beauty

Day 11: Turning Point in Your Life.
The Power of Beauty, Nancy Friday.

Enter my first* accidental foray into feminism. In my then-boyfriend's bedroom, I had inadvertently picked up a book I once saw the cool girl in my homeroom reading. But turns out in my naiveté I had misread the titles and the homeroom-cool-girl had actually been reading The Beauty Myth. That fact alone validates my homeroom girl crush, I mean, what kind of a tenth grader reads Naomi Wolf? It took me four years to finish it, embarrassingly enough. Eventually, both books would go on to have a huge impact on me, Friday's simply because it was anecdotal enough to draw me in and simple enough for a budding feminists to understand.

*No wait, or was this my first foray into feminism?

Woolf

"But beauty was not everything. Beauty had this penalty – it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life – froze it. One forgot the little agitations; the flush, the pallor, some queer distortion, some light or shadow, which made the face unrecognizable for a moment and yet added a quality one saw for ever after. It was simpler to smooth all that out under the cover of beauty."

– Virginia Woolf

Beauty freezes life, masking the face by denying it variety and motion.

Wolf

"We can dress up for our own pleasure, but we must speak up for our rights." - Naomi Wolf.

myth

Angelica Saved by Ruggiero from the cover of The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women

I've literally been reading this book for four years, my roommate from 1st year can testify, but it's just cause I've been reading it like this, but I'm finally on the last few pages. The book is endlessly fascinating, enlightening and at times disturbing, you should most definitely read it.

"The Beauty Myth examines beauty as a demand and as a judgment upon women. Wolf examines how modern conceptions of women's beauty impact the spheres of employment, culture, religion, sexuality, eating disorders, and cosmetic surgery.

Wolf argues that women in Western culture are damaged by the pressure to conform to an idealized concept of female beauty—the Iron Maiden throughout modern society, from Victorian Times to today. She argues that the beauty myth is political, a way of maintaining the patriarchal system. It allows women to enter the labour force, but under controlled conditions. She also claims that this system keeps women under control by the weight of their own insecurities. The beauty myth is sometimes viewed as succeeding The Feminine Mystique, which relegated women to the position of housewife, as the social guard over women. In this sense, Wolf claims that public interest in a woman's virginity has been replaced by public interest in the shape of her body."

From Wikipedia.

google

These are the first pages of images which show up on Google. Hillary Clinton is so often depicted unflatteringly. Young women have older women to look up to, there are so few women depicted favourably who are above forty and intelligently noteworthy. These images almost serve as a warning for young women: If you want to be smart, ambitious and successful, you will be ugly. On the other hand, the term a 'distinguished man' is basically a synonym for handsome. Also notice how these two results are so reflective of gender constructs, Bill is calm and strikingly blue. Hillary is erratic and colorful, qualities usually considered feminine.

Like, look that that photo of Bill, 1st one second row, when will someone depict a women like that? A flattering portrait of one's imperfections one which commands respect and forgiveness. Beautiful lines and character as on the face of a loved one. No one depicts women like that and I'm sick of it.
Popular media, I beg of you, give me a role model.

"sweet and satisfying"

Caramel is one of the best films I've seen in a while. Beauty salons are a special place, true they do their part in holding up the Beauty Myth and drain woman's wallets but it is an intimate environment for women to bond and I love the chatter and the massages.
The first part of the film couldn't be embedded, but just go on youtube to watch the whole thing.

"On one hand, women are trained to be competitors against all others for "beauty"; on the other, when one woman - a bride, a shopper in a boutique - needs to be adorned for a big occasion, other women swoop and bustle around her in generous concentration in a team formation as effortlessly choreographed as a football play. These sweet and satisfying rituals of being all on the same team, these all-too-infrequent celebrations of shared femaleness, are some of the few shared female rituals left; hence their loveliness and power. But sadly, these delightful bonds too often dissolve when the women reenter public space and resume their isolated, unequal, mutually threatening, jealously guarded "beauty" status."
- Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth.