The Beauty Phenomenon

The beauty myth is in everything we do. We, as a culture, are so invested in the qualities and beliefs of this myth it controls our lives. The beauty myth has manifested itself deep within our culture and dictates the way men and women live their lives. The beauty myth can affect us both consciously and subconsciously. For instance, when a girl goes on a diet or buys all the clothes she sees a model wearing in a magazine because she desires to look like her, the influence of the beauty myth is a conscious phenomenon. We want to look good for others and also for ourselves. However, where is this sense of 'looking good for one's self' coming from? I think this attitude comes from years of exposure to beautiful women and this is what we as a culture define as beauty. Why do girls not go out and buy comfortable non-stylish clothes? Why do girls put on mascara to make themselves look pretty? How is this pretty?

The beauty myth is also evident in almost every form of media imaginable, as women strive to look younger, thinner, and less like themselves. When speaking of the nature of fashion magazines, Bob Ciano, former art director of Life magazine, says, "no picture of a woman goes unretouched...even a well known [older] woman who doesn't want to be retouched...we still persist in trying to make her look like she's in her fifties" (Wolf, 82-83). This re-imaging gives grounding to the fact that many women desire to look younger than before in order to appear more desirable to men, but has it always been this way? Did women in colonial times struggle to maintain their youth? The beauty myth cannot even be called that since it is simply part of our nature, it is not a clear component, but rather a way of life.

Pornogrpahy vs. Magazines

The porn industry is fast becoming one of the most popular and profitable fields in film and entertainment. Naomi Wolf's Beauty Myth explores this field in a chapter entitled 'Culture'. In this section, I was shocked to find new information about the rapidly increasing popularity of pornography. The amount of money the porn business is bringing into the industry is astounding, and according to Wolf, "pornographic films outnumber other films three to one, grossing $365 million dollars a year in the United States alone, or a million dollars a day". This makes porn "the biggest media category". Pornography is also dominating magazine sales, as "eighteen million men a month in the United States buy a total of 165 different pornographic magazines...one man in ten reads Playboy, Penthouse, or Hustler each month" (Wolf, 79). As a giant in the film and magazine industry, the popularity of pornography worldwide has lead to a competition with other (traditional) magazines and other forms of entertainment. Magazines these days are becoming sexier than ever, as evidenced by the two ads on the left. I believe magazines are feeling the pressure of entertainment industries such as pornography, and this pressure is pushing them to be bolder than ever before concerning the content they deem as appropriate to publish. Some images in magazines, such as naked women barely covering themselves up with their arms, are borderline porn, and this line between porn and viewer friendly is growing ever thinner and the area between acceptable and offensive is increasingly grey.

The beauty myth was always used to sell magazines, but magazines are more than just pages to browse through, their true power is much deeper than that. Magazines are used as a way to connect, "They bring out of the closet women's lust for chat across barriers of potential jealousy and prejudgment" (Wolf, 76). Women can share common experiences through the carefully crafted issues of magazines; they are a representation of women's mass culture. Each reader feels connected to others because they know information or are aware of events that they can then share with others. Magazines, however, also function as the killer of self-esteem. The women in these issues are so beautiful and so stylish that it is impossible to copy or look like any of them. How did this cycle begin? Women aspire to look like a celebrity in a magazine or who marvel at a photo-shoot in the latest issue of Vogue. Magazines have transformed as women (and sex) are now used to sell almost every product imaginable. How can women still read copies of these brainwashing creations after seeing women degraded and put on a pedestal that is unrealistic and just fake?

Here is a copy of the May 1917 issue of Vogue (left) and a 1991 issue of Vogue (right):

  

 

The difference between these two covers is astounding, and it is evident that we have become desensitized to images like the one on the cover of the 1991 issue of Vogue. So what has caused this change in what is morally right? What happened that made it okay to put a picture of a 99% naked woman on the cover of a major publication?  This dramatic change in cover material could be the effect of pornography, an industry that has always been pushing the boundaries of exposure. With pornography putting the heat on all other forms of entertainment, it will be interesting to see if magazines get sexier as the line between what is and isn't appropriate fades away.

Harvard Sailing Team

This video from the Harvard Sailing Team (a You tube comedy sketch group) features men acting like women. In the video, the men embody physical characteristics of women as well as many stereotypical sayings and habits of the opposite gender. The video is based entirely on stereotypes of women and the aim of the video is to pinpoint and depict (with a lot of exaggeration) a day in the life of a teenage girl... 

I think this video is very funny, but after completing a semester of this class, I see how it could offend women and how it is unfairly stereotyping females. At the beginning of the video, one guy makes a call to his 'boyfriend' asking him all sorts of questions about his plans for the night, poking fun at the notion that females love to talk and make plans with their friends. The video then delves into more serious issues such as weight loss and diet. At one point, a man is talking about how many pounds he wants to lose, while another points out, "you already weigh that much right now". While the video takes on these issues from a comedic standpoint, these are problems that girls may face on a daily basis. The fact that these men are even portraying women talking about this proves that the beauty myth and the skinny phenomenon have infiltrated our culture to the point they may someday to define it. 


These men had only four minutes to make comments and observations about women's culture or the feminine nature as seen through the eyes of men. Amazingly, they spent almost two of these minutes talking about food, diets, weight loss, and pinkberries (a brand of frozen yogurt). The skinny phenomenon, the belief that if you aren't skinny you aren't pretty, is a very real and very scary idea. This phenomenon also includes the belief that weight can always be taken off, the number on the scale can always go lower, and lower, and lower. In Beauty Myth the belief that models are getting skinnier and skinnier shows no hope for women. Is it a self-esteem issue? Fitting in? Or does the need to please others and conform to societal and media pressure so much that it forces these women to starve themselves and mistreat their bodies?

Calculating Beauty

What makes a person good looking? The million dollar question. My twelve year old brother recently did had a math project in which he was asked to record the measurements of his face. The first step was to measure the length of his lips, find the halfway point, and record the length of each side to test for symmetry. He then repeated the measurement using the outside of his right eye to the outside of his left. Then he measured the inside of his eye to the inside of the other and followed by measuring the outside of one nostril to the other. He concluded the experiment by measuring the distance between cheekbones. The point of the experiment was to see how symmetrical and properly proportioned his face was. At the end of the assignment, the math teacher said that the more symmetrical your face, the more you are perceived as 'good looking'. Symmetry does exist, but is being beautiful the same as properly aligned?

In Naomi Wolf's Beauty Myth, beauty and perception go much deeper than the measurement from a nose to a cheekbone. Wolf says that, "The quality called 'beauty' objectively and universally exists" (12). Beauty is part reality, but the other part of it is in the eye of the beholder. However, over time, beauty has transformed from a quality into a lifestyle. Women strive to embody it, while men strive to obtain women who possess it. Beauty has always been an admirable quality, why wouldn't it be?

Wolf perfectly outlines the core of her book and the beauty myth itself when she remarks, "In assigning value to women in a vertical hierarchy  according to a culturally imposed physical standard, it is an expression of power relations in which women must unnaturally compete for resources that men have appropriated for themselves" (12). This excerpt is extremely important, as it sets the scene for the rise of the beauty myth. However, I am also interested in the role of women in the formation and progression of the beauty myth. I think the old saying, "it takes two" applies to social standards. Men may be the ones who provoke and encourage women to exude beauty, but women are equally guilty of absorbing the stereotype and turning it, along with the help of men, into a worldwide phenomenon that finds its roots embedded deep within our culture.