention, is to get society to drop this whole idea of a standard of beauty. This is like trying to get a cat to bark. You can train and train the cat. You can scold it, punish it, make it go without food and water, and the next time the cat makes a noise, it will meow again. That is because that is how the cat is wired. Likewise, people are attracted to beauty. If two people apply for a job, and all else is equal between them, chances are that the more beautiful one will get hired. That is because all people are wired to prefer beauty. They will be that way until there are no more people. It is fruitless to try to get society to not prefer beauty.
Another way to approach the end of women's persecution as a result of this beauty standard is to redefine beauty, and live by your own standard under this new definition. Find your own beauty, and develop that. When someone is doing that which they love, and they are feeling good about themselves an inner beauty emanates from them that can be neither hidden nor enhanced by make-up, or body shape or any of the things we women hurt ourselves with in order to be beautiful. The beauty of a person at peace with themselves, and/or happy with themselves is a beauty beyond comparison. And the lack of beauty emanating from a person who is unhappy about themselves is one that can not be overcome with any amount of manipulation of the body.
Women, as well as men, can use the fact that humans prefer beauty to motivate themselves to do what it takes to find their own happiness within themselves. If you want to be the most beautiful woman in the world, find your joy. Find what you like about yourself and develop it. Don't compare yourself with others. Compare yourself with yourself. Are you growing? Are you learning? Are you challenging yourself, and finding that which brings you joy? Are you living in the solution of your problems, rather than living in the problem of your problems? What this means is when you find a problem, do you wallow in what is wrong for an extended period of time, maybe wishing it were different? A good example would be this beauty thing. Do you wallow in the fact that there is a standard of beauty and you don't measure up? Or do you acknowledge that it is there, and define beauty for yourself, thereby motivating yourself to learn about yourself and become more beautiful from the inside out? This is how to live in the solution to the situation of the beauty standard.
Let's return to our job applicants. Let's have the same two applicants going for the job. All their credentials are equal, and one is clearly more physically beautiful than the other. The pretty one is relying on her good looks to land the job. But the less physically beautiful one is self confident, happy, and more interested in the job itself. She is actually interested in doing the job, in being helpful to the people involved in the company, and wants to learn the trade. Now which one do you think would get hired? My experience has been that the one with the better attitude gets the job. Let's face it, a happy person with a positive attitude, a can-do approach to life is much more beautiful than someone with only physical beauty.
Human's natural preference for beauty is a good thing, and it is here to stay. Our desire for beauty is a huge motivator moving us be kinder, more fair, and more merciful, for when we do these things we feel beautiful inside. It also motivates people to plant pretty flowers, and tend to the natural beauty of being earthlings. It gets us to clean up the house, and hang paintings on the wall, and to simply make the world more beautiful around us. There is no benefit to trying to get people to drop their desire for beauty, in fact there would be a tremendous price to pay should society become successful in the attempt.
To see the effects of losing the desire for beauty, check out how those who have given up the hope of having beauty in their lives live. It is a sad sight indeed. For example, check out folks living in ghettos who don't believe they can ever get out. They don't aspire to make their life beautiful, because they don't believe they can and as a result everything around them is unkempt and not beautiful. Flowers are not planted in the spring, trash is not put in trash cans. Without the hope of beauty, life becomes bleak.
Inadvertently, those women who struggle against society's standard of beauty and feel that it is society's job to dismantle the standard in order to stop the women's suffering are asking to live in a ghetto of the soul. And were they successful in getting society to not value beauty for beauty's sake, the physical world would become a bleak and ugly place in which to live.
By all means, if you know someone who is suffering under the weight of trying to measure up to what they believe to be society's standard of beauty, reach out to them. Help them learn to set their own realistic standard of beauty for themselves, and how to achieve it. If you are one of these people who are hurting yourselves in an attempt to measure up, find someone you trust and ask for help.
Our love of beauty is a wonderful thing. Our attempt to measure up to someone else's standard can be very harmful. It is how we are hurting ourselves. Instead of envying beautiful people, give thanks to them for decorating your life, and learn how to decorate your life for yourself. It is not society's job to make you feel beautiful. It is your job. Beauty is an inside job, and other people's opinions about your beauty have only the power you give them. Being beautiful is an ongoing do-it-yourself project.
| Searching for "Political Trends" in Feminine Beaut Name: Alanna Alb Date: 2005-04-15 12:33:30 Link to this Comment: 14589 |
Keywords: Beauty, symmetry, confidence, intelligence, superficial judgment
Experimental Procedure: 9 color pictures of women from various age, job, and socioeconomic divisions were collected onto a single sheet. No information about the women was provided to the participants other than the pictures. A survey consisting of 9 questions was designed to ask about the intelligence, personality, and status of the women (see Supporting Information for a listing of all survey questions). Participants were chosen based on accessibility, relation to the surveyor, and willingness to complete the survey. Tootsie rolls were sometimes used as an incentive, along with a pleasant disposition and firm, polite manner in order to attract survey participants. Usually, stating the overall purpose of the survey worked best when trying to encourage others to complete the survey. Twelve members of Bryn Mawr College completed the survey. All participants were women; eleven were college students between the ages of 20-22, and one was a professor of the College. Seven of the participants had majors in the physical sciences; the remaining five had majors in math, computer science, social science, and the humanities. Participants required 15-25 minutes to complete the survey.
Results: The results of the survey were found to be highly varied among the participants, with only a few common responses to some of the questions. This was probably due to the highly subjective nature of the survey; most of the participants expressed different reasons for answering the survey questions in the way that they did. The majority of the participants considered picture 9 to be ugliest, the least intelligent, and the meanest because of her upturned, snout-like nose, angry look, bad hair, outlandish clothes and makeup, and disproportionate features. Most participants agreed that pictures 3, 5, and 7 were most beautiful because of their large eyes, smooth and clear faces, youthful appearance, calm and composed look, distinctive features, and tidy hair. Surprisingly, the most votes for intelligence were awarded to pictures 2, 7, and 8; whereas picture 7 depicts a model-type woman, pictures 2 and 8 depict average-looking, everyday young women who wear glasses. Pictures 7 and 8 also received the most votes for getting hired for a job, as well as for being overall nice people. Pictures 3, 5, and 7 received the most votes for women who had high-scale, high paying jobs such as models and actresses. However, it is important to note that the pictures that received the most votes for high-intelligence jobs, including doctors, lawyers, and CEOs, were pictures 2, 7, and 8.
In addition to their votes, some participants also wrote additional, very insightful remarks. Confidence, a happy expression, and a tidy appearance, in addition to symmetry of features, seemed to play an important factor in choosing which women were beautiful. These were also important when choosing intelligent women. Some chose intelligence based on the "nerdy" appearance of the woman; for example, wearing glasses in addition to an "everyday" look made for a nerdy appearance. Other participants remarked that they could not make judgments about intelligence, who they would hire for a job, personality, who they would offer money to, or job/life status based on a picture alone. These participants stated that they would need to meet the woman in person and get to know her before making such decisions.
Some participants stated that they would not give money out to any of the women, regardless of looks, simply because they do not give money to others in general. Others remarked that they would give it to any of them by virtue of being nice. This also applied to the "offering assistance" question, where most responded that they would help any of the women simply because it was the right thing to do. Some said that they would not offer money or assistance to anyone who appeared scary, demanding, or unapproachable in some way. Pictures 4 and 6 got the most votes for receiving assistance, because the woman in picture 4 appeared disabled, and the woman in picture 6 had a child with her, and also looked sad and "world-weary," according to one student.
Discussion: When a similar, less extensive survey had been conducted in the English 249 class, I had heard many say that they would hire the uglier woman over the prettier one, and that the uglier woman was the more intelligent one. This immediately called to question the issue of whether or not a woman's beauty would make her appear less intelligent to others. Such an issue had rested heavily on my mind, due to a question a math major friend of mine had posed to me about two years ago. She had questioned why many of the famous female mathematicians pictured in the math department did not look beautiful, and she also asked why it did not seem okay for a woman to look beautiful and be intelligent simultaneously. I admit, she presented a valid point. In my own adolescent and teen experiences, I had grown up thinking that a woman had to look nerdy or appear unattractive in order to be considered intelligent. If a woman was beautiful, that probably meant that she was girly, flirtatious, and possessed no interest in studies whatsoever.
I am not entirely sure how such ideas were placed into my mind; maybe it was the media, the grammar school and high schools I attended, the male-dominated environment I grew up in, or a combination of all of them. Usually, the beautiful girls that I saw in high school and in the media consistently acted ditzy and stupid. In grammar school and high school, other students always said I was smart, but never beautiful, and certainly never both. To top it off, some guys had remarked to me that they could not believe that I was both good-looking and smart. One of the largest flaws in the survey that I conducted was that none of the surveys were completed by men. Male participants might have greatly helped to address my issue of beauty versus intelligence; unfortunately, at the time the survey was conducted, an abundance of men was nowhere to be found (a common dilemma on an all-female campus). Therefore, I had to settle for all female participants, of which there were only twelve. Twelve is certainly not a considerable number for a survey of this magnitude, but it was the best that could be done considering time constraints and a lack of available, willing participants.
The twelve women's responses seemed to be in conflict with my own argument that beauty is not thought to be associated with intelligence. The majority of participants said that the women that they considered to be the most intelligent were the ones that they had also considered to be the most beautiful. Do these responses imply a major discrepancy between the sexes on the beauty/intelligence topic? Or did I just happen to be surrounded by a select group of narrow-minded individuals while growing up? I cannot say for sure, but some of the survey responses certainly challenged my previous thinking. One participant admitted that attractive features could be just as important as other qualifications for jobs, and would probably give beautiful women an edge in the hiring process. Another person stated that if she were hiring someone for a job that required interacting with many people and presenting an image (such as an actress, model, or waitress), she would choose a beautiful woman.
However, the same person who remarked about beauty having an edge in the job process also made a comment that actually supported my original perspective on beauty/intelligence. This person said that "average beauty" would work best for women who would make good lawyers, CEOs, and professors, because these women would still be taken seriously but not passed over for promotions and such based on looks. It was comforting to know that there was at least one other person in the survey who was aware that beauty could play a role in detracting from intelligence. Interestingly enough, this person said that for jobs like housekeepers, chefs, mothers, maintenance workers, and scientists, beauty was "not necessary" and too much beauty might "hinder" the woman's career.
Most participants remarked that they would not loan money under any circumstances, and some would only do so if they were sure that the woman was a nice person who really needed it. Provided the woman appeared friendly and approachable, most participants would offer assistance to her on a busy street corner (with the exception of picture 9, the snout-nosed scowling woman). One participant remarked that she would actually feel more compelled to assist the less attractive women (pictures 4, 6, and 9), since they would be less likely to receive help from others. I was very pleased to see that in some of the survey responses, participants noted that the judgment of beauty is very subjective, and pictures alone are not the best way to decide who is beautiful or not, because "the moments when the pictures were taken may not have been when the women all looked happy," or looked their best. Another person remarked that she found certain pictures of women to be beautiful because of the way that beauty is often defined in society; she also said that the pictures of the not so beautiful women could be considered beautiful if one were to find out about their stories, personalities, and backgrounds.
Considering the many flaws of the survey, such as lack of participants, lack of male input, and its highly subjective nature, it was difficult to come to any definitive conclusion about the stereotypic ideals created in relation to beauty. However, the surveys did demonstrate that an appearance that fit society's standards of beauty (symmetrical features, clear skin, and tidy hair) was found to be most beautiful. However, a high level of beauty did not necessarily correlate with a high level of intelligence. Only one of the more beautiful women (picture 7) was voted to be intelligent, and the two young, glasses wearing-women of the group (pictures 2 and 8) also got intelligence votes. Although some participants refused to make a superficial judgment call based on a picture alone, many responded that the more attractive or more intelligent-looking women appeared to have nice personalities and were more likely to be hired for jobs. Overall, the survey was very informative; nevertheless, it would be better for next time if the survey was completed on a much larger scale. A much larger, more diverse group of people that included various ages and ethnic groups, members and non-members of the College community, as well as those from both gender groups, would be much more beneficial in searching for the political trends that our society holds towards feminine beauty.
Supporting Information: The following are the original questions asked in the survey:
Which of these women do you find to be beautiful? Not beautiful? Either way, explain why.
Which of these women do you find intelligent? Not intelligent? Either way, explain why.
Which of these women would you hire for a job? Why?
Which of these women do you think would be nice people? Which do you think would be mean people? Explain why.
If all of these women asked you for money, which women would you choose to give it to? Why?
What kinds of jobs and lifestyles do you envision each of these women living? Why?
If any of these women found themselves a couple dollars short at the grocery counter, would you spare them some cash? If so,which women, and why?
If you saw any of these women looking hopelessly lost on a busy street corner, would you immediately offer assistance? Which women and why?
Which of these women do you think would make good Doctors? Lawyers? Mothers? Chefs? CEOs? Scientists? Models? Actresses? Professors/teachers? Waitresses? Maintenance workers? Housekeepers?
Any other comments.
The nine photos of the different women, as well as the actual survey responses, are attached to the back of the hard copy of this paper.
| The Power of Beauty Name: Meera Jain Date: 2005-04-15 14:02:28 Link to this Comment: 14592 |
"Beauty is the still birth of suffering, every woman knows that." It is easy to understand the social implications surrounding beauty because as a woman I am constantly surrounded and influenced by it but it gives me the opportunity to tell it from a woman's perspective. Although I would like to say that women chase beauty for their own pleasure, women do it because of the feeling of power they get when regarded as feeling and being beautiful. Ted Chiang confirmed my hypothesis, one of his interviewers Maria de Souza said, "For me, one of the things that attracts me to a guy is if he seems interested in me. It's like a feedback loop, you notice him looking at your, then he sees you looking at him, and things snowball from there." The "snowball effect" gives women a feeling that they can achieve anything now that they are regarded as beautiful. The power women attain, lets them gain respect and admiration in communities, they become well known and perceived as trustworthy. They also go on to use their beauty in positive way to enhance other women's experiences. I agree that feeling beautiful is a powerful effect on your attitudes and habits, but it has to be in balance with reality. Unfortunately, sometimes this power we achieve can become an enigma for women who are unable to balance it with reality, especially the younger women when they are most susceptible to outside pressures.
Women are perpetually influenced by the media at a young age because of the over stimulation we receive from our environment. We see it everywhere, and the beauty mentality stays with the pre-teen generation and becomes more serious as they progress to middle and high school. The role models we are constantly examining are on television shows; movies, magazines and they hold a certain standard for women to follow. The environment of physically appealing women is a competitive one, each one outdoing the next in their quest for skinnier hips, larger lips and firmer bottoms and we start to have a new respect for these women. Or at least I do; some might disagree that pop culture idols are a terrible role model to have, but their hard work and determination are what got them where they are. Their fortitude and perseverance is no different than women that have intellectual beauty, both groups had to give up certain things to attain that level and are now enjoying the power they get from feeling and being beautiful.
After researching what the social implications of beauty are, I looked at the intellectual environment and saw what their definition of powerful beauty is. Examining the websites of many Fortune 500 Companies, I saw that all the women in high executive positions are beautiful and had achieved a power position from feeling beautiful. They were likely to be respected, idolized and could achieve a lot more in their male dominated industry because of their feminine beauty. Their profiles on the websites displayed a smiling, bubbly, controlled and powerful woman with the smarts to run a company. It is true that our society places a huge emphasis on physical beauty, because we are all beings that enjoy working and seeing beautiful things. Therefore based on society's belief, these women who were at the highest positions in their corporations were at that level because they had been beautiful.
In Christine Koggel's Concept of Beauty, she makes a fundamental point that all women who are beautiful are white and rich, but I disagree because across the spectrum you see Condoleeza Rice, Oprah Winfrey, Maya Angelou, Chitra Banerjee, Yoko Ono and the list continues. All these women hold beauty and are able to be a huge force in producing enjoyable movies, books, songs and discourses because of the power they get from being beautiful. Therefore, I think that wanting to attain an ideal of beauty is a positive attribute because it drives women to desire a power. Koggel goes on to say "a beautiful object has a property or set of properties that makes the object capable of producing a certain sort of pleasurable experiences." It is this belief that supports my theory that physically, intellectual and inspiring beautiful women are more likely to have a powerful effect on their surroundings.
Even though there will be certain women who go to such extremes of contracting an eating disorder or other body-image problems, as long as the women are aware of the benefits and pitfalls of conforming to an ideal, there should be no problems. I think it's important to have an ideal that society approves of because it helps both genders appreciate the people who keep to it and they do so through hard work and not giving into distractions. By appreciating the women that are keeping to an ideal because they want to attain a goal that beautiful women before them have attained, it lets all types of women be appreciated. Feeling beautiful is being beautiful; each of us has that power to feel like we are worth every minute of pain and pleasure that we underwent to be that beautiful.
Beauty is seen as a pervasive and negative force in society, but I think it has a positive influence on women of different ethnic backgrounds, size, height and skin color. Koggel makes a ubiquitous statement "being bombarded with messages about paradigms of beauty means not measuring up and often going to great lengths to attempt to measure up in some way." Yes, it is true that the media bombards us with messages of beauty, "try this new product, wear a belt so your waist looks smaller, exfoliate dry skin and etc" but these messages are what help motivate us to attain some sort of ideal that helps us feel powerful. All the women executives at the Fortune 500 companies had to go to great lengths to measure up so that people can admire and respect them, such as undergoing pain of working long nights, giving up a social life, be in constant limbo between family and work life so how is it any different than wanting to feel and be beautiful? Good things only come with sacrifice, but understanding the sacrifice is how we can balance the power from being and feeling beautiful.
There will always be a societal norm that women covet for, and I think that it is a positive ideal that initiates women to push them for something because it involves hard work. Being and feeling beautiful can be a difficult task but a much-wanted one, because it affords women a power. The power we ascertain from being beautiful can be used in a positive way, like to empower other women or make a contribution to society or start an organization. Most women, who want the power from feeling and being beautiful, will go through hurdles because they want to live up to that ideal that society approves of. Being intellectually and physically beautiful are very similar attributes, each comes with sacrifice and are respected in every environment, what makes it unique is the women who can effectively balance the both and use their power from feeling beautiful, to achieve goals that inspire women like me.
References:
Koggel, Christine. "Concepts of Beauty: A Feminist Philosopher Thinks about Paradigms and Consequences" Beauty Symposium, March 23, 2004.
| When Beauty Becomes Ugly Name: Alice Stea Date: 2005-04-15 15:44:42 Link to this Comment: 14596 |
Understanding the social and political implications of beauty in our society is challenging, because we must address many ethical questions that accompany beauty and our perception of it. When it comes to physical beauty in our society, it is no longer simply an observation of whether someone is beautiful or not, because now the object of observation will have a subjective reaction to our observations. Our observations are in fact harsh criticisms. Men and women put pressures on one another to be the epitome of beautiful. These pressures can present very negative social implications; however they are not entirely harmful. This paper will explore some of the positive and negative effects of having a standard of beauty, as well as to examine some of the underlying origins of these standards.
Personally, I think it is a wonderful thing to be able to identify beauty in a human face and a human figure. And I do believe that models are beautiful, but I also believe that people I interact with every day are beautiful. However, this is coming from somebody who is able to separate myself from the too-perfect models. Some cannot do this, and this is where the danger lies. It is primarily women who are being marginalized by this standard, although some men feel pressure. Women feel the need to choose between brains and beauty. This happens every day in high schools, maybe even colleges. Some girls choose to act ditzy because they believe it will put them into the popular group, which has the connotation of being one of the pretty girls. They do not want to be smarter than the boys because then the boys will feel threatened by their intelligence, and not like them, or so they believe. This is a case unique to women; men can be both popular and intelligent. But why should women have to dumb themselves down to fit in? This is directly caused by the standards set for women. One major institution that contributes to this stereotype is the Miss America Pageant. Christine Koggel talks about the negative effects of having this kind of beauty competition. She states that boys are told they can grow up to become president, and girls are told that they can grow up to be Miss America. (1). Miss America is a beauty competition, not an intelligence competition, and while the producers of the show have strived to portray it as a scholarship program, the women are still judged on their looks. Christine Koggel, in her essay "Concept of Beauty: a Feminist Philosopher Thinks About Paradigms and Consequences," adds that beauty is from a "male perspective and masculine values" (4). And this is probably accurate; to take the example of Miss America again, the judges are primarily men. This is not always the case, but when men are involved, there is a completely different sense of competition among women. In addition to competition, women strive to be thin and have beautiful hair, skin, etc., because the winner of the Miss America contest always has these attributes. The contest feeds women this idea that we should all have these same characteristics.
Literary critic Laura Mulvey takes a very Freudian approach to explain the origin of this standard; she believes that men in fact see women as castrated men, as injured and grotesque (2). Therefore, they have two ways in which to deal with this frightening prospect; one is to see them as the same (as men), and that they are injured because they are being punished, or they can choose to look at women as other and turn some other aspect of their body, i.e. other than her genitalia, into a fetish. She calls this response "fetishistic scopophilia in which the male builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying in itself" (Mulvey 438). This is the reason, she argues, we focus on a woman's face; we become obsessed with the parts of the body that we can see as whole and unaltered. She states, "there is an obvious interest in this analysis for feminists, a beauty in its exact rendering of the frustration experienced under phallocentric order" (Mulvey 436). This complements Christine Koggel's theory that "what is called beautiful reflect the male perspective and masculine values" (Koggel 4). Men put these pressures on women to be beautiful because to see the beautiful face as complete and whole makes them forget about what is "missing." Thus, these pressures exerted on women by women originate with men's obsession with the female face, breasts, legs, etc. Although this is a strange theory, and Freudian theory is now often regarded as invalid, it does provide an interesting insight into our obsession with beauty and why we need to create this perfect image of a beautiful woman. It provides a psychoanalytic approach to why we present these standards of beauty, and perhaps the social danger of not having a standard. She would argue that without these standards, men would view women as grotesque and injured, but the standard allows them to see their beauty.
As destructive as our standard can be, it may be a necessary one. There needs to be a norm so that people can fight against it. While it does lead to destructive behavior in some women, it does not mean that we should not have some notion of what is beautiful. If we did not have a standard of beauty, we would not know beauty when we saw it. Furthermore, if we did not have a standard, we would not be able to appreciate how beautiful it is when someone defies those standards. There will always be a standard, and there will always be people who do not fit the standard.
The answer is not to see everyone as equally beautiful. In his short story "Liking What You See: A Documentary," Ted Chiang postulates the notion of being able to turn off our ability to comprehend human beauty. He asks the question should we be able to turn on and off our ability to see human beauty, like one switches on and off a light? Will this provide a healthier solution to the problem? I see nothing wrong with being able to see beauty; the problem lies in the way we process our reaction. At first seems as if this could be the answer to all our problems, that every woman would be better for it, we would lose the ability to have one of our most beautiful experiences. While it is true that something needs to change, it is not our ability to perceive beauty. We derive a tremendous amount of pleasure and happiness, in addition to the pain, from seeing a beautiful man or woman. Rather than seeing a standard of beauty as a means of comparison, let it be a celebration of beauty.
There must be an answer to this problem, and I believe the Amish perception of beauty, or some derivative of it, could potentially be it. When the Amish make quilts, they always leave one flaw because they believe that only Nature, or what God creates, is perfect. Thus, they are able to see beauty in their imperfection; they are willing to accept it. This is their standard. Our standard, however, is to strive for perfection, to attain the unattainable, to be perfect. We want perfect bodies and perfect faces. But what if we could see beauty in the quirks and flaws that we all have? This could alleviate much of the pain that women subject themselves to in striving for ultimate beauty. Our standard of beauty could never be reached, or else it would no longer be a standard. Once that standard is reached, the bar would be raised again. Thus, we need to adapt our perception of beauty to be inclusive, rather than exclusive. Rather than criticizing women for what they do not have, long legs and large breasts, for example, appreciate them for having a beautiful face, including their large noses or beauty body, despite their curvy hips. The goal is to readjust our focus to see the beauty in our imperfect bodies. If women could live by this principal, it could save many women the pain and suffering of having to reach the ultimate.
(1). Koggel, Christine. "Concepts of Beauty: A Feminist Philosopher thinks About Paradigms and Consequences" 23 March 2004
(2). Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Feminisms.
| Beauty: Creating Inequality Name: Elizabeth Date: 2005-04-15 16:03:36 Link to this Comment: 14599 |
It has been said that women are universally subjected to standards of beauty. While the specific aesthetics will change from culture to culture, the fact that we feel pressure to achieve these standards is fairly universal. In most cultures, the standards that are set for a man differ from that of a woman, depending on the cultural norms and values. The reasoning for why these standards differ between men and women is not too hard to imagine since the genders differ in their basic, physical, bodily construct. After all, one couldn't ask that the standard for men being beautiful must be that they bear good children. No, the standards are generally within the realm of achievement, but at the same time women find themselves at the short end of the stick. They have historically, speaking from a Western cultural standpoint, been given standards that take much more effort to achieve. For instance, during the colonial and expansion period during which this country was founded, fashion was critical, but the fashion for men did not require that they damage their internal organs, in the form of wearing a corset, for the sake of vanity.
One could argue that this is due to the historical status of women. Historically speaking, the two genders have not had equal footing. In our patriarchal society, the men are supposed to achieve such characteristics such as strength, intelligence, and a competitive edge; on the other hand, women are meant to be nurturing, docile, and gentle. Where these characteristics came from isn't certain, however, some anthropologists hypothesize that they come from the division of labor between the two genders. While men have traditionally managed affairs outside of the household, such as politics, hunting, war, and commerce, women have managed affairs within the household, the primary concern being that of managing offspring and nurturing the family.
Women outside of the sphere of the household are primarily decorative. They have no power outside of the household except to exhibit behavior that would reflect favorably on their husbands or fathers. Let us bear in mind an example from the book, "Veiled Sentiments" by Lila Abu-Lughod. (1) This is a book about Muslim women from the Bedouin society, a society that practices many of the traditional Muslim behaviors, such as women being veiled. Women in this society are considered objects of lust, of sexuality, and therefore in public they must display modest behaviors. Silent in front of men, subservient, the women in this society are a model for how roles between women and men can be unequal. They are beautiful when they display moral, 'proper' behavior, and remain veiled. This is their beauty. It is also a standard of beauty that is forced upon them by society.
Why is this example significant? Because it demonstrates how historically women have been portrayed in our society with beauty. Men and women have always been on unequal footing, with women having to subject themselves to standards that undermine any attempts to being equal to men. In the case of the Bedouin, that standard is the veil. The veil is not only their symbol of beauty, but also a symbol of their morality, namely, their modesty, obedience and consequently their inferiority to men.
In Western culture, we do not have such a specific symbol, as fashion has evolved over time. But let us take for example, the skirt. Women have worn the skirts for centuries. Skirts are not the ideal clothing of choice for horseback riding or running, and women wore skirts because they were not performing tasks that would require as much mobility as men. It is a symbol of feminism, a cultural icon that means woman, and that when worn is supposed to make women attractive. "Simply put, the skirt is the most flattering object that an attractive human female can put on her lower torso. It highlights hips and buttocks and suggests, through the open bottom, the possibility for immediate sexual contact."(2) Therefore, such as simple thing as wearing a skirt broadcasts this ideals of women as a sexual object, as being an icon of admiration and lust. Thus for the modern Western woman, we still have not managed to shuck the shackles of being the objects of admiration.
But does this mean we have to do without skirts, because they symbolize the subjucation of women? If we were to do that, then we would have to do without a great deal many things that we considered in the realm of classic beauty. For instance, nudes, such as Manet's Olympia. This piece of artwork was ground breaking because the model, a prostitute by trade, was staring audaciously at the viewer. Her presence in the painting is one of empowerment. Is it because she's staring in the eye of the male viewer, instead of demurely turning her head to one side? In a sense, it does not matter one wit if she's staring or turning her head. Her posture, in all likelihood, was mandated by the artist. So the fact that she is staring at the audience has nothing to do with radical feminism, but with the artist trying to produce a piece of artwork that would win him acclaim. Therefore, at the fundamental level, it is still a woman lying naked before the male eye, demeaned to an object of beauty and deprived of her dignity.
In a sense, Olympia represents the modern woman. She recognizes that she is an object of beauty and has decided to use this position, and her sexuality, to empower herself. More likely than not, she did not ask to be drawn, but was paid to model for the painting because of her beauty. Seizing this opportunity, she reaped financial gain by selling her sexuality. But she is still being exploited, she is still just a sexual object.
The modern woman, despite the best efforts of the feminist movement, has not demolished the stereotype of the female form being an object of beauty. Although we now have the choice between skirts and pants, we still learn from a very young age what it is to be beautiful and be a woman. In fact, we are bombarded from all sides with standards of beauty. We must be pretty, aesthetically pleasing. Having the latest styles, most up-to-date fashion is what most women try to achieve. There is still a double standard between the importance of beauty for men and women, and women are still treated as objects of beauty.
For those disbelievers out there, simply walk into a supermarket. You don't even have to go to any particular aisle, just walk straight to the checkout counter and take a look around. You'll most likely find yourself facing rows and rows of magazines filled with gorgeous women. These women that stare back at you, glamorous and sleek, are the women that are the trailblazers for the standards of beauty. You'll see the occasional male model, but the amount of glamor put into his appearance will pale in comparison to the women surrounding him.
Pick up a copy of Cosmo.(3) The front cover will be oozing with beauty, not only from the woman, but by the titles of the cover stories. Get the perfect bikini line, a quiz on how sexy you feel today, and seven secrets of highly orgasmic women are all sample titles. Flip through the pages, and the advertisements will blow you away with models that are beyond perfection. If that doesn't do it for you, you can always learn how to give yourself a facial or put together the perfect wardrobe. In short, this icon of cultural values, the magazine, is promoting the very standards of beauty that the feminists were trying to pull us away from.
Is there anything wrong with that, though? By using our sex to sell ourselves, we manage to pull ourselves up in a male world. Take Madonna, for instance. Madonna, a nation wide sex symbol, has exploited her beautiful body and her beautiful voice in order to gain not only appeal, but also to gain economic status. There's no doubting that by identifying herself with the cultural standards of aesthetic beauty that she managed to play the system. It is almost a new form of feminism.
Yet at the same time, by exploiting our sex and our feminine charm, we draw attention to the differences between our two sexes. By highlighting our beauty, by accenting our sexuality, we might as well be putting up neon signs that say that we're women. It serves as a constant reminder that we are women, and brings up the history of the division between the sexes, and the renew the cycle of subjecting ourselves to the standards of beauty.
1) Abu-Lughod, Lila. "Veiled Sentiments." University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1986.
2)Everying2: Skirts -- a forum discussing the origin of skirts and the implication thereof
3)Cosmo -- Cosmo magazine
| Undoing the Patriarchy in Art Name: Alice Kauf Date: 2005-04-15 16:12:58 Link to this Comment: 14601 |
Using androgyny to de-objectify women is common, but can be limiting in its possibilities for liberation, because Woman has simply borrowed subjective power of Man. Woman is made masculine, and the femininity which marked her for objectification is removed. Alternatively, Man is made feminine, taking away masculinity and thus indirectly granting subjectivity to woman. These ends are often accomplished at the same time. Yayoi Kusama's sculpture is a prime example of this technique, "by interpolating the phallus, symbol of patriarchal authority, into environments composed of familiar domestic objects" (Chadwick, 19). Semi-flaccid stuffed fabric tubes growing out of ironing boards and baby carriages impart masculine authority onto feminine props, validating the feminine, while at the same time demeaning the masculine with cartoonish genitalia surrounded by these props which imply passivity and obedience. It is open to debate which interpretation is the prevailing one, but I believe that Kusama demeans the masculine to a greater degree than she elevates the feminine.
Frida Kahlo's Self Portrait with Cropped Hair is a less jarring example. The artist is painted in drag and with short hair, with long black hairs and a partial braid draped messily on the floor and on the chair she sits in, holding scissors in her hands. The only retained identifiers of Kahlo's typical gender are the earrings she continues to wear. Here masculine power has been dramatically and unmistakably stolen; because of the earrings, and because the figure's face is well known from Kahlo's other self portraits, it is clear that this is still a woman. It is a woman who looks just like a man, and therefore has the subjectivity of a man. In many of Kahlo's paintings, her face is portrayed as more masculine than in actually was, making it clear that the figure in the painting is not to be looked at and objectified, but challenges with her immobile, mask-like and manly features and unrestricted stare.
Louise Bourgeois's early work also reflects androgyny, but to a greater effect. Bourgeois's sculpture goes beyond bartering masculine power from one subject to another; her abstract work abandons binary sexuality altogether, and as opposed to one type of sexual organ, her pieces contain many on one figure. Her sculpture Torso is a very literal illustration, "covered with penile, scrotal, and labial shapes" (Chadwick, 19). Because the genitals themselves are so shocking, particularly in their combinations, the female genitals are not any more of an object than the male genitals. While the subheading of the sculpture is Self-Portrait, the torso is abstract enough that it cannot possibly be a literal interpretation of Bourgeois's physical form. Bougeois's true self is not only unlimited by sex, it is clearly unlimited by her body.
In this way, Bourgeois uses the second technique in de-objectifying women, that of disconnecting the female body. Abstracting the physical body disconnects the body from the self, making it impossible to identify discrete body parts as Woman. Cindy Sherman's Untitled #261 is composed of mannequin and prosthetic parts that are not connected to each other nor form a complete human form, but the subject is technically female, because of the prominent rubber and silicone breasts and vagina. The viewer is then able to question this labeling, exploring societal paradigm that allows us to view an assemblage of parts as a gender/sex. It becomes clear that this form cannot be gendered; it is not even alive. At best the form can be sexed, and this sexualizing brings further evidence that sex is unrelated to humanity. The same conclusions can be drawn from a photograph of a parallel disjointed male form, and indeed Sherman has created a very similar 'male' piece, Untitled #256.
Annette Messager is another artist who makes use of fragmenting the body. In Messager's Piece montee, "Messager's disembodied head vomits forth a cascade of fragmented body parts" (Chadwick, 21) in a gory, almost campy version of early male Surrealists' preoccupation with objects/artifacts and bodies as props. The shock value of this image can be used to further examine how ideas of womanhood and a woman's personhood are connected to her body, which allows objectification to take place. In Messager's photograph La femme et..., particolari; 1974 shows a female human torso with a human torso and pelvis's skeletal pattern drawn onto the skin with marker. The torso's head and crotch is cut off by the edges of the photograph. Once again, this unplaced body part, shown to be a mask or covering of what the form 'really' is by exposing the skeletal structure that lies beneath the skin, challenges what we know as female. Unlike Sherman's abstractions of the body, this is clearly a photograph of a living woman. But the viewer cannot think of this as a picture of a woman; traditionally objectified breasts are there, yes, but without further context for the body, the viewer cannot deceive her or himself into believing that this is a woman. It is a picture of a body part of a woman, nothing more. The objectified body and the humanity that should be respected are helpfully separated.
Cindy Sherman's early work, most famously her Untitled Film Stills series, used a similar, but much subtler method of de-objectifying Woman. In this series of photographs, Sherman creates super-feminine caricatures of Woman, mostly from movies, and just as in the forms of disjointed bodies, these female forms lose all power as hurtful objects. The setting and execution of the series is extremely artificial and each picture is inspired by internalized clichés of American culture. The women photographed, often Sherman herself, are too fake to be anything but objects. There is nothing to experience them with but a clichéd, objectifying male gaze. By doing this, Sherman guides the viewer's attention to the clichés themselves, allowing the viewer to recognize the sex kitten, the lusty good girl librarian, the spirited maid, and see these constructions for what they are. Hollywood and mass media have used these ideals of women, formulated primarily by and for the male consumer, with such regularity that Sherman is able to mock them with the characters' own falseness. There is no person who can conform to such one dimensional specifications; Sherman's playful recreations show that we can use them only if we realize they are severely limited and unreal.
As previously stated, de-sexing or masculinizing women does not appear to be a viable, permanent solution to women's traditional lack of power. Erasing femininity altogether seems limiting. Redirecting this attention to the feminine to attention to the disconnection of a female body appears helpful in recognizing the differences between physical and nonphysical identity. Ironically using clichés can also lead to this enlightenment. But it appears that until general society comes closer to a feminist ideal, most women artists cannot go beyond identifying problems of the male-female power dynamic. The artists examined thus far have not been able to offer any solutions to this problem besides being conscious of it, and acting with the problem in mind. If all in society does, it is possible that it is all that needs to be done.
Chadwick, Whitney. An Infinite Play of Empty Mirrors: Women, Surrealism, and Self -Representation.
Helland, Janice. Culture, Politics, and Identity in the Paintings of Frida Kahlo. Women's Art Journal 11, Fall 1990/Winter 1991.
| Changing Beauty Name: Liz Patere Date: 2005-04-15 16:27:26 Link to this Comment: 14603 |
Athletic activities have the potential to add to the increasing diversity of beauty; however, all sports must first be perceived as requiring focus and athleticism and the media must portray athletic women in a more favorable light. Figure skating and dance both have stigmas of femininity that make the athletes who participate seem less fit than they are. This also makes them more susceptible to societal standards of beauty. Tae Kwon Do is seen as masculine, which likely decreases female participation and limits its impact. Therefore the world view of the aesthetic beauty of the sports must evolve before they can make a greater impact.
I found that athletics have two types of beauty, the immediate pleasure they give to an observer and their ability to change world views. The external beauty is immediately apparent. The simplicity of movement in dance, figure skating and Tae Kwon Do can all be referred to as the external beauty. This attracts the eye of the viewer and makes them interested. It can be competitive as in football or wrestling or aesthetic like in dance. Without this initial impact it would be impossible for people top find the inner beauty. Like a book, the cover attracts may catch the eye but the content ultimately leaves the largest impact.
Tae Kwon Do is perhaps the most unique of my activities from the eyes of the outsider. As a competitive self-defense art, which is seen as rewarding aggression and physical skill, it is viewed as a masculine activity. It involves competition and many observers look at the fight rankings rather than the beauty of the motions. They may see it as a blood sport because of the connotations of extreme violence that Kung Fu movies generate. However, the art actually trains people not to harm others and to control their movements making it aesthetically beautiful to watch. As prowess increases, individuals learn how to defend themselves with the least amount of motion possible. This allows them to fight for longer periods of time without exhaustion and is the corner stone of being a successful martial artist.
Tae Kwon Do is not the masculine activity that it has the stereotype of being; however, in order for it to gain more female participants, women must learn this. Martial arts do not reward brute force. Tae Kwon Do requires the concept of focus. It is almost impossible to explain this notion in words, as there really are none that adequately describe it. A very terse definition could say that it is the simplest way to generate the most power and the ability to control every motion that the body makes. This concept removes gender from the equation. Women are equally capable if not more so than men to use this. In fact women's smaller size and greater endurance is advantageous. This makes it clear that if stigmas were altered, female participation would increase.
Tae Kwon Do has the power to positively change the stereotypes of beauty that world places on females or at least to add a new dimension; however, this must happen because gender stereotypes are expanded. As Robinson stated, beauty ideals are broader in Western culture than ever before (1). Perhaps if women who had a high degree of athleticism were represented by the media as beautiful, strength would be synonymous with femininity. Some theorists believe that all of Western culture's beauty notions result from the media and whether or not this is true, it is clear that a large portion of what we like or dislike is influenced by movies and television (1). These athletes would create a healthier ideal. It would aid in breaking down the walls between feminine and masculine. This would also be helped by tournaments not being segregated by sex.
Figure skating and dance both have the stereotypes of being "feminine" activities, which involves the external observer's view of the simple motion of beauty. They have primarily female participants and people often view them as light and airy. However, performing a five minute dance or skating a four minute program is extremely exhausting and requires a large amount of muscle strength. The competitive and physically demanding nature of these activities is often pushed to the side because they are seen as forms of aesthetic entertainment. Knowing about torn ligaments or lost toe nails, might detract from that sense of calm beauty that a viewer perceives.
The feminine stereotypes in these sports allow for society's feminine beauty ideals to have a greater impact upon the participants. Due to the fact that a person without muscle tone could perform the activities, the ideal of thinness becomes one of extreme athletic leanness. This obviously generates unhealthy body ideals. Even though figure skating is a very competitive activity, competition is very aesthetic and subjective. Judges have the right to give a lower score due to the overall look of the program. This gives them freedom to mark down skaters that they dislike. The dance world is almost entirely aesthetic, and performers like actors need specific looks. There is no argument, that anorexia is prevalent in the dance world. Movies like Center Stage touch on the subject of both rejection for not being the ideal of thinness and the "perfect" people who hurt themselves to reach that goal.
The main difference between the bad body image in aesthetic athletics and that in larger society is that for athletes, there is a clear goal of financial gain or self-success. Women in society may hope they will appear more attractive and that this will benefit them in some abstract manner. However, in speaking with figure skaters who have been bulimic or anorexic, weight loss aids in jumps ability and speed, which can make all the difference at highly competitive levels (2). Overweight figure skaters will be unlikely to perform these, and even if they are capable, they will have a much more difficult time trying to win at competitions. Dancers over a certain weight likewise face criticism and may not find work. This, however, gives hope that if a more healthy and athletic ideal were favored, women in these sports would feel less direct pressure to lose weight. This would positively impact women's health by allowing them to be simply healthy, a power that figure skating has above many other sports. As my skate instructor said to me the other day, "It's [skating] one of the few sports you can stay in your whole life." (3)
The way that the media portrays the external beauty of the sports must change to emphasize the focus and athleticism before they can impact the world view of beauty. Masculine sports often have an emphasis on the competition whereas feminine sports often emphasize a performance. Therefore, an emphasis by the media on the beauty and grace of male sports and the athleticism of female sports would be beneficial to changing participation in the sports. By giving boys and girls strong women as a beautiful ideal, we set them up to mimic this ideal later in life. It is clear that our nurture plays in a role in what we find beautiful. Therefore exposure to strong beautiful females and portraying feminine activities as requiring strength can excite a change and make healthier beauty ideals.
Works Cited
1) Robinson, Julian. The Quest for Human Beauty. W.W. Norton and Company, New York. © 1998
2) Anonymous Interviews and Conversations. 2000-2005
3) Pamela S. Figure Skating Coach. April 12, 2005
| The Paradox of Beauty Name: Katy McGin Date: 2005-04-15 16:28:44 Link to this Comment: 14604 |
Countless odes, poems, prose, musical pieces, paintings, sculptures, and songs have been created throughout the ages in the name of beauty. The fact that most of these types of art continue to be relished and admired to this day speaks volumes about the emotional power of beauty. Beauty is almost always regarded as a positive trait and something that is inherently good. And yet some of the planet's most horrendous atrocities have been committed in the name of beauty. Notions and ideals of beauty indeed have profound social and political implications, particularly for women. To ignore this fact would be delusional. Equally delusional, however, would be the idea that beauty is inherently bad and must therefore be dispelled with in the human psyche. Yes, beauty has been involved in some pretty heinous crimes, but it has also brought indescribable joy and even hope to people since the beginning of time. Regarding beauty, I believe that it is yet another part of life that one must take the bad with the good, and hopefully try to ameliorate the bad.
Beauty is by its very nature unequal. How else can we consider something beautiful if it does not stand out from the average? This fact can have negative consequences for those who strive to be beautiful. Someone will always be more beautiful, no matter how much one diets, starves oneself, exercises, puts on makeup, or undergoes expensive plastic surgery. In their article "Beauty is the Beast," Elayne A. Saltzberg and Joan C. Chrisler note the fact that "The value of beauty depends in part on the high costs of achieving it. Such costs may be physical, temporal, economic, or psychological." Young women have wasted away and died in a desperate and tragic search for the ever elusive and cruel ideals of beauty. For these individuals, beauty has
been associated with acceptance and love: if only they could be just a little more attractive, surely everyone will like them and accept them with open arms. Until only very recently in Western countries (and to this very day in some non-Western countries), beauty essentially was a woman's only bargaining tool to use against men. Philosophy professor Christine Koggel notes that beauty has provided women with a false sense of power over the ages, as the primary judges of physical beauty have been men. Only if she was beautiful would a woman be accepted by men, yet only by using her beauty in manipulative ways could she maintain at least a semblance of control over herself, such as withholding sex from her amorous man and always keeping him wanting. In recent years, it has no longer been the case that women are so pathologically dependent on men, yet I would argue that the majority of women still base much (if not most) of their self-esteem on their outward physical appearance. The ideal of beauty, in this sense, is internally driven. One could and should argue that Madison Avenue is largely to blame for transmitting unrealistic ideals of femininity, yet most of the women who buy into these ideals seem to have an unrealistic mental model of their own beauty. Anorexics, for example, seem to base their senses of beauty on their own unhealthy cognitions and beliefs, while those around them likely are horrified and would do anything they could to help these poor individuals.
Other ideals of beauty are externally directed and, in many cases, all the more heinous. Perhaps the single worst deed that has ever been committed in human history—the Holocaust—can be argued to have been based on the "beauty" of the Aryan race and the "lack" of beauty of the Jews. "Ethnic cleansing" going on the Balkans, too, can at
least partially be explained by superficial and esoteric standards of beauty (though, in this case, religion undoubtedly plays a larger role). On a less extreme scale, criminals who are judged to be "unattractive" are given harsher sentences than criminals deemed "attractive." People are more likely to befriend or help a stranger who is attractive than one who is not attractive. The saying "People like you better if you're pretty" is sadly very true. On all these counts, beauty does not seem to be such a positive trait at all. Indeed, it seems to be the instigator of everything that is wrong with the world.
On the other hand, we absolutely cannot get rid of our senses of beauty. Biology professor Paul Grobstein describes how the experience of beauty is, first and foremost, a biological process. Whether it aids us in an evolutionary sense or in a more day-to-day sense of "that which is beautiful is good and should not be avoided" sense, perceptions of beauty clearly are useful for humans in many ways. Only through serious and extreme alterations in our neurological systems could we avoid our experiences of beauty. The Chiang sci-fi documentary on "calliagnosia" presented an eerie and almost fascistic world in which one's subjective perceptions of beauty could be turned on and off like a faucet. While social justice seemed more likely to exist in this fictional world, it also sounded, well, boring. I know that may sound a little cliché, but think about it. Forget human beauty—don't we all experience an emotional high when we hear a beautiful song that we love? Don't we all get shivers down our spines when we experience something we consider beautiful? Don't we all enjoy a beautiful, sunny spring day with the colorful flowers, beautiful birds, and balmy weather? Isn't love itself something beautiful?
We cannot experience these instances of beauty without also regarding some of our fellow humans as beautiful. It feels good to look upon an attractive person. I for one find it highly emotional and fulfilling to gaze upon a beautiful face. People who are beautiful often give me inspiration and renewed hope for humankind. Furthermore, even "ugly" people can be considered beautiful in their own ways. Beauty is subjective, despite what Madison Avenue tells you. I truly believe that we are all beautiful. Beauty itself, then, is clearly not to blame. People who abuse it and enforce their perceptions of it onto other people are the real culprits. Instead of making futile attempts to eradicate human perceptions of beauty from the world, I believe what we instead should endeavor to do is to trust our own personal experiences/perceptions of beauty, become comfortable with our own unique beauty and forget what the media dictate to us, and move on with our own lives.
Sounds swell, but how do we do it? That is the Achilles' heel. I will be honest—I have absolutely no idea. It may not even be possible. But to have an idea and to recognize that we have been duped throughout the ages on what is truly beautiful can at least clue us in to the fact that there is more to physical beauty than what meets the eye. Considering all that standards of beauty have wrought upon us over time, to at least have a plan, however vague and idealistic that plan surely is, seems to me at least to be a good first step. We can ameliorate the bad that standards of beauty incur. I don't know how to do it, but maybe someday someone will figure it out. Until that day comes, I for one will strive to be confident enough in my own unique, personalized standards of beauty to enjoy my life and not get too hung up on what Big Brother tries to tell me. In the end how we feel about ourselves, and not how others think about us, is what truly makes the difference.
| Blessing or Curse? Name: Megan Mona Date: 2005-04-15 16:40:53 Link to this Comment: 14605 |
| The Interested Viewer as a Means of Mercy Name: Kat McCorm Date: 2005-04-15 16:50:08 Link to this Comment: 14606 |
The switch of beauty from a comparative format to a broader web where attention is reflexive and thus draws attention to, rather than detracting from, things within its own class is dependent on the switch from the "disinterested" attention of early philosophies into the ultimately interested and invested attention of a potential viewer. Here, also, Scarry's (1) concept of the "passive perspective" must be overturned towards regarding beauty in favor of the "instrumental perspective" which is equally capable of engaging with beauty as it is of engaging with ugliness or abuse. The supposition that only things that need to be "fixed" can give humans the wish to intervene is harmful to the concept of beauty. By making room for beauty in the realm of the interested, a new ethic of beauty and its uses begins to emerge.
Another arena in which the broader effects of disinterested attention are seen is in the work of Carol Gilligan(3). In her work "In a Different Voice" she examines the morality of men and women as deeply tied to their understanding of relationships with others. In her many case studies, women consistently score lower on the Kohlberg hierarchical scale of morality than men. She attributes this difference to a fundamental difference in the conception of relationships, essentially, of being invested or uninvested, interested or disinterested.. Moral dilemmas, then, from a woman's perspective are seen "not as a contest of rights but as a problem of relationships," resulting in a weblike "ethic of care" which makes little sense from the passive male hierarchical perspective. Gilligan comments on this problem, stating:
But these images create a problem in understanding because each distorts the other's representation. As the top of the hierarchy becomes the edge of the web and as the center of a network of connection becomes the middle of a hierarchical progression, each image marks as dangerous a place which the other defines as safe. (62) (3).
While this imagery is, in Gilligan's argument, applied strictly to morality; it is useful to replace the men of her study with a "disinterested viewer" and to replace the women with the "interested viewer" which can change the ideals of beauty from hierarchical absolutes to relational subjectivites, allowing for a broader definition of beauty and justice, not necessarily hinging on the greatly debated quality of symmetry. While symmetry gives rise to absolute justice; asymmetry, perhaps, can give rise to a system of justice based on mercy. Hence, when the disinterested viewer is replaced with the interested viewer, "the experiences of inequality and interconnection...then give rise to the ethics of justice and care....the vision that self and other will be treated as of equal worth...dispite differences in power" (63)(3).. An ethic of care in beauty can give rise to the idea that asymmetry is more aptly capable of producing the justice of mercy in Scarry's understanding than is symmetry and objectivism.
One of the most widely read and cited instances where a shift from absolute justice to the justice of mercy occurs is between the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. While the justice of the Old Testament stands as "and eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth", this rule is reexamined and restated in the New Testament as "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Whereas the first is clearly about symmetry and highlights this in physically tangible way, the other instead requires an extension of good faith even where there is no precedent of action.
The event which precipitates this switch is the entrance of Jesus into the world. Jesus is concieved of in the Bible as a liason between the spiritual world of God and the physical realm of humans. Because Jesus is a union of the divine realm and the physical realm, he is thus invested in the human experience in a way that God alone could not be. With Jesus' entrance, humanity has switched from a "disinterested" divine figure to an "interested" one; and this switch precipitates the change from hierarchical justice to a justice of mercy. Inherent in this relationship of creator and created is inequality and asymmetry, but yet this can lead to an ethic of justice and care, because asymmetry requires mercy.
The interested gaze is inherently asymmetrical, because an invested viewer is undergoing a "radical decentering" as Scarry (1) states: when we view a beautiful thing it is hardly passive, instead the interested viewers "cease to stand even at the center of our own world. We willingly cede our ground to the thing that stands before us" (112). Investment of the viewer causes the prostration of the observer to the beautiful object, a worship of the beautiful object as more worthy of regard than either it's surroundings or the observer. This leads to an imbalance of power, and hence mercy is necessary as a part of the system of justice.
Scarry assumes an interested viewer throughout her work, becuase she expects that "the vulnerability of the perceiver seems ... greater than, the vulnerability of the person being perceived"(73)(1). It is the investment of this interested viewer that allows Scarry to make the claims that beauty inspires justice, that the "daily unmindfulness of the aliveness of others is temporarily interrupted in the presence of a beautiful person, alerting us to the requirements placed on us by the aliveness of all persons"(90). The perspective difference, then, that Scarry requires is not the "passive" versus "instrumental" perspective juxtaposition that she outlines, but rather reconcieving the role of the viewer of beauty as interested rather than passive.
1) Scarry, Elaine. "On Beauty and Being Fair." On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.
2) Koggel, Christine. Concepts of Beauty: A Feminist Philosopher Thinks about Paradigms and Consequences. Beauty Symposium, 2004.
3) Gilligan, Carol. In A Different Voice: Psycological Theory and Women's Development. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1982.
| Justice Name: Malorie Ga Date: 2005-04-15 17:01:38 Link to this Comment: 14607 |
Nothing in my personal experience has caused me to be able to believe that noticing beauty leads to justice. We live in a society that holds women up to an unattainable goal of beauty. And while some of us maybe able to reach some of those standards, either through nature or through hard work, it is nearly impossible to reach them all. I have been blessed with a fast metabolism. It allows me to eat whatever I want with out gaining a pound. So with out trying, I am able to attain the ideal waist size. Even though I have a thin waist, I am still constantly being judged by it. The comments people make to me about my weight or waist size always makes me feel awkward, because they are never really compliments. Sometime what they say comes off as a fact, a general point of information. Like, "Wow, I never noticed, but you are skinny, aren't you?". Then there is the condescending comment. They look at me with what I perceive as a cross between discuss and jealousy, as if to say "How dare you look like that while I look like this." And do not get me wrong, there are people who say it with the intention to compliment me-people include most of my family members, aunts, uncles, and cousins as well as close friends. The usual comment is "You've lost weight!" Over spring break, I got this comment twice in one day, first from Lucia, the lady who cleans our house and used to baby-sit me, and later by the women who owns the Chinese food restaurant we go to on a normal basis. And although I know they say it to be nice, I still cannot help but see it as negative attention. They never say, "gosh, you look smarter" or "You are a really intelligent women", they focus on my slim waist.
While it may seem convoluted to talk about the negative attention I receive for being thin, it helps to prove the point that beauty is judgmental. People judge me by my thin waist. They call me skinny, not thin, but skinny. Skinny to me is a negative word. When people tell me I am skinny, it is not to congratulate me on reaching an "ideal of beauty", it is to condemn me for it. I have reached an ideal of beauty, I should be sitting pretty (no pun intended). Instead I receive comments from fellow women. Why they feel the need to constantly remind me of my waist size, I do not know. It may be because they are insecure in their own appearance. They are jealous that it comes so naturally to me. They also hate me for having the natural ability. As women, we constantly strive to make ourselves more beautiful by any and all means necessary. There are a number of reason we do this, for men, for ourselves, and for fellow women. Teresa Riordan paraphrases an observation made by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy in the introduction of her book by saying "Women is out to conquer not just men but her rival females" (Riordan xxii). We use our looks, our beauty, to show that we are better than other women. So if we are out conquer other with our beauty, how can it lead us to justice?
One argument that Scarry uses in her defense is about the power involved with beauty. She says, "If we really believe that "beholders are all-powerful" and "persons beheld are powerless," then wouldn't we decline the offer?" (Scarry 76). In one respect I agree with her here, because I do not think that those beheld are powerless. In fact, women have been using there beauty to gain power for many years. Though I do believe beholders do exert a certain amount of power over those whom they view. As beholders, we can chose to judge the people we behold purely on their looks. In contract to what she is saying, I would argue that some of us do decline the offer, or at least try to. I by no means try to make myself particularly beautiful in the morning. Even though I "decline the offer" to be beautiful, there are still people who will judge my beauty- my waist. We cannot escape others views as much as we cannot escape viewing others. And in our viewing, we are not striving for social justice, but comparing our ideals of beauty to that person, whither consciously or unconsciously.
Throughout this paper, I have deigned the fact that beauty could lead us to any sort of justice or truth. While I may not give beauty enough credit, Scarry give it to much. She says: .
1) Elaine Scarry, "On Beauty and Being Fair." On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999: 55-124. 127-132.
2) Teresa Riordan. Introduction and Conclusion. Inventing Beauty: A History of the Innovations That Have Made Us Beautiful. New York: Broadway Books, 2004: xv-xxv, 276-278.
| Reaching a Paradigm of Beauty: Cosmetics and Plast Name: Jaya Vasud Date: 2005-04-15 17:38:55 Link to this Comment: 14611 |
Paper 4: The Political and Cultural Implications of Beauty
Reaching a Paradigm of Beauty: Cosmetics and Plastics within Western Culture
Since the beginning of time, aspects of beauty have been bestowed to different animals during sexual maturity within the animal kingdom in order for ways to lure and woo potential mates. Humans too arguably looked their very best during their teenage years when they were the most fertile youthful but mature, when traditionally they courted each other, found a mate, and reproduced and became paradigms of reproductive success and fitness. However, as the years progress ideals of beauty and its relation to repoductivity has shifted significantly. Humankind has become even more and more obsessed with becoming beautiful, as advertisements on large billboards show airbrushed, digitally altered models with perfect complexions and skinny bodies that would be considered the ideal of beauty, one of which is unreachable and unrealistic for most people. Despite its unrealistic nature, however, most people try to achieve this in fears of being defined 'ugly'- a fear that has been pervasive for centuries. Even Plato said that "what is beautiful is good," and everything ugly and deformed was mad, bad and dangerous and were stigmas given to the body by a vengeful and wrathful God.
Consequently, we now live in a world where the idea of 'lookism' is one of "the most pervasive but denied of prejudices (Etcoff, 42)". People like to believe that looks don't matter, but most people, especially marketing executives and cosmetic corporations know better. Appearance is treated not just a source of pleasure or shame, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, but as a source of information as to how we should base our emotions and judgements towards people. Fair, blushing skin is the skin of youth, of the female, of the woman who has never borne a child. Aside from this, women of all ages have struggled and still struggle throughout their lives to maintain the look of the blushing, fertile female who has never born a child, with a complexion that glows with youth. They are trying to mimic the beauty of the adolescent and in doing so join the univervsal obsession with clear skin and the various ruses to mimic it. Cosmetics and increasingly facial plastic surgery, is all about the illusion of youth and fertility and the innate desire to attract a mate. Therefore, looking at the effects that cosmetics and plastic surgery have had on our society are worth looking at to show how appearance obsessed a society has become and how we as humans have evolved to cover up our problems with ourselves rather than embracing them.
What exactly are women doing to themselves when the apply cosmetics to their faces? Blushing and flushing suggest sexual excitement. When the coloring gets vivid, the skin is most, the lips swell, and the skin generally signals "the likely hood that one's courtship guestures will be reciprocated and consummated." Red lips and pink cheeks also advertise health. Many women today unthinkingly apply blush and lipstick every day, many add foundations and powders a shade lighter than their natural complexions. The light foundation and blush on the cheeks and red on the lips are sexual signals mimicking youth, the blush of youth, and the vigor of health. Women hide behind their facial makeup. Even though the church tried to ban the use of makeup, as it was a cover up to the true self and was therefore a thing of evil, and even though some men in past centuries were unsettled by it, women still used cosmetics as much as they do today. Women have been and are still willing to cover their natural skin tone and texture daily with a small range of shades produced by cosmetics manufacturers. When they put on makeup they are altering and working their faces to a 'shared ideal,' to replace their individual, characterizing features and their skin's unique properties with these idealized features that are different from their own. In the words of Nancy Etcoff, author of Survival of the prettiest, "[it is] the trade off between revealing the uniqueness of the individual's appearance and beauty, the willingness to give up some of the former to gain more of the latter." However, today we've gone into to even further extremes as we have left the world of temporary paints, powders, potions, gels, and creams that stall, sooth or mask the appearance of aging and oldness for knives, scalpels, laser beams, and injections- the permanent and much more altering realm of plastic surgery.
Nearly half of the world's cosmetic surgeons exist within the United States. Seventy percent of cosmetic surgery patients learn less than fifty thousand dollars a year. According to the American society of plastic and reconstructive surgeons, over 600,000 cosmetic surgery procedures were performed in 1996. Most of these were done on Caucasian women within their 30's, 40's, and 50's, 89% of all surgeries taking place on women, with eye lifts and face lifts being among the most popular procedures done. According to Nancy Etcoff in Survival of the Prettiest, we may lose a sense of what it lookslike to age. Sadly people do not even try to hide the secrecy that once belonged with plastic surgery; the wealthy flaunt it at parties and consider it a thing of social status. Even people, namely being Oprah Winfrey, who used to celebrate the beauty within women had a special show that let women know the different types of plastic surgery that were now available on the market. If one was to Google® search plastic surgery on the web, the number of procedures that are now available (especially just for the face) are quite unsettling and very numerous; one would also encounter many testimonials with people who boast about the seven or eight reconstructions they and their family members have had done to their faces. People don't even look at the ridiculousness of some of the treatments, such as botox- the injection of a potentially life threatening organism that is usually found infesting dented soup cans that causes paralysis and stiffness of the face, thus diminishing the appearance of wrinkles. In the most general terms, literally any part of the face or body can now be reconstructed, tucked, nipped, broken, scraped, restored, or even added.
Instead of letting faces age, people are now getting little procedures at the first signs of aging. People are starting plastic surgery in their thirties rather in their fifties, with the idea to never visibly age at all. Is this to imply that one associates ugliness with aging? At first the idea of ugliness and aging seems kind of hard to swallow, but then one wonders: if an elderly women in her 80's or 90's was theoretically given plastic surgery and was reconstructed to look like a young, 30 year old supermodel, would people in this society look past her possible senility, need of dependence on other people, and nagging nature and not neglect her as much as they often do with other elderly people, or would they show more respect and admiration for her? The author's guess, as outrageous as it may seem, leans towards the latter. In many other societies especially in the East, becoming older is welcomed and embraced as an inevitable part of life, as each wrinkle signifies one's maturation, intelligence, and experience in the world; ideals of Western society constrast this completely.
Cosmetics have also taken on another form with natural sunlight and tanning beds. My mother often finds herself perplexed with the Western ways of thought, because the ideal she was raised on that "fairness equals loveliness" is drastically contradicted when she views people in the West sitting in the sun and tanning booths, causing irreversible sun damage in order to attain an olive, 'exotic,' glow that myself and other Indians share, that implies healthiness and vigor. In this way are people also covering up their true form, masking the defining characteristics on their face in the same way that cosmetics do? According to Nancy Etcoff's book Survival of the Prettiest, in a way they certainly are. Fair skin at one time was considered attractive, because it could reveal possible facial imperfections, better mask boils, warts, and freckles, and also underlying illnesses such as anemia or other illnesses that would cause the skin to become pallor and sickly. In this way a man knew that he was marrying a healthy woman, because no ailments could be hidden by tanned skin. However, possible effects of rapid globalization and also achieving a temporary glow has become a thing of appeal in Western society, while irrereversible damage from the sun and tanning booths have been pushed aside so that one could once again try to reach the idealized form of beauty.
Survival aspect of beauty has truly shifted significantly. One may go through such drastic measures of using cosmetics and plastics in order to appeal more youthful and attractive, but there must be other driving forces that makes a woman do what they do. Why does one make these alterations to oneself then? Does it make a person happier with their life and with themselves? According to recent studies by psychologists, although beauty can make a woman a slightly happier than who would be considered an average looking woman, it could also at the same time make them unhappy, and may not give the woman a sense of overall life satisfaction at all. The biggest effect on one's overall happiness and satisfaction with themselves in part is based on their romantic lives, and not necessarily with their own sense of beauty and self worth. Certain individuals in class have said before that one cannot reach beauty without having to suffer greatly. But how can one appreciate this beauty if they're too busy being unsatisfied with themselves and are therefore blinded by their criticism to see the beauty that really exists in the mirror in front of them? Although cosmetics can help one's self esteem and make them feel better about their appearance, at the same time it can have equally damaging effects to one's self esteem and self satisfaction.
As said by Professor Koggel, we spend such a large part of our lives judging the appearances of one another, doing it within in a context that contains norms and standards as to how we do the judging, while not 'stalking' or looking at oneself enough to realize this judging taking place. Even as much as we detest the idea, we're all guilty of making comparisons, whether making the comparisons with ourselves. How often does one try to look at the beauty within an individual? How often do we look at a person and not judge them as being fat, skinny, pretty, ugly, and instead judge them based on the soulful look in their eyes, the confidence in their strides, or the eloquence of their speech? We even spend far too much time judging ourselves, and how we're not able to reach an ideal form of beauty that we've created for ourselves within our minds. Many of us spend too much time having people tell us how to look without having formulated our own ideals. As said by Professor Grobstein, beauty is not inherent in the external world, it is within us.
In essence judging is not something we should be ashamed of; we were bestowed these innate traits to make comparisons in order to choose a mate that would help allow for best reproductive fitness and healthy offspring. However, we should evaluate why we have gone to such extremes in order to maintain a youthful, fertile appearance. We easily chastise others for going along with society and its obsession for women to reach an unrealistic beauty ideal that has been set out for us by other women and even other men, but as pointed out by Professor Koggel it is us in the end who buy magazines with idealized, airbrushed models on the covers that we look up to strive to look like, buy tubes of lipstick and boxes of blush that keep the cosmetics companies in business, give thousands of dollars to cosmetic surgeons to alter our faces and bodies, and sit in tanning salons and booths. Because many of us, the consumers and the followers, we have let society create this idealized beauty standard for us, and left other people to do the judging for us when we ourselves should becoming up with our own decisions.
Works Consulted
Etcoff, Nancy. Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty. New York: Anchor Books July
2000.
Koggel, Kristine. Concepts of Beauy: A Feminist Philosopher Thinks About Paradigms and
Consequences. 23 March 2004.
| Exploring the social implications of beauty throug Name: Amy Martin Date: 2005-04-15 18:01:31 Link to this Comment: 14612 |
Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. – John Berger
The media network has its idols, but its principal idol is its own style which generates an aura of winning and leaves the rest in darkness. It recognizes neither pity nor pitilessness.
- John Berger
Ever since my early adolescence I've loved women's fashion magazines. Most of the time I am an indiscriminating reader, I flip through the glossy pages without a thought, the bright pictures and funky typography eye candy that is the fluff of my literary interests. To me, the magazines are like watching T.V. - a way to escape the world, some intellectual downtime. Yet, I am not so naïve as to be oblivious to the common perception of the social implications of the women's fashion magazine. It, like all other media, feeds the machine of the Western ideal of feminine beauty. In this essay, I want to examine John Berger's quotes about men, women and the media and their relation to the societal implications of fashion magazines and the concept of female beauty. Are fashion magazines anything more than pedestals that promote the impossible standard of beauty? Is the existence of such a standard evil? Is it ever acceptable to want to fit the standard of beauty? Do women try to live up to these beauty ideals for themselves or for someone else? Is it to acceptable to want to be beautiful for you but not to want to be beautiful to attract someone else?
One of the central ideas of John Berger's book Ways of Seeing is that in our Western visual tradition men are active and women are passive. Our pictorial tradition is dominated by a presupposed male viewer who watches the female subject. She is thus merely an inactive object, existing solely for the male gaze. Berger postulates that women's place in this tradition leaves them to merely watch themselves being looked at. One can argue that such a visual tradition is perpetuated by the women's fashion magazine. For the purposes of this essay I've chosen five women's magazines from the past year. All of the covers feature a smiling, thin, young woman in revealing clothing, despite the month of publication. Each clearly represents the beauty "standard" of our age, a standard which celebrates women who are skinny and who display their fit, but not too muscular, bodies in tight, minimal clothing. The cover models smile coyly out at the viewer. If we interpret such covers through our heteronormative standards, why would women need to be smiling coyly out at other women, scantily clad to sell magazines? Using this heteronormative standard, if women's magazines were created for other women, why couldn't they or wouldn't they have scantily clad men on their covers? Or women dressed in sweaters, fittingly for the December issue? Through pictography alone, women's magazines perpetuate the iconographical tradition of woman as a sexual object on display for a male viewer.
Once one moves from the pictorial objectification of women on the covers of these magazines, one focus is drawn to the text of such covers. The captions continue to impose the idea that there exists a single standard of beauty that exists in the cover model as well as reinforce the heteronormative message of the picture. These headlines often focus on heterosexual sex and relationships and female physical appearance or "beauty". "His secret pleasure points", "Help is here! Great hair on a daily basis", "6 mystery moods guys get into and how to decode "them", "Celeb hair DOS & DON'TS", "Brand- New Makeup The 8 Best Looks for Fall", "The Body Trap What's Keeping You from Losing Lbs?", "How to Get Rid of Bad Breath, Itchy Butt Crack and Other Mortifying Body Bummers" scream some of the headlines of Cosmo, Allure, and Glamour. There is a connection between all three topics of these headlines – their advertisement that women need to buy the magazine in order to better understand the opposite sex, to be more beautiful to the opposite sex, and to be more sexually appealing to the opposite sex. All of which seem to be connected- if you make yourself beautiful by the means we tell you, men will want you. A sum total that is consistently telling the consumer she is not good enough as she is now, that she needs to look at herself and her outward appearance, and take the magazine's tips to modify her existing physical self. Such headlines are inextricably linked with the magazine's cover model because she serves as the poster child who embodies the headlines, who has a hot hairstyle and the brand new makeup for fall, who knows his secret pleasure points.
The message to the target consumer is that she obviously has to undergo self change in order to meet an imaginary beauty ideal that the magazine promotes. Berger's second quote emphasizes the idea of the idol in the media. The fashion magazine's cover girls are such idols, who as symbols of the beauty ideal that the magazines promote, are efficiently the cream of the beauty crop. They are the winners that Berger refers to. In the world of the fashion magazine and its upholding of the beauty standard, physical fulfillment of the standard is winning, and if you too- take the tips the cover model embodies, you can be like her- you can be a winner. In "winning", we see an association between beauty and power, that by being physically attractive, you have a better chance of holding a high place in our social hierarchy.
The paradox inherent in the beauty standard, as parlayed by the magazine, is that it is ever changing. How would Cosmo survive if the "Hot New Hairstyles" were the same month to month, year to year? The instability of the standard, its constant transitions and transformations, make it an unobtainable goal while reinforcing its strength. Since so few ever reach it, the goal is thought to be worthwhile. After all why would anyone want to achieve such standards, if everyone easily could? Thus, we see that the energy inherent in keeping up with this arbitrary standard is exhausting. Yet, perhaps because of the impossibility of achieving such a goal, many women try to keep up with such a standard. We use fashion magazines as our guides to these standards, as the front that informs us about the changes in the standard and how we can convert our natural selves into the new standard.
This year, Glamour had a circulation of 2,509,566 in the United States alone, that's just women who get the magazine delivered, and excludes all the impulse store sales. And those numbers only represent one of the many women's fashion magazines. In buying these magazines, we support the current format of the women's fashion magazine. If one accepts John Berger's ideas and their application to the women's fashion magazine, in buying such magazines we are supporting both the objectification of women and the idea of a singular beauty standard. We support the notion that we have to alter the physicality we were born into and fulfill such a standard. Ironically, we are the society who is setting such standards before ourselves by embracing the idea of the standards through our consumerism of these magazines.
Why? Perhaps the huge sales of such magazines show that there is something inherently pleasurable to us within these magazines, something perhaps even beautiful that brings us to buy them. Societal standards of beauty may not be inherently oppressive. Perhaps women even enjoy such standards. If this is not the reason why women are buying fashion magazines, the other extreme is that they are buying them because they feel pressure to engage in society's idealized standard of beauty. If this is the case, the fashion magazine becomes merely an outlet for the objectification of the female subject to fulfill the male viewer's gaze.
I can't accept the notion that women have become so socialized to a beauty standard that they disagree with that, if they feel the fashion magazine is oppressive, they still continue to buy it to live up to such a standard. Nor do I want to believe that women would only buy women's magazines because they feel such standards will lead them to be attractive to the implied male viewer. I have to question why the desire for some sort of physical beauty is always assumed to be oppressive to women. If one feels that one looks good, one has better self esteem. Yet, ideas of one's own personal physical beauty and sexual attractiveness won't always fit the norms that society has created. The tension between the two ideas of beauty is the painful part. Women can be aware of such a standard, yet chose to adhere to only the parts of it that she chooses, for whatever personal motivation. Stepping beyond Berger, women can be their own viewers and their own objects. We can reclaim beauty as our own, choosing the grooming changes to partake in, in order to please whatever individual standard we have created for ourselves. Since it is impossible to escape society's norms, I acknowledge that such "choices" will always be informed by the standards of culture. Even if we own our own beauty, our notions of beauty are inevitably informed by the societal standards of beauty. It is obviously a challenge to deviate from that which is perceived as "normal" in society. Even if one is aware that few people fit into such standards of beauty.
Within the mandates of the fashion magazine exists the ambiguity of the social implications of beauty. Not only do such magazines serve as dictates of beauty standards that we may choose to accept or reject, that we may call oppressive or creative, we have to consider their roles as a unique space only for women. Glamour's November 2004 issue, the one of "Help is here! Great hair on a daily basis!", also has the headline"50 health secrets, for women only". This issue also includes an editorial on the lack of women running for Congress and an article on women soldiers in Iraq. Although the women's fashion magazine can serve as the embodiment of the oppressive standard of female beauty in our culture, it has enormous potential as a space that tackles the political, cultural and social issues women confront daily in our society. I wonder if covers could feature pictures of Hillary Rodham Clinton in her stodgy business suits with headlines that read "Why Aren't More Women Running for Congress?" Even if the women's magazines of the future included all the junk, whether you find it fun or oppressive, that they currently feature on their covers inside their binding – what would the effect be if they changed the image of the cover model? Even this singular step could begin a tradition that breaks the cycle Berger writes of. This new tradition would promote active women, rather than embracing the portrayal of woman as passive. Perhaps slowly the women's fashion magazine could become a space where the societal implications of beauty had something to do with character rather than simply coy gazes. Would women buy such a magazine? Or do we accept and embrace the current image and issues that the women's fashion magazine projects on their covers?
