"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

[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....