Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Library

The Beauty Myth.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

I recently finished reading Naomi Wolf's book The Beauty Myth: How Images Of Beauty Are Used Against Women. I recommend it to women, and also to men.

Though I can't say I buy her theory that everything she talks about is conspired for political reasons, and I can't say that I hold to her interpretation of Christianity in some regards...I can say this was an important book for me to read. Reading some of it was extremely angering because I can identify with the frustration and double standard detailed inside and I know that I can't do much about it but find a way to exist within it all. I was glad Wolf gave voice to the wordless frustration and self-hate that exists inside.

I don't really want to do a blow-by-blow critique of this now decade-old book. You can do a quick Google search and find plenty of people who are better able to extract and critique the facts, figures, an validity of Wolf's ideas. I wish there was a version of the book for younger girls who are especially brutalized by the media into what it takes for them to be considered beautiful, worth something, and necessary.

What I took away from the book, mainly, was a recognition of the extreme frustration and destructive way of thinking about who I was and am and should be. And -- most importantly -- that when I let outside forces (media, peers, etc.) tell me whether or not I am beautiful, I am perpetually at the mercy of changing whims and never able to function with confidence.

My entire life has been one of a small voice in the back of my head -- even in moments of other personal triumph or success -- telling me "you're fat, you're ugly, you're not worth anything, who are you kidding." What a horrible thing to think, despite all the education and skills and experience I have, to fixate on something so meaningless as extra pounds or pimples! It is absolutely ridiculous! I am fairly certain that many other women out there identify with this existence. Nothing distresses me more than when my female friends, who are smart and talented and capable and a real joy, start equating their physical appearance with what theya re worth. I want to holler "you are so much more than the size of your hips!" Yet I do the same to myself. The comparative pressure of perfection is an unbearable weight.

This world is brutal to women because of the value placed on external beauty which is, inevitably, fleeting. Wolf points out that women are valued for their beauty while men for their experience and skill. If our worth comes from our external beauty, we become worthless as we age while experience and skill (which often show up as lines on the face) increase with age. I look at women like Helen Mirren and find her gorgeous and hope she never messes with her face and hair, but I know, just from listening in on men's conversations over the years, that she would receive a derogatory comment as they flipped through a magazine in search of a 20-something model who was "hot."

Upon finishing the book, I knew some of the extreme ideas I couldn't agree to, such as extreme self-love and the entire concepts of "reward yourself and spend time on you" and all those other selfish thoughts that I do battle to remove from my head. However, I also realized I don't have to, in order to combat selfishness, hate myself.

There have been moments where I've foolishly commented aloud to a friend that I thought a particular person was good to look at, even though they might have been not traditionally "good looking." I often speak in terms of drawing, thinking back to my days in college when I drew from nude models and got to see the human body in all its variations. My favorite model was not the tight-bodied young woman named Alex, but an older women named Delores with sags and wrinkles everywhere. She was the model who all the stupid younger college guys joked about after class. But I found her wonderful to draw, which was the point of the class. After a while, I found her beautiful by using this different "definition." She helped me create beauty, and I found her beautiful.

But that's hard to describe to people who get a strange look on their face when you even try to tell them how it is to draw from a nude model and why it is important. Even more so in a bizarre world where a woman commenting on the beauty of another women makes people think of lesbianism rather than a mere appreciation of beauty. And even more so when the a definition of beauty slips in that isn't the one being pushed on us today. And so, when I find myself drawn to an unusual face, I've learned to not make a comment about it since the response is usually something like "you've got to be kidding me!"

I know, then, that beauty is definied differently in each person, yet I still, like Wolf points out in her book as she talks about "beauty" magazines and models and celebrities and the way women are silenced ever-so-subtly by making a comment about their looks -- I still fall into the trap.

I compare myself, and I come up short. I have a never-ending list of things I need to "fix" or improve, as if my own healthy, functioning body weren't beautiful on its own, as if it were broken and needed fixing.

I want to be beautiful. We all do. I'm starting to see, however, that there is no one definition of beauty, despite what women have been trained to think by what they see in the images and expectations around them. There is no one definition of beauty. This is important.

There are so many things I'd like to say about beauty and about this book and what it is causing me to rethink, but mainly, I've caught myself (since finishing the book) repeating a phrase in my mind in the moments I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror or see a bad photograph and hear the disembodied voices of all the magazines and movies and TV shows with the thin women with perfect skin and the comments men make that seem harmless but cut: You don't get to decide if I'm beautiful.

I don't have the "perfect" body as defined by today. I don't have the skin, the facial feature arrangement, the lack of lines, the flawless hair... I'm just a normal, healthy woman. And, I've spent a lot of time on the inside, not just the spackle on the outside.

I think that's beautiful.

I am created in the image of God. I am beautiful because of that.

I just need to remember this when the feeling of ugliness sweeps over me like a wave the next time I'm standing in a checkout line and see a magazine with the Perfect Woman on the cover.