As a follow-up to my last post,  I offer you a brief yet serious commentary on the subject of beauty, in a culture obsessed with physical “perfection.”

We’ve heard so many “quotes” to temper our gullibility, to warn against judgement based on physical appearance. For example:

Beauty is only skin deep

Don’t judge a book by its cover

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Handsome is as handsome does

We allegedly get it, on an intellectual level.  Still we expend so much energy working to achieve some (one’s) ideal of physical beauty.  Young women and men trying to meet the standards of the moment…Such pressure to put on oneself.  [“If only I had straight hair/flawless skin/perfect teeth. Then everyone would like me; then someone would love me.”]  And for those who feel that they’re failing?  Where does it leave them?  Scarier still, where does is lead them?

Here are my own words of wisdom. Feel free to quote me:

Beauty doesn’t require perfection.

Perfect doesn’t mean beautiful

You can have all the “right” physical qualities, but if you are ugly on the inside, it will show on the outside.

Imperfect does not mean unloveable.

And you know those things you hate about the way you look, those things that, when you look in the mirror, are all you see?  Guess what?  No one sees them the way you do!  When others look at you, they don’t see your  too-thin upper lip, your crooked nose, or that crease between your brows.  No, they don’t.  They look in your eyes and see the goodness in you, the spark that makes you who you are.  And they see that you are beautiful.  And when you look in the mirror, so should you.

Madwoman Yoda has spoken.

[cue music Beautiful by Carole King.  I know, it’s kinda hokey.  Tough on you.  I love this song]

 

…Well, life’s not fair and the sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be…

We all know this by now.  Unfair in so many ways, on so many levels.

Today I’m thinking about how life is unfair to women.  I don’t want to talk about it in the political sense – this is not the forum for that, is it?  You don’t need to be reminded about glass ceilings, disproportionate pay, genital mutilation, criminal injustices, etc.  You are well aware of it all and, while I want you to remain incensed by these things (and more), I want to focus on a different perspective:  The disparate standards of physical “beauty” between men and women.  Count on me to take it to an elevated level.

Now, I’ve always been aware that in our society women take on more of a burden to look good, but something recently put me over the edge on this one:  The “dad bod” phenomenon.  Really, little girl who wrote the note heard round the world??? You have now just sealed the deal.  While women are running, spinning, and crunching (and not just in the gym), men can now be comfortable to let it all hang out (or over, as the case may be.  as in “over their waistbands”).  While women are eating child-size portions of salad and tofu, men are snarfing buckets of fried chicken and washing them down with six packs of beer.  Is that fair?  I ask you!

Gentlemen:  The women you love are in the gym, trying desperately to stave off the upper arm batwings, to rid ourselves of every physical scar of having borne YOUR CHILDREN while you guys are out there ordering pizza AND a side of  garlic knots (you freakin’ gluttons!).   And you still feel ok to jog with no shirts on and bare your beer guts at the beach – sans shame!  HEY!  I DIDN’T BUY A TICKET TO THAT SHOW!  And what do women do? We hide!  Geez, a special swimsuit was even created – the tankini – so that we could hide our little bellies from your critical eyes!  Or worse yet, we avoid the situation altogether.  [speaking of swimsuits…nearly every woman out there will tell you how much she dreads swimsuit shopping, and swimsuit wearing. It’s no wonder – have you seen the choices? just check out the Land’s End summer catalogue: the bikini for the perfect bodies. and the one piece.  then we have the high waisted bikini bottoms to keep the meat neatly tucked in. then there’s the swim short, the swim “mini” and at the popular tankini (basically a bikini bottom with a tank top).  so many options for various degrees of exposure, so many ways to hide].

Oh, this isn’t only about swimsuits.  Think about it.  Women pluck and tweeze, wax, shave, or chemically burn off all unwanted hair from their bodies.  Most men only shave their faces.  SOME go farther and do some manscaping, but the idea hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm.  We spend a fortune on skin care, on make up.  We have toxins injected into our foreheads, silicone injected into our lips, some other crap injected into every other line on our faces.  Men do as well, you say?  Yes, of course some do.  But face it (pardon the pun), those procedures are mostly undertaken by and marketed to women (check out the advertisements).  Most women dye their hair.  Going grey is not the popular option – women look old (heaven forbid we look our age!) and haggard.  Going grey makes a man look…what?  oh, yes:  Distinguished.  Hair loss in women?  OMG!  Not acceptable!  We have supplements, elixirs, tonics, serums, etc.  Yes, men suffer the same fate, however, we accept that men will likely begin the balding process at some point.  We accept the male-pattern baldness, the receding hairlines.  But here’s the diff:  Women are ok with that.  Men can just go ahead and shave the whole damn head and we’re ok with that!  (Just do us women a favor.  When the hair that stops growing on your scalp starts growing out of your ears, please do something about it.  PLEASE).  And if we let it all go – LIKE MEN DO – we look like we “just don’t care. ”   [really, guys? maybe we just don’t have time for ourselves after WORKING and cooking YOUR dinner and doing YOUR laundry and cleaning YOUR houses and taking care of YOUR kids.  HMMM? or MAYBE some women don’t believe in the chemicals, don’t want to subject their bodies to unnatural and unhealthy, and potentially dangerous processes.  do they get kudos for that?  perhaps…but do they get dates?  just askin’]

And how about the extreme of plastic surgery?  Who do you think signs up more often?  My guess is women.  Face lifts, brow lifts, neck lifts.  Boob jobs – because we are a breast-obsessed culture.  If a woman is small-breasted she needs to be at least average or (what the hell) big. If a woman is naturally big she wants to be bigger. And who invented the breast implant?  A man, of course.  Who perfected it?  Other men (SURPRISE!)  What is the most popular form of plastic surgery?  Yep, you guessed it.  Breast augmentation.  Why aren’t as many men lining up for penile implants?  Plenty of you guys are running around with substandard penises.  Am I right, ladies?

Now here’s the kick in the head question:  Who did this?  Can we honestly put this all on the male of the species?  Or did women do this to themselves? I mean, who really set the standard here?  Women have adorned themselves for thousands of years, and in some civilizations so have men.  Was our idea to enhance ourselves so that we’d be more attractive to men?  Does this really all distill down to competition? Women competing for men’s affections?  Doing what WE think men would find attractive?  That’s a very plausible theory, I think.

MAYBE it really went like this:  Men paid more attention to certain women.  The “beautiful” ones (the ones with long eyelashes, the ones with full lips, the ones with large breasts).  Thus was created a standard of beauty. In response to this, women – the ones who didn’t have the lashes, lips, large breasts – really wished they could do something about it. And VIOLA!  It was done!  Man said:  Your wish is our command.  We shall do this for you, Woman. (The only time a man actually gave a woman what she asked for).  Yeah that’s a little hard to believe…OK, so MAYBE it went like this:  Men really dug women with certain physical attributes.  Man said:  “Hey, let’s figure out a way to make them ALL look like this!  Wouldn’t that be freakin’ awesome for US?!”  And we bought it, ladies.

And the rest, as they say, is history.  Or, more accurately, HERstory.

I say “We must throw off the yoke of oppression…Revolt! Revolt!…Comes the revolution…We’ll all eat strawberries and cream!”  Make it extra heavy cream for me.