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drewbearI've been thinking on this for a while, but this post was at least partially inspired by the op-ed piece by Anna Quindlen in this week's Newsweek.
In "Ode on a Grecian Urn", Keats may have said that "[b]eauty is truth, truth beauty", but that is not the case in modern society. Nowadays, beauty (or prettiness) is seen as a sign of "correctness". If you are perceived as pretty (whether or not you actually are) (I'm looking at you, Paris Hilton) everything you say or do is seen as being just a little bit better than it would be if an "ordinary" person said or did it. Just look at "celebrities", who can lie, cheat, steal, murder, commit adultery, and use prostitues or drugs, yet we forgive them because we idolize them. And why do we idolize them? Because they're pretty.
Another sign of this is how viscerally betrayed we feel when someone or something beautiful turns out to be evil or bad. In fact, betraying the implicit goodness associated with beauty can actually make the person or object seem even more evil that he/she/it actually is. Not that this is a new thing: take the fairy tale of Snow White. The evil queen was the "most beautiful in the land" until Snow White surpassed her. And one of the original versions of the tale, the queen tried to use three objects of and for beauty to poison Snow White. A jeweled comb, a silk girdle and a perfect red apple.
And while this may bother me, what makes this association even more dangerous is the unhealthy standard of beauty that the media presents as "ideal" to modern society. My youngest sister is a truly beautiful young woman with a quick wit, enquiring mind, heavenly voice, classicly beautiful face and form and (for you straight guys out there) a healthy amount of "buxomness". But because she actually has a healthy amount of body fat instead of looking like an emaciated scarecrow, the media says that she's not worth as much as she really is.
Not to mention the double standard between men and women. As an extremely simple example, how likely is it that an average American woman would leave her home for the day without even a little makeup on (base, lipstick, eyeshadow, whatever)? And how would people react to her if she didn't? Compare that to how likely a man is to wear makeup on a daily basis and how people would react to him if he did.
I don't really know where I'm going with this; I think I'm just rambling. But these are the things I think and feel and I don't how to better express them. Not right now, anyway.
In "Ode on a Grecian Urn", Keats may have said that "[b]eauty is truth, truth beauty", but that is not the case in modern society. Nowadays, beauty (or prettiness) is seen as a sign of "correctness". If you are perceived as pretty (whether or not you actually are) (I'm looking at you, Paris Hilton) everything you say or do is seen as being just a little bit better than it would be if an "ordinary" person said or did it. Just look at "celebrities", who can lie, cheat, steal, murder, commit adultery, and use prostitues or drugs, yet we forgive them because we idolize them. And why do we idolize them? Because they're pretty.
Another sign of this is how viscerally betrayed we feel when someone or something beautiful turns out to be evil or bad. In fact, betraying the implicit goodness associated with beauty can actually make the person or object seem even more evil that he/she/it actually is. Not that this is a new thing: take the fairy tale of Snow White. The evil queen was the "most beautiful in the land" until Snow White surpassed her. And one of the original versions of the tale, the queen tried to use three objects of and for beauty to poison Snow White. A jeweled comb, a silk girdle and a perfect red apple.
And while this may bother me, what makes this association even more dangerous is the unhealthy standard of beauty that the media presents as "ideal" to modern society. My youngest sister is a truly beautiful young woman with a quick wit, enquiring mind, heavenly voice, classicly beautiful face and form and (for you straight guys out there) a healthy amount of "buxomness". But because she actually has a healthy amount of body fat instead of looking like an emaciated scarecrow, the media says that she's not worth as much as she really is.
Not to mention the double standard between men and women. As an extremely simple example, how likely is it that an average American woman would leave her home for the day without even a little makeup on (base, lipstick, eyeshadow, whatever)? And how would people react to her if she didn't? Compare that to how likely a man is to wear makeup on a daily basis and how people would react to him if he did.
I don't really know where I'm going with this; I think I'm just rambling. But these are the things I think and feel and I don't how to better express them. Not right now, anyway.
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 01:31 am (UTC)Then there is physical beauty that is subjective.
Then there is glamour. Creating/enhancing an illusion of "beauty".
And men just have a different type of "make-up" (hair style, whiskers, clothing, ect.) to make themselves "glamourous".
Sure there are people I think are physically beautiful. Once he shaves his head bald though his glamour disappears for me (and the opposite for someone else's sunjectivity about it...)
I tend to not pay attention too much to physical beauty. Many people who know they are pretty or people tell them thay are pretty have empty souls and cold hearts...
Ken is pretty...
no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 02:18 am (UTC)Ladye