What Beauty Is and What Beauty Isn't
Have any of you heard of Magaret Cho?
I suppose recently she was on a radio show and this is what the host asked her:
"What if you woke up tomorrow and you were beautiful? What if you woke up and you were blond, had blue eyes, were 5-foot-11, weighed 100 pounds, and you were beautiful? What would you do?"
In a deadpan voice, Cho said she responded, "I probably wouldn't get up because I would be too weak to stand."
I was reading an article over at afterellen.com about her newest tour when that was one of the first things I saw. And, naturally being 5'8, over 100 lbs, brown hair, brown eyes, and decidedly African American, it made me think about people's assertions of beauty in a country so ethnically diverse.
Anyone who saw that comment, could find offense in what was said: that if you don't fit this description, you are not beautiful. And what about the rest of us, even the rest of the white people, who do no look this way. Why are we still carrying this ideal of beauty?
I know plenty of beautiful people who do not fit this description. Perhaps, I'm even a little biased against blond hair blue eyed persons because I found this ideal to have been shoved down my throat for years and years. But I think Margaret Cho is beautiful even if some ignorant radio show host does not.
I suppose recently she was on a radio show and this is what the host asked her:
"What if you woke up tomorrow and you were beautiful? What if you woke up and you were blond, had blue eyes, were 5-foot-11, weighed 100 pounds, and you were beautiful? What would you do?"
In a deadpan voice, Cho said she responded, "I probably wouldn't get up because I would be too weak to stand."
I was reading an article over at afterellen.com about her newest tour when that was one of the first things I saw. And, naturally being 5'8, over 100 lbs, brown hair, brown eyes, and decidedly African American, it made me think about people's assertions of beauty in a country so ethnically diverse.
Anyone who saw that comment, could find offense in what was said: that if you don't fit this description, you are not beautiful. And what about the rest of us, even the rest of the white people, who do no look this way. Why are we still carrying this ideal of beauty?
I know plenty of beautiful people who do not fit this description. Perhaps, I'm even a little biased against blond hair blue eyed persons because I found this ideal to have been shoved down my throat for years and years. But I think Margaret Cho is beautiful even if some ignorant radio show host does not.