https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U
I was lucky enough to have a healthy body image for most of my childhood. I consistently played on various soccer and basketball teams, and between going to practice and scrambling to finish my homework, I did not have a spare moment to think about whether I was too skinny or not skinny enough. I cared about my strength and speed, not my looks.
This past year, however, I have thought more about my appearance than ever before. Last August I sustained my fourth concussion and was forbidden from exercising. For four months, I did little more than sit on my couch and ended up gaining a significant amount of weight. I always preached that everybody is beautiful no matter what, but suddenly found myself horrified that I was no longer able to wear my favorite pair of jeans. This horror quickly turned to guilt about caring about my appearance at all, inciting a self-destructive cycle of negativity.
Then the other day I encountered an article entitled “Stop Trying to Convince Me I’m Beautiful.” I’m ashamed to say that when I first read the title, I felt sorry for the author. “That’s someone with some serious self-worth issues,” I thought as I began to load the article on my phone. To my great surprise, however, the article was not about the author’s lack of self-esteem. It was about her perfect contentment not being beautiful and her frustration with a capitalist society that tried to convince her to feel otherwise in order to sell her products.
“Without a shadow of self pity, I don’t think I’m beautiful,” she wrote. “I love myself, my life, my body, and my face—but I’m not a beauty.” Given this feeling, she continued, she finds the “constant insistence from pop-culture and advertising to tell us we’re something we’re not … insulting because it assume[s] beauty is something I mourn for and desire.”
After reading this, I began to question what “beauty” even means. The Oxford English Dictionary defines beauty as “A combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight.” But our society also undeniably uses the term as an all-purpose, shorthand description of an unattainable standard to which women in particular are meant to strive. It seems that advertisers especially frame “beauty” as a universal goal in order to sell as many women as many products as possible (like Dove and Bare Minerals for example). As a result, beauty has become an ideal concept more than a concrete quality and little more than a vague, but arguably effective, marketing tool.
While many have noted men are increasingly being marketed to as well, it seems that being beautiful for them still isn’t the perpetual, necessary goal it still is for women. Women are constantly confronted with largely unsolicited advice about how to improve their appearance in a way men rarely are. For example, one of my guy friends wore the same basic sweatshirt and t-shirt every day for three years in a row. Neither his friends nor the larger community thought any less of him for doing so, chastised how his appearance reflected his character or value, or said anything at all. Somehow, I get the feeling that if a girl decided to do this people would not react in the same way.
But not every woman can — or even wants to — be beautiful. While marketers may try to convince women beauty can be bought, in reality one either has a genetic make up that meets society’s current definition of beauty or not. There are some with disposable income who may try to artificially alter themselves to reach this perfection through methods like acne treatments, personal trainers or even plastic surgery. But it’s unreasonable, unrealistic and unnecessary for every woman to be expected to do this.
Ultimately, we need to move away from a conversation about beauty altogether. Even when we talk about why beauty doesn’t matter, we’re still reiterating beauty’s importance in our lives. We need to instead focus on why other qualities do matter. We should highlight women’s strength and integrity and make a point to specifically compliment them for exemplifying these traits, rather than get caught in debates about ones that don’t.
I would never give up my creativity or empathy in exchange for a thigh gap or thinner arms. I know that my talents and ideas will take me further the perfect body and face. It’s really hard to remember that sometimes, but perhaps if we all committed to shifting our focus away from those qualities, it would make remembering a little easier.
