My thoughts on beauty
Beauty preoccupies our minds as humans, but more importantly it takes up so much space as females. We are constantly thinking about it, whether it's in disdain, envy, or just how to attain it. It's such a huge theme in stories, movies, music, any popular media.
Just think about it: the Trojan War, if the myths hold true, would not have started or (if it had) ran the course it did if Helen was just some ordinary woman. Would the Round Table have stood if Guinevere wasn't a beautiful queen? On that end, would Arthur have died if Morgan le Fay wasn't so bewitchingly beautiful and seductive? Rhiannon's plight would undoubtably have been different if she hadn't been a famed beauty. Why did Freya risk her reputation to get the Brisingamen? For eternal beauty. Why was Hephaestos so jealous of any male who ever earned a passing glance fro his wife, Aphrodite? Because of her beauty. We grew up on these myths of beautiful women that lasted throughout time.
And what about in history? Cleopatra was by most accounts beautiful, although that wasn't her greatest asset by far. She had to be beautiful to have so many lovers, right? And so many famous actresses were "tempestuous beauties" who always got their way. It seems that beauty and power go hand in hand.
I'm aware that there are exceptions to this cultural norm. I'm not concerned with that. I want to know why it exists.
Everybody claims to have a different perception of beauty - understandably so; it's a variable that changes from culture to culture and person to person on what is considered the epitome of beauty. There's common ground between the views (there has to be somewhere), but my question is why does it always seem to hold such sway over what people think? Who first decided that beautiful people - especially women - hold the power in the palms of their delicately pretty hands? Is it a conscious thought? Can you be fully aware of the fact that you think it's important, or can you delude yourself into saying that "looks don't matter" when in fact it does matter to you? Can someone say to theirself that it's not important what they look like and truly honestly mean it? Who does it matter more to: "ugly" people, "beautiful" people, or the people inbetween?
I don't know about the rest, but my bet is on the people in the middle. The "plain" girls who aren't remarkable enough to warrant a first glance, let alone a second one. The guys who are immediately passed over for the hottie in the back. It matters more to them than to anyone else, I think, because they're "unremarkable". (Note: this is not what I actually think about these types of persons; this is just me throwing out ideas, hypothesizing, trying to fit myself into others' minds.) People who are seen as ugly are noticed because of their ugliness, and obviously the beautiful people are revered and hallowed. The extremes get all the attention, leaving the middle ground abandoned and clamoring for only one side: beauty. This way, they'll get noticed, they'll be part of that elite group of Olympians whose feet never tread the ground and who grace the world simply by existing.
And what about not just the girls that meet standards of beauty and know it, but the truly beautiful? How do you differentiate that? To me, it's a pretty thick line. Girls who know they're attractive and flaunt it are different than girls who possess that Platonic ideal of beauty. (Beauty's such a feminine thing to me, being a woman and all, so forgive me if I'm grossly neglecting men. I've never experienced that kind of thought process and I'm intimately familiar with the female ideas of "beauty" and "attractiveness", so I'm running with that.) Girls who are attractive tend to know it and take advantage of it. They're the popular girls from high school, they're the stereotypical sorority girls on campus, they're the Niobes and Cassiopeias, the female versions of Narcissus, so vain that they could waste away watching themselves in the mirror.
But the beautiful girls... ah, that's something different. They're the girls you see in movies. Those girls aren't aware of their beauty, working at their urban jobs that get the bills paid. Sandra Bullock in Two Weeks Notice comes to mind, as does Kate Hudson in How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. Or they're aware that they're beautiful, but don't care, like Lena in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series (I think of the book, not the movie, although Alexis Bledel does a good job portraying that quality). They don't take for granted their attractiveness, because it just doesn't faze them. They're not just beautiful to look at; they're quirky and cute and genuinely beautiful on the inside too. They're everything that girls and women strive to be.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I try to be beautiful - not attractive, beautiful. I don't try and play up any attractiveness I have because to me, that seems so presumptuous and vain. I'm guilty of playing up my idiosyncrasies, of acting like the quirky girls in the movies. I push my physical attractiveness down because to me, it's not beauty to have too much makeup on or so many pieces of jewelry or sexy clothes. I go for understated elegance, which I suppose is admirable, but I hate myself for it sometimes because it's so selfish. I want people to tell me I'm beautiful. I want men to say, instead of "you are so hot", "you are so beautiful". I want to be noticed because I'm not playing up that sexy/hot/cute angle of me; I want them to think I'm attractive in a completely different way than most girls because I want to be set apart. Yes, I have those times when all I care about is looking sexy and seductive, but for the most part I don't want people to see that side of me. It's the little, simple things that I want to attract them with.
Maybe that's not as unusual as I think it is, but either way I can't label myself as beautiful because I think it's such a selfish desire. It makes me feel manipulative and sneaky, and beautiful girls don't feel that way, right? Or is that just feeding into the idea of beauty that this view holds, that beautiful girls are paragons, goddesses above such mortal feelings?
So. I'm done. What do you think? About the essay-thing, about beauty, about what I feel beauty is, anything. Let me know if you want to share; I'm all ears.