the beauty thing

[keryx]

The thing I posted yesterday on body_positive [link here] still has me thinking about a seemingly minor but actually kinda essential question of living as a woman (and increasingly, of living as a person) in this culture.

If "beautiful" (which has absolutely no set definition, but plenty of manufactured ones, a big problem with the word/concept) is seen as a thing women must be to be valuable, is it more useful to redefine beautiful to include yourself or to reject the idea that one must be any one thing to be valuable? The right answer depends on the person answering the question. When I answer, it's both.

You can't truly divorce from the whole Beauty Myth without doing the latter, but the former's a useful way to get there, particularly because you can take that route in baby steps. This is a shift in thinking for me - I used to be very angry about women in the size acceptance movement being willing to depend on the male gaze for validation, for instance. But that is, actually, a cultural step towards recognizing the relativism and observer-dependency of attractiveness. It's just a small step. For a woman who chooses that route, it's still an external force dictating what is okay for her to be, but it's better than bowing to a supposed cultural ideal - assuming the male gaze she's relying upon isn't obscured in some way.

I'm not sure why exactly it is that someone else finding them beautiful convinces some women that their bodies are acceptable. I assume that it's a result of the twin ideas that a woman's purpose is to have a partner, and that partners are gained only by her external attractiveness. So, if you have a partner, by default you must be attractive, is that how it goes? It's odd logic, but I wouldn't begrudge anyone something that got her through this issue, even though in this case, the woman ends up contributing to the idea that you need a man to validate you.

Because I do things that end up contributing to bad ideas, too. I dress and make up and prep most days in ways that might just be about my personal comfort and confidence, but also further the assumption that a normal, right-looking woman must complete certain beauty chores to be presentable.

Comments

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

I read your initial question, and was like "BOTH!!!" and scared the cat. :)