"You're so vain..."

[elfs]

So, I was listening to this woman the other day, a woman who I usually respect for her opinions and her experience, and she went on a tear about current standards of beauty, specifically the way porn stars shave their pubic hair and the way this fashion has trickled down so that "ordinary" women are expected to shave their pubes. She went off on how this was somehow the logical extension of the neoteny (look it up, I had to) and creeping pedophilia that was rampant in our culture.

And it suddenly occurred to me. She wasn't really out to "protect the children," or "protect women," or whatever. What she was really saying, over and over, was "The standards of beauty don't include me, and I feel left out. I'm a victim!" And in our current culture, claiming to be a victim, and pointing out why other people are victims, is a very effective technique.

When I realized this, my reaction to her was "tough." Standards of beauty wiggle around a very common pair of qualities: youth and health. We might feel other things for people with other qualities but, y'know, if the standards of beauty don't include you, there isn't much you can do about it. And claiming we shouldn't have standards of beauty at all, or that they're "unfair," just sucks the life out of any appreciation for beauty in the first place.

Comments

[unmutual.livejournal.com]

Well, on the other hand, many women feel that they shouldn't have to live up to the porn standard of beauty (big blond hair, no pubes, huge boobs, can accommodate three or four cocks at once) because it's a fake standard. It's not real, but sometimes the boyfriends/husbands of these women want it to be, so the women feel that they'll never live up to this imaginary standard.

It's like... have you ever noticed that half the women in the Victoria's Secret catalog have had their legs digitally lengthened, and the other half have had their waists digitally narrowed? The media gives women a completely unattainable ideal of beauty. Many women don't have the confidence to have that 90% attitude because the unreachable standard that's been handed to them by society has destroyed it.

I hope that made sense, I've only been awake for half an hour! Me, I'm working on not caring what "society" or "the media" says that beauty ought to be, but it's not easy.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Of *course* they shouldn't have to live up to some fake digital standard. The problem is that most of them have been indoctrinated by the government not to question (and so have their boyfriends).... their confidence in anything other than a group identity stripped away...

The trick is letting them know that it's OK to be happy in one's own skin (which often involves a fair bit of convincing that said skin makes someone else, or a number of someone elses, happy).... After that, everything else follows....