05 November 2010

Beauty: the art of cultivating oneself is all about men.

So, I was all set on praising the wonders of Fireworks Night, and how ridiculous and yet amazing it is that we celebrate an attempted terrorist attack on the Houses of Parliament. We Brits are weird, no lie.
However, I came across this article today and I raged. I tend to rage a lot, but really, it inspired a lot of anger from me. The writer of the piece has a history of fat-shaming (hurrah! We all love to judge anyone who deviates from the 7st norm!!!!) so I admittedly have a bias against her anyway, but really? I appreciate a commentary on how the beauty culture can be used as a way to build a woman's self esteem; I like to put it on when I go out because I like to feel good about my face, for me. Not for any man.
I think the worst sentence for me was "To understand what it takes to be beautiful, we need to be very clear about what being beautiful means-being sexually appealling to men." Really? How sexist and heteronormative of you.
Don't let me spoil the experience for you, though. Go ahead and read this trainwreck of an article.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201010/the-truth-about-beauty?page=2

(and loling at the idea of no French feminism. Simone de Beauvoir, anyone?)

3 comments:

  1. Just read the article. Wow. Holy crap that made me angry. I particularly liked the bit (well, I say liked...) where it implied that anyone who wanted someone to "love them as they are" was actively putting men off by not wearing make up every day.

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  2. wow. that was.... it's own special brand of "special".... wow.

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  3. I couldn't actually read the whole thing, and I really don't have the energy to point-by-point dismantle it (although I feel like it's just asking for the internet MST3K treatment). But what amazed me most is the author's discussion of how ABSOLUTELY WRONG everyone is who doesn't find the beauty balance in the EXACT SAME PLACE. No makeup and baggy clothes? YOU DON'T DESERVE A MAN. Too much plastic surgery? YOU ARE A WORTHLESS TROLLOP. Any deviance from one person's definition of middle ground? WRONG WRONG WRONG NO WONDER YOU CAN'T GET LAID.

    Lady, there are 4 billion women on this planet. Some of them are going to manage to successfully mate without squeezing through your needle-eye of standards. Maybe you want to look into getting over that.

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