This post is long overdue. I have been thinking about it for months, but wasn’t quite sure how to approach it. It is complex and touchy, and could be the topic of a book I’d happily write, although it has already been discussed and developed in countless phenomenal literary works that I have passionately devoured. In my burning desire to address the subject here and expose my point of view, I wondered how to sum up centuries of societal behaviors that still have such a negative impact today in just one blog post. I didn’t want to make shortcuts, I certainly didn’t want to leave a single rock unturned on such an important matter and wanted to ensure I conveyed my thoughts and feelings accurately. Anyhow, here is my attempt at destroying the heavy and often detrimental weight of Beauty in women’s lives.
I’ll start by sharing my own experience, before diving into the anthropological side of things.
My entire existence, up until I got a reality check a couple years ago, revolved around the way I looked. Despite being deeply uncomfortable in my own skin until my early twenties, I devoted much of my free time to enhancing the physical attributes I did like, thanks to makeup and fashion, in an attempt to, firstly, get the attention away from the body parts I disliked by hiding them (in style, mind you); secondly, to create an illusion of perfection; thirdly, to feel beautiful because that’s what I thought was the most important thing in the world. I felt beautiful only when I managed to hide what I perceived to be imperfections behind layers of clothes. Stripped of that, I thought I didn’t ressemble the standards of beauty portrayed in the media, and came to the conclusion that I wasn’t pretty enough and as a result, didn’t deserve many things in life I craved more than anything and that I was convinced, were only accessible to beautiful women, because obviously being beautiful was the ultimate coronation a woman could have. As a matter of fact, I was so self-conscious that one day, at 16 years old, I was sitting at a café with my parents and brother and refused to get up and cross the room full of clients to get a spoon at the counter. I couldn’t have bared the thought of anyone looking at a body I loathed moving; these thirty seconds would have felt like eternity. I remember seeing beautiful women in the media with very different physical attributes and thinking every time: “oh, I wish I had that body”. – Girl, how do you want to have a supermodel skinny type of body AND five minutes later, want to have coke bottle shaped physique with a small waist and a big ol’ derrière? That’s impossible. That’s ridiculous. But that’s also reality. Not just a reality I lived many years ago, but the reality of many young girls and women who suffer from self-hatred, low self-esteem, lack of confidence; young girls and women that are so unstable emotionally, that whatever the media deems beautiful, the average girl will want to possess or incarnate and failure to accomplish so can lead to deeper self-hatred, sand a feeling of inadequacy. But trends change. So one day the girl with big boobs will be trending and the next day a girl with smaller breasts will be trending. When the root of your being is based upon superficial (beauty) exterior things (other people’s opinion) that are subject to change, you become a slave to those two factors: beauty and other people’s opinion; you become vulnerable to outside approval. Because if we’re being honest, our main goal when trying to look beautiful or fashionable is not only to feel beautiful, but also and perhaps more importantly, to be described by other people as a beautiful woman; and when that compliment comes from another woman, the personal gratification is even greater. Through the admirative or envious suffrages, women seek the absolute affirmation of their beauty, their elegance, their taste and, ultimately of themselves. They get dressed to show off and they show off to get their sense of being. In doing so, they submit themselves to a painful dependance. Dependence to other people’s love and approval. Complimenting a woman’s allure can literally make her day and criticizing her physique has the power to utterly ruin her life.
Although women nowadays are financially independent, although they have more power and legal recognition than they ever have before, when it comes to the way they feel about themselves physically, they may actually be worse off than their grandmothers. The notion of beauty, and the obsessive quest of it will poison even the most successful working woman’s life and act as a true barrier to her freedom and happiness.
The problem is that a lot of women associate self-esteem, self-acceptance and self-confidence to the way they look. When someone says you have to accept yourself the way you are, they mean you have to be happy in the skin you’re in, in the flesh that envelops what should actually really matter and that is completely occulted. The implication of other attributes such as intellect, personality, creativity, are not implied when someone says: “accept yourself the way you are”, as if these factors didn’t matter; as if they didn’t exist at all. I used to define myself, my entire being, by my appearance. I didn’t care about anything else. I would constantly compare myself to the other girls I’d see and in doing so, would more often than not find them more beautiful or better than me. I was constantly focusing on what I lacked. I never realized how narcissistic and self-centered I actually was and when I did realize that, it felt like a slap across the face because that meant I had a big ego which I had never really thought I had. Being uncomfortable in my own skin was socially and morally acceptable because it was pejorative and it is sadly widely accepted by the outer world to talk or look down on oneself. However, if you are too confidant, and think too highly of yourself, that’s when I thought, you could be labeled a narcissist, which is obviously perceived negatively by society. So here I was, realizing that I was so obsessed with trying to look perfect, trying to find a way to be more confident, trying to hide what I perceived to be my imperfections, that all I thought about was… myself. All the time. The whole world revolved around me. And that’s being narcissistic. But how can you think so poorly of yourself and have a big ego at the same time? Well, simply because as kids, mothers spend time doing their daughters’ hair and dressing them fashionably, as if they were dolls, parents keep telling their little girls they are the prettiest girls and as the little girl grows up and gets into the world, she realizes she is not the most beautiful girl in the world but desperately keeps trying to reach that goal. The emphasis on beauty throughout the life of a girl is so powerful that the girl learns at a very young age, from the compliments and attention she constantly gets, that in order to be loved or liked she needs to seduce, and be beautiful, so she dresses up, wears make up, looks at herself in the mirror, compares herself to a fairytale princess and dreams of Prince Charming, of love. (On a side note, I will never allow my daughter(s) to watch Disney movies. Ever. The subliminal message that girls should wait for a man to deliver them from all their problems and be happy, instead of trying the difficult and uncertain quest of happiness by themselves is outrageous.)
Begging for the world to love you when you don’t even love yourself. Asking for the world to recognize qualities you don’t even think you possess yourself. Giving other people the power to determine your value. The fear of not being liked or loved, as if it mattered at all; the fear of not meeting people’s expectations of you, the submission to others people’s judgement. Such self-depreciation extends its effect in all areas of women’s lives and leads them to accept too much from their entourage; to make their own wellbeing, their own interest, their own feelings come after others’; to feel guilty; to adapt to every situation instead of fixing their own rules, all in an attempt to get a sense of recognition that would make them feel loved, appreciated and needed and to validate their existence. Because being selfless is a “quality” that is expected of women from certain cultures, mine included.
Dear Friend, first of all, you, your own wellbeing comes first and foremost (and that’s why I left France. I needed to distance myself from my family’s expectations of me, from everyone deciding what I should be doing with my life, from the idea that every single thing you do must be aligned with your parents’ idea of what and how you should live your life even if it doesn’t make you happy, from cultural obligations that made absolutely no sense to me. I’ve had to break up with all of this and decide to invest in myself, in my own happiness, regardless of whether anyone approved or not). Second of all, your self-esteem should not rely on the way you look. Your confidence should absolutely not be based upon whether you ressemble the standards of beauty portrayed in the media and you should never take anyone’s advice to “accept yourself as you are” as if it was the end goal everyone should aim for in life, because continuous self-improvement is the high road to happiness. I loath the phrase “accept yourself the way are”, because it implies a weakness, vulnerability and fragility that has been stuck as a label on women’s back for too long. I prefer: STRENGTHEN YOUR BODY AND CULTIVATE YOUR MIND. STAND STRONG, FIRM & PROUD IN YOUR CONVICTIONS, DESIRES, ASPIRATIONS AND IN YOUR BODY, WHICH IS THE MEDIUM THROUGH WHICH YOUR CONVICTIONS, ASPIRATIONS, DESIRES & INTELLECT SPEAK. See, your body is not the most important thing here. Your spirit, your brain, your mind, your heart are what really matters. But since your body is the vehicle that carries you through life, you must make sure it is strong and healthy.
How did we even get there? How have we become enslaved to beauty instead of being really, genuinely and utterly free? Why are many women so centered around their physical appearance? Has this played a role in perpetuating gender inequalities or degrading clichés about females over the years?
I firmly believe the first factor to blame is women’s upbringing and the second one is the media that not only perpetuated ridiculous beauty standards throughout the years, but also encouraged women to turn the most superficial considerations into larger than life problems, by creating full magazines about absolutely useless matters that women read passionately and cling to because it resonates with what they are experiencing in their own lives. Matters that revolve mainly around romance, stardom, gossips, and physical appearance. There you have it, I have just summed up many, many women’s preoccupations in just five words: they fantasize about being famous to escape the chaos of real life; in order to have a glimpse of that stardom, they imitate celebrities’ attitude, style and make up; they actually hate themselves so much that gossiping about other people makes them feel better about their own mediocrity, they dream of finding love and when they do, make their significant other’s life living hell because they place in the man’s hands the very heavy weight of making them feel beautiful which they think is going to make them happy.
Although the media and clothing brands are now promoting diversity in the models they hire and the image or message they try to convey, I firmly think we’re still missing the essential point here, which is to stop making such a big deal out of beauty altogether, and encourage women to turn to more important things such as strengthening their bodies (read me well, I am not saying losing weight, but grow physically stronger and healthier) and cultivating their mind. That’s what should be largely promoted in the media. I am not in any way saying we should stop discussing beauty, and women should stop taking care of themselves. I love taking care of myself. I am saying we should profoundly change mentalities. Be into beauty and fashion all you want, but don’t let this rule your world and don’t be defined by such superficial things. Find who you are behind the artifice and if you can’t find anything, figure out who you would like to be: what does your purest, strongest, healthiest, happiest self look like, then build her from scratch.
Here is my issue with the media. The press has the undeniable and very precious power to influence people’s decisions, opinion and behaviors; and I feel like over the years, it has dragged women down instead of lifting them up. It has dragged women down firstly by allowing to spread images of the happy housewife in advertisement in the 1950’s and 1960’s, thus conveying the message that women’s role was to seek fulfillment as wives and mothers and encouraging them to make a career out of having babies, all while teaching women to despise and pity the “unfeminine, unhappy, neurotic” women who aspired to be poets, writers, presidents and doctors. The housewives did not have an identity of their own and didn’t know themselves. They waited for their husbands all day to make them feel alive. Then grew the beauty industry that dictated beauty standards, and profoundly affected the way women’s perception of themselves; the entertainment industry also played a role in the perpetuation and propagation of unrealistic beauty standards and women chosification. The entertainment industry, with the help of the media, killed Culture (I’m talking about real culture, culture that thoroughly forms the mind and develops general knowledge, such as literature, real music, philosophy, art exhibitions, etc.) and glorified the image of the woman object that young girls still idolize and strive to resemble. Young girls need to have other role models than artists who sing about sex and love. Young girls need to be exposed to other things than the superficial topics the media bombards us with.
But the media is not the only factor to blame. There is a huge problem in the way girls are brought up. Simone de Beauvoir, in the excellent second volume of The Second Sex, wrote that one of the curses weighing on women’s lives is that during their childhood, they are left in other women’s hands. There is a clear difference in the way girls and boys are raised. While boys are allowed to run, climb, fall, act a fool and expand their energy, girls are being told not to climb trees because they’d risk to hurt themselves (understand: you’re not strong enough to handle the pain if you fall, get hurt and as a matter of fact, you’re not strong enough period). Everything in the way young girls are raised in some cultures (mine included), instills in them self-doubt and fear of being adventurous and trying new things, and encourages them to appear delicate, sentimental, without any strength of spirit and body whatsoever. An upbringing that emphasizes and values women’s sensitivity moves away the exercise of reason and often leads women to feel unsatisfied in their lives. Their only ambition becomes to be pretty, arouse emotions instead of inspiring respect and the lowness of this desire destroys strength of character.
In order to change mentalities, I firmly believe there should not be any difference in the way girls and boys are raised. I think girls should be encouraged to be their strongest physical and mental selves from a very young age and the notion of beauty should be very limited in parents’ language.
In order to change mentalities, I firmly believe the media should diversify the topics discussed in women’s magazines, not be so focused on appearances, promote culture and living a healthy lifestyle.
In order to change mentalities, I think women who could relate to anything that has been evoked on this post should take upon the necessary exercise to find herself outside of her beauty, unlearn the typical feminine behaviors that have been passed on to her for centuries and that are so detrimental to her wellbeing and happiness.
