ROTW - Weight and the Beauty Myth
With all due respect, I think I may have to cut off both my ears if I have to listen to one more person obsessing over their weight. ‘It’s all about self-discipline. If I only eat two meals a day I could lose X amount of weight before Christmas’, I overheard a - in my view - perfectly shaped lady in the office tell her fellow colleague. The words ‘self-disciple’ being the most shudder-inducing part of the sentence to me. It is an established fact that, despite feminism’s best efforts, most of the female population still thinks that they are overweight. A survey carried out just last year, by New Woman, revealed that nearly all of the 5,000 women asked thought that size 12 is fat, and that half said they had gone without food all day before a big night out to fit into a dress. Half also admitted to having taken diet drugs; and one in five admitted to using speed or cocaine to facilitate weight loss. Another report, carried out by the British Medial Association, revealed that just over 80,000 people in Britain have recorded eating disorders. With such shocking statistics you’d think Beth Ditto or Nigella Lawson never happened.
The problem is worse for women, due to our culture’s sexist standards against them - indeed only one in ten people with eating disorders are men. However, just a cursory glance around any gym reveals men killing themselves pumping iron, downing copious amounts of protein shake in the hopes of acquiring a David Beckham style six-pack, as shown on recent billboards - with a, by the way, clearly digitally enhanced package.
The issue isn’t just weight either, it’s about beauty as a whole and how the concept has been polluted and commercialized by the media. Ask anyone and they can usually give you a lengthy list of their flaws, telling you how perhaps their nose is too big or their cheekbones are not angular enough. Evidence seems to suggest that even some of the most intelligent human beings can’t seem to differentiate between the images of stick thin, and photo shopped, models that we are show in the media, and reality. The general consensus being that the western way of seeing beauty, and the ideal weight, is something we are innately born with. It makes the maxim ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ seem like a joke.
Way back in the early nineties Feminist Naomi Wolf released a book called 'The Beauty Myth’, which was a polemic against this beauty ideal. This book should be required reading for…well everyone in western culture with issues about how they look. In her book Wolf sought to annihilate an inimical stereotype, which the media has fashioned against women since Victorian times. She claimed that after the first two waves of feminism demolished the mindful housewife stereotype, a new stereotype of the 'beautiful woman' was created to bind women within an 'iron maiden'. Women who would otherwise be free to smash the glass ceiling. In her book Wolf discusses two key fears that this ‘beauty myth’ perpetuates in women: the fear of age and the fear of weight.
It’s a terrifying concept that just as society ostensibly opens the corridors of power to women they were, and still are, being programmed to limit themselves within their own minds. But even if this motive isn’t palpable enough for you, then an equally sinister, and more capitalist, reason for the media to push such ideologies at us exists: the need to belittle and then segregate us into set identities in order to sell us things. Advertising companies sell their products to identities, and it is the advertising companies that fund the magazines, the TV stations and even the Internet. If we are all desperately trying to obtain a mutual perception of beauty then products can be sold to us as being essential in becoming this image of flawlessness.
The worst crime of the mainstream media in perpetrating this motive is that by digitally altering images and claiming them as a reflection of reality, they make the beauty ideal seem achievable to us, and yet just out of reach. It is important for the media to keep us in this perpetual state of anxiety about our looks because content people simply do not buy things. Furthermore, not only does it make us a nation of neurotics but it also exacerbates the gender divide by creating myths about what the opposite sex looks for in a partner. It makes women believe that all men have secret preferences for skinny girls - as if we are not all individuals with subjective tastes. And, of late, it would have men believe that all women want their boyfriends to be built like brick shit houses. As for same sex relationships, well the media/advertising companies attempts to teach us to try and emulate male-female relationships by simply offering us no alternative.
The beauty myth makes woman’s magazines, like Cosmo, become a confusing read. Their editors seem to struggle with upholding modern feminist values, whilst still appeasing the advertising agencies that fund their magazines. It’s difficult to sell advertising space if the ideas your magazine promotes contradict the beauty products that fund them. It has not been unheard of for advertisers to pull their adverts, and therefore money, if they feel a particular feature in the magazine attacks the beauty myth; or even just has a photograph on it’s cover in which a model is not wearing enough makeup. Money from advertisers is what primarily funds the magazines because, often enough, money from magazine sales doesn’t even cover the production costs.
But surely the concept of beauty predates the ubiquitous big-bad media, comes the counter-argument. It’s certainly true that our ancestors did have a concept of human beauty, which can be seen in sculptures from long past, and in myths such as those of Adonis and Helen of Troy. But this vision has become warped by the media from what it was. Beauty used to be subjective. It used to be classified as ‘the interpretation of some entity as being in balance and harmony with nature, which may lead to feelings of attraction and emotional well-being.’ (Quote taken from unidentified source on Wikipeidia). Now it is less interpretation and more dictation.
There are a number of myths about beauty, posing as truths, that the media likes to use to defend itself. The first is that that the beauty is a monolithic concept fixed in time and space. In reality the ideal weight that is considered healthy, and therefore beautiful, varies in other countries as well as time periods. There are a number of examples to show this. For example if you look at some of the old statues of Roman or Greek goddesses, such as Aphrodite (the goddess of Love and Lust): they are often curvaceous. Also, in modern day Ghana, the thicker and heavier a woman is the more rich and attractive she is seen to be; an interesting parallel to the size Zero model mentality of Europe and America. An example of a difference in male beauty standards would be in Japan, in which men defined as 'bishonen' dominate the media. These are men with predominately feminine features and builds. Again this is a stark contrast to the 'masculine' beauty of Brad Pitt, or David Beckham that we are fed by the media in this country. Another obvious example would be how, in ancient Egypt, pharaohs often adorned their face in makeup to pursue beauty.
A second common myth is that beauty is linked directly to health; that beautiful women are more reproductively successful and that being above a certain weight, for either sex, is said to be unhealthy. Sure, to be morbidly obese, to the point that walking is a problem, is quite obviously unhealthy. But at the other end of the spectrum we have size zero models such as Kate Moss, whose body mass is bordering on insanely fragile, that are still seen as beauty icons. Also it is important to note that data, from so-called proven scientific studies, is easily manipulated to confirm biases and other presuppositions. As is which of these studies are given media coverage in the first place. Often these theories are later refuted by further studies, which are selectively ignored because they demolish stereotypes that are useful to the media. The ‘beautiful women are more reproductively successful’ study is one of these. As is the myth that tall men are more reproductively successful, or that small men are more likely to be gay…etc etc.
A third strident argument against the subjective view of beauty is the evolutionary one of the existence of 'Koinophila'. This argues that to have symmetrical facial features is a sign of good health, and good genes, and that sexual creatures seek mates that do not have 'peculiar' features, which deviate from this norm so these features are not passed onto their offspring. Now, surely it can’t be just me who is repulsed by the concept of a dystopian future in which we will all have the same, ‘normal’ features. Like the beauty ideal purported by the media reflects the ‘norm’ of our reality anyway.
Additionally who really eyes anyone up these days with the initial intention of making babies with them. People use the same rules to distinguish if someone is attractive when selecting a one-night stand, as they do for lifetime partners. In fact I would argue the latter is less likely to be judged purely on looks because personality is more important for a potential boyfriend/girlfriend, than for a one night stand. Besides it’s an incredibly hetero-centric view to argue that we look for traits in our partners that we desire our children to have. Obviously gay men and women, due to genetic impossibility, do not select their lovers within this premise. Yet they share the straight view of beauty and, if anything, feel the desire to fit the beauty ideal more than their straight counterparts do, being attracted to the same gender does that to you, and the advertising media exploits this weakness ruthlessly.
So after establishing that the media’s reflection of beauty is a farce the question remains of what should we do to combat it. Banning certain types of advertising is not only unlikely to work, but also adverse to the right for free speech in the media. Instead Naomi Wolf offers a solution at the end of her book with I advocate strongly: we educate ourselves and ignore these images, ultimately making them obsolete and forcing the media to adapt to us.
As well as changing the way we look at ourselves, it will change the way we look at others. When we look at people and come to the conclusion that they are either attractive, or not, our pre-programming by the media plays a central role. It is only by being aware of this and de-constructing our own thoughts can we recognize them for what they are, and then truly form our own subjective view of what is beautiful. At the very least it would help us to be a little less shallow.
Now, people who know me well may accuse me of being a hypocrite by displaying such a view. I do have a propensity to care too much about my hair, and yes I also go to the gym frequently. I’m not saying that those things are wrong. I just feel it’s important to realize that attraction is about more than mimicking two-dimensional images. In the words of Naomi Wolf, ‘It’d be nice to play for fun rather than stakes’, when it comes to looks. True beauty lies in originality. How very boring life would be if we were all to ever actual achieve an image of perfection, as we would all look exactly the same. Surely, to use another maxim, 'diversity is the spice of life'. And personally, I'd take originality and personality over an exactly symmetrical face and six pack any day. They are certainly rapidly becoming a lot more rare.