Looking at Beauty through a Microscope
Dove''s campaign for Real Women - courtesy dove.ca
“Throughout the ages, women's bodies have been manipulated to fit the latest fad. We've been trussed up, pumped up, corseted and bandaged. Waists have been pinched, skin bleached, and ribs removed. The fat sucked out, the silicone injected in.”--- The Body Shop International
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Every period holds its own standard of beauty, and it’s clear that with the evolution of each stage, the standard has continuously changed. The Mona Lisa, for example, did have hanging, exposed, and oversized cleavage and would have been considered overweight by today’s standards. The Victorian and Georgian era women as well would be considered overweight and unattractive by the same standards. In fact, the corset which Victorian women used to enhance their figures deformed the internal organs making it impossible to breathe, in or out of the corset. Because of this, they were always fainting. Marilyn Monroe as well, although she was an icon during her days, would be considered overweight and therefore not as attractive today. |
There can be no denying that the 20th and 21st centuries have seen a gigantic upsurge in the importance placed by Western societies on physical beauty, specifically when it comes to women. The fashion, cosmetics, plastic surgery, cinematic, advertising, weight loss and even the food industry have all cashed on the preoccupation that most women have with physical appearance. Never has there been a bigger proliferation of special weight-loss diets, clinics and pills, anti-ageing creams, fascination with counting calories, promotion of perfection through plastic surgery and exercise routines that most people have trouble sticking to.
Ideal Beauty or Curse?
Many women and girls look at the ‘picture-perfect’ women portrayed in magazines and cannot help but compare themselves to the high cheek-boned, slender, cellulite-free, athletic-looking women and find that they fall very short. Very few women can naturally match up to those glossed-up images of perfection. Psychological studies have revealed that many of these false images leave women feeling depressed, guilty, inferior, self-conscious, insecure, vulnerable, inadequate and ashamed to say the least. The idealized standard of beauty is destroying the same people that it is trying to celebrate.
Enter bulimia and anorexia. For a disturbingly long time, people who are anorexic and bulimic have been promoted as sexy and beautiful. Being thin is being advertised as fashionable, sexy, healthy and happy to the exclusion of other body types. People like Twiggy and Paris Hilton are naturally thin. That is their body type. So for the rest of the women who are not naturally like that, and they happen to be the majority, it is only a representation of a small minority.
But being thin is not a crime. What is damaging is the fact that the degree of thinness has gone overboard, with many women doing unnatural things to stay thin. It is a vicious circle of forcing the body towards a goal that is nearly impossible for the body to maintain. An editorial review of Naomi Wolf’s book The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women points out that “Naomi Wolf argues that women's insecurities are heightened by these images, and then exploited by the diet, cosmetic, and plastic surgery industries. Every day, new products are introduced in the marketplace to ‘correct’ inherently female ‘flaws,’ drawing women into an obsessive and hopeless cycle built around the attempt to reach an impossible standard of beauty.”
Yet nowhere do these advertisers who promote this limited and unrealistic ideal of beauty admit the fact that according to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, in the UK alone, about one woman in every hundred suffers from bulimia nervosa and only slightly less have anorexia nervosa. According to University of Cincinnati researchers, it is estimated that nearly 10 million American females - and 1 million American males - have an eating disorder. 150,000 women die yearly of eating disorder-related diseases. In Canada, according to Statistics Canada, 1.5% of British Columbians over 15 are at risk for developing an eating disorder in any given year—that''s more than 50,000 people in British Columbia and about half a million nation-wide. Is it cause for alarm? Even young women in Africa are succumbing to these diseases.
Promoting the Lie of Being Picture-Perfect
Cindy Crawford has been quoted as saying that even she does not look like Cindy Crawford when she wakes up. Tyra Banks also once said, “I’m not ugly, but my beauty is a total creation.” In the Canadian-owned Glow Magazine July/August edition, Ashanti, the African-American R&B singer, mused that one of the biggest mistakes women made was getting too caught up with the idea that they have to look like someone famous to be beautiful.
Indeed, there was a time when makeup and stylists were the only enhancements that models used, but the digital computer edge has raised the stakes. Airbrushing, where computer specialists digitally brush away ‘imperfections’ like blemishes, wrinkles, cellulite, extra hairs, stretch marks, and pimples, gives a false impression of ideal beauty, making it even harder to attain. Along the way, the world’s image of beauty has become dangerously distorted.
While there is nothing wrong with promoting beautiful people, there is something wrong with portraying unrealistic images of beauty. There is something warped about presenting a singular idea of beauty where the models are all one-size-fits-all. When most women walk on the street, they see a variation of body sizes, heights and shapes. But this is not reflected in most women’s magazines.
Cultural Definitions of Beauty
The truth is beauty is hard to define. Whoever coined the expression ‘beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder’ summed it up best. In certain African countries, like Sudan, women who bear scarification marks on their bodies and faces are considered beautiful, whereas they would be looked upon as horrific in some other countries. Many ethnic groups in West, South, East and Central Africa, as well as many Caribbean countries, consider bigger, curvaceous women to be beautiful - but these women would be considered “fat” by Western standards. In some Nordic European cultures, tall, skinny, blue-eyed, blonde women are considered beautiful, while in others, like the southern Mediterranean ones, voluptuous brunettes and redheads are.
In the Masai culture, women who are bald and adorned with colourful jewelry and paint are deemed beautiful. In certain Australian Aboriginal communities, painting their entire faces with bold colours is beautiful. The Padang women in East Asia place rings (which can weigh as much as eleven pounds) around their necks as a sign of beauty. Because of this, they are referred to as giraffe women. The Kayapo people of the Amazon often use scarification marks, mark their skins with ritualized patterns, tattoo, pierce their noses, lips and ears and use body paint as a symbol of beauty.
Change in the Horizon?
Many people criticize Dove’s Real Women Have Curves campaign as a political and covertly financial one. The campaign presents positive advertisements highlighting women of various sizes in an effort to raise women’s self-esteem. Whatever the intentions, the efforts to properly represent all kinds of women must be applauded.
There is no ideal beauty because it comes in all sizes, shapes and colours. More than ever, it is imperative that the celebrity community, which is the benchmark for beauty, starts re-evaluating what is beautiful. The fact is they have a large impact on teenagers and women all over the world, and their decisions can make a difference. Trendsetters like the fashion and movie industries need to make a concerted effort to promote healthy self-images. Granted, celebrities like Jill Scott, Beyoncé Knowles, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Kate Winslet are promoting healthy body images but more of an effort needs to be made.
Aishwarya Rai, the Indian actress, is considered by many as the most beautiful woman in the world. Yet women like Halle Berry, Angelina Jolie, Beyoncé Knowles, Liya Kibede, Jennifer Lopez, and Ziyi Zhang, although they all look different, are all beautiful in their own right. There may very well be even more beautiful women than them in the villages of Tibet, Siberia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Fiji, Paraguay, Cuba, or Uganda. But because they are not publicized, for the moment, only famous women will make the 100 most beautiful people in the world. Ironically, even this list changes every year, with the flavour of the year suddenly taking the backseat to one who may have been the 5th most beautiful one year and the 10th most beautiful in another year
It is comforting to see that Spain has taken the initiative to stop their models from being anorexic. However, the changes must also come from individuals. Being anorexic or obese, which are both at extreme ends of the strata, is not healthy for anyone. But there is a lot in between, which represents many healthy sizes. We, as individual women, must love ourselves as we were created. At birth we were all given wonderful bodies, which do so many wonderful things for us. We must take care of our bodies, but not abuse them. We, as individual women, should focus more on being healthy, as opposed to skinny, at the expense of our health. We as individual women should celebrate the various sizes we come in and stop striving for unrealistic goals that leave us frustrated and unhappy. We can stop this cycle of damage by demanding change, but it all starts with us.
