In light of last week’s essay on beauty, you girls [and guys and everyone inbetween] are doing me in with all the links and resources you’re sharing. Seriously, I’ve got to climb out of my inbox every now and again for air.
I want you to view this video, and take a serious listen to what’s being said here. To be fair, unless you’re in Venezuela you won’t be able to question or understand what context their choices are made within… but, since this blog definitely has an international family, I’m interested in what y’all can share with me on this. It’s… I don’t know the words. It’s just…a lot.
I think it’s pretty f—ing jarring to hear someone say “I say that inner beauty does not exist; it’s something that unpretty women invented to justify themselves.” They need to justify themselves? As in, their raison d’etre? Their existence? Women who are not “beautiful” are subject to justifying their existence, lest there be no reason for them to exist?
Am I reading that correctly?
Beauty is sociopolitical. One person who wields the ability to affirm the wealthiest and most connected people in the world by proclaiming “beauty” as being “in their image” is, without a doubt, going to take that opportunity. It undoubtedly gives him status, as a result. Why create a standard of beauty that affirms the poor, when you can affirm the wealthy and use it to advance on your own personal agenda?
It also leaves a lot of women who don’t look like that standard… spending lots of money trying to get there.
And even in the video, the comparison of living, breathing, thinking, functioning human beings to mannequins was unbelievably jarring. Women are meant to be more than things that carry big breasts and hang clothes. We shouldn’t be expected to carve and slice our bodies in order to be a “more appealing” clothes hanger.
And, speaking of expectation, nothing was more mind-boggling to me than hearing him ask, “If it can be fixed with surgery, then why not do it?”
For starters, because many women cannot afford it. For second, since we insist on reinforcing this idea that a woman’s beauty should be the deciding factor in whether or not she’s marriage material – beauty that is only given to certain women that look a certain way – it’s encouraging people to look for traits that don’t even naturally exist. It artificially raises the need for things like breast augmentation, rhinoplasty, and the like.
I remember being in high school and seeing girls get nose jobs, coming to school with what looked like black eyes and bandages across their faces. Your face has barely grown, yet – why alter it at such a young age? They knew something I didn’t – you “go to college to get your MRS degree, and you need to be pretty to be ready to get it.” If ready included nose jobs, then so be it.
I can’t express enough how much this video left me speechless – yes, “speechless” for me is 500 words – but I’m curious. What’s it like in your community? Neighborhood? City? Country? Do share. I’m curious.