Big changes: How to accept a variety of beauty
year 2014. An open lesbian leads the Oscar ceremony and jokes about the fact that John Hill showed a member in “The Wolf of Wall Street” that she hadn’t seen for so long. For three seasons in a row, Lena Dunam shines with her unwary body in the main girlish series of modern times, and then appears on the cover of Vogue (however, elegantly photographed). Dazed in one year puts on the cover a very elderly Iris Apfel and a very dark-skinned Lupita Nyong'o. A couple of years before, GQ recognized Christina Hendricks as the woman of the year, the world goes crazy about Adel and Kim Kardashian, and Jennifer Lawrence loudly refuses to lose weight (but in the end she still loses weight). The Gentlewoman is adorned with non-concealing wrinkles by Susan Sarandon and Vivienne Westwood. Oprah and Scarlett are removed without makeup, and the plain woman Peggy Olsen becomes the second (if not the first) hero of the Mad Men TV series, pushing aside the harsh secrets and wives of Don Draper.
Orange and maturity - new black. The world is delighted with each secular exit Gaburi Sidibe, the exact opposite of the girls with glossy covers. Dove is launching an advertising campaign with the slogan "You are more beautiful than you think" - and only the most persistent will not knock out a tear. Political correctness or the triumph of a variety of beauty? Be that as it may, for some reason it still does not become easier for us to look at ourselves in the mirror day by day. The deception lies in the fact that all this is an event that gets out of the ordinary course of things. And although the atypical beauty in the media space becomes larger, this space itself is also expanding - instead of a dozen magazines for women 100 years ago we have 100 in each country, and a couple of plus-plus with dimensions of 95-62-98 added a pair of plus-size. But what happens to the general statistics in this case? It is almost unchanged: the majority continues to believe that attractiveness is equal to youth, slimness and long legs.
American Beauty: The Phenomenon of Girls in the Metropolis of Modern Capitalism
The twentieth century began with the fact that Europe was hypnotized by the new American beauty. In 1905, the "Gibson Girls" appeared - a beach-like image of white American women on vacation, enjoying natural health, and America, with claims of world domination, finally emerges from the shadows after the First World War. Until the 60s, people with a non-European-type appearance could hardly apply for management positions or prestigious work, and national communities settled by districts. Anyone who wanted to climb the stairs had to not only change their habits, but also their appearance with clothes, so that they would be taken seriously in the competitive free labor market. Women's standards in America after the war were rooted in the reaction: instead of artists who dealt exclusively with problems of philosophy and public criticism, public space was occupied by advertisements and magazines with their message, aimed at making a profit. Much has been written about the strict standards of the American way of life, but the most eloquent example would be, perhaps, that there was not a single woman president in America.
At the same time, women of the 20th century begin to live longer: from the previous 48 years their average life expectancy grows to 76, besides after the sexual revolution, they are able to control childbearing. However, this turns into a new problem - now it is necessary to age and experience menopause, to which women did not live out in former centuries, publicly, and this brings a hysterical perception of their beauty and an increase in spending on age-related cosmetics. A woman of Balzac age, who received the last chance for love three centuries ago, is now an ordinary resident of a big city in her thirties, for whom many questions of her future are still open. Brands of cosmetics and clothing, welcoming the idea of a variety of beauty, thanks to globalization, have gained a huge market of competing women of different backgrounds. M.I.A. in advertising bags, Marc Jacobs is a gift to the brand, which is looking for itself in the new demographics of big cities, where more and more children from mixed marriages appear. Now they have someone to be like - a tamilka from Hindustan, whose songs are played on every corner. At the same time, over the past decade in many Western countries, the rules for accepting foreign students have become more complicated, subsidies and the arrival of labor from abroad have decreased, and Islamophobia and xenophobia have increased: officially declared multicultural, white societies continue to shut themselves off from outside influence — no one speaks out loud, plump Algerians for some reason do not become the faces of L'Oréal, although they are also the target audience of the brand.
A modern girl sees on the day as many images of female beauty as her mother has seen in her entire youth
A woman who builds a career invariably becomes an object of evaluation: your whole appearance must prove that you are active, know how to work and rest, manage to do everything and try to live a full life - you are an artist or a lawyer, a freelance journalist or an official. Excess weight is synonymous with illness, which means that your labor insecurity: how can you lead the work of the whole department if you have not learned to control your own appetite? A healthy lifestyle becomes more important than fewer sources of health exist in big cities: not to mention the quality of water and air, products saturated with hormones and chemicals, health obviously has no place to take for millions of young people who want equal rights for women. Full sleep, free time, a lot of movement and walks in the fresh air - a luxury for those who did not make the body their own career or trying to fit the role of wife, mother, daughter and responsible employee in 24 hours. And at this moment cosmetic companies, having enlisted the results of medical experiments, launch an offensive with the latest developments that can compensate for the effects of global warming, a sedentary lifestyle and the presence of heavy metals in the air. By approximate calculations, a modern young girl sees on the day as many images of female beauty as her mother saw during her entire youth. 25 years ago, models weighed an average of 8% less than their contemporaries, now the difference is close to 25%. The year before last, US women spent 6 billion dollars on make-up and the same amount on perfume, 1 billion on manicure, 8 billion dollars each for hair and skin care, about 40 billion for dietary products, spa and sports procedures, and all at the same time, only 5 percent of women can meet the standard 10-7-10 and normal body mass index.
If diversity really existed, would massive double eyelid operations in Asian countries be possible, 20 billion liposuction costs in Latin America and the general fashion for fixing the nose in Iran or in the Caucasus? Why did bulimia among teenagers Fiji start after the population got involved in television? Why are there more AVON girls in Brazil than men in the army? Why are Aishwarya Rai and Freida Pinto whitening before our eyes, as if they were wiped with vinegar every morning? In 2010, a survey of men and women revealed that the new standard of beauty is not far off - the Latin American appearance was recognized by the respondents as the most attractive, however, it is still a very Americanized standard - Eva Mendez, Eva Longoria, Zoe Saldana or Mariah Carey lose weight and lighten hair. Yes, the jokes of Sarah Silverman and Tina Fey about the female body and the irony of Louis C. Kay inspire optimism about their completeness, but because of the excitement around their person they will never be on par with Kristen Stewart or David Beckham, who signed another contract to run into tight underpants H & M. A recent comprehensive analysis of the popularity phenomenon of Jennifer Lawrence talks about such a thing as a cool girl in a transitional society that is desperately looking for new models to follow, but believes that "a cool girl is one that doesn’t care about pleasing a man, and he still loves him terribly. "
What to do with all this?
Is there any way to take care of yourself and understand your beauty, but at the same time do not become a victim of collective hysteria about another one it girl, which should be equal? Maybe there is. And this, as usual, is the cheapest and most difficult path. To admit to myself that most of any information that comes to us is information noise and spam, which cannot be taken into account, it is impossible to read all the announcements in the mailbox or listen to all the sounds on the street. To realize that a modern girl who is gradually catching up with a man on income is an object of constant attacks and beauty agitation, and companies will do everything to scare her with irreparable consequences, and then promise a panacea and preserve what is dear to her. Remember that the most insightful and talented chief editors do not particularly know life beyond their comfort zones — the three districts and fifty streets where they spend all their working and free time embrace the aura of their close friends and important long-term clients. Conditional Anna Wintour and Karin Roitfeld or their colleagues, locked up in Manhattan in pursuit of style and eternal youth, will be lost in the alien atmosphere of Ufa, Mexico City or Guangzhou, to whose inhabitants they preach the ideal of feminine beauty. In the Pskov village or in Lebanon after the war, most of their editorial deeds and filming will turn out to be zilch - they are not applicable to the huge palette of life situations and choices that a modern woman is immersed in. Most publications are silent about the female body in old age, non-standard sex, how to get in shape after a difficult birth and recover from operations, or how they understand physicality in the Islamic world. In the end, the fact that the struggle against the fullness that hinders a full-fledged lifestyle and the desire to keep muscles in shape is not the same as the obsessive desire of a 48th size harmoniously built woman to squeeze herself into the 42nd. The bulk of the media continues to talk about beauty in such a way as to force us to reach for a single standard, and not to allow ourselves to look critically at ourselves and make a difficult choice - between our uniqueness and those legs on the cover.
Most of the publications are silent about the female body in old age, about how to get in shape after a difficult birth or how they understand physicality in the Islamic world.
The history of art can be a great helper in accepting one’s body and appearance — not a biased short course of two hours from Venus de Milo to Marilyn Monroe, but a detailed immersion into what all of humanity left the world: Sumer statuettes and Fayum portraits, sculptures of Australian Aborigines and Asian graphics, photographic portraits of American Indians and African Americans immediately after the abolition of slavery. Few things are more interesting than modern photography and anonymous art from around the world, in order to understand one's own and someone else's body - Babylonian and Korean sculptures have more to do with accepting oneself than the list of useful products from the best-selling Cameron Diaz. With due attention and interest in these often anonymous works, you can find depicted their beauty. If Lily Cole looks so much like Lukas Cranach's model, Penelope Cruz looks like Mach, and Grace Jones looks like elongated sculptures of Central Africa, you can imagine that your own face and body were once depicted by the artist’s curious and attentive look, and then take and fall in love with the fact that for centuries has not found media approval. One can accept the body as the biology of one’s land and family and trace in its heredity the Tatar, Belarusian, Polish, Caucasian, northern roots - this is a particularly difficult, but also interesting process in modern Russia, where they treat personal and collective memory so frivolously and carelessly local genealogy easily assumed the American ideals. This experience is now actively being lived by women in Asia, Africa and Latin America, who, through sociology and gender theories, are trying to return to the races a healthy look at themselves.
No one will give women a fair and diversified ideology if they do not suffer and realize it by passing through themselves. So the first thing that can be done is not to judge the book by its cover and not to enter into the rush of imposed beauty. Interested in not only Kira Knightley and Scarlett Johansson, but also Greta Gerwig, Mindy Kaling and Soviet style icons, read memoirs and diaries of different eras and take a firm stand on how difficult it is for people of any class and fate to accept themselves. Remember that the pursuit of eternal youth threatens to lose the human form - remember Kim Novak at the last Oscar ceremony. Beauty is worth discussing and challenging, sharing your anxiety with loved ones and more often believing the compliments that we are told. Do not be upset about the fitting rooms, knowing that the light and the fitting rooms themselves are designed so that most girls hate themselves after undressing in the store. Keep in mind that the camera is full, and generally remember about the fluctuations in weight and hormones. To believe that our children will grow up in a less spoiled world, when the habitual Barbie is replaced by a doll with healthy body proportions, which can bend in all directions, like a living person, and will not be a walking hanger. Recognize when aggressive marketing is behind beautiful words about equality, and a brand is manipulating noble feelings to buy your loyalty. And in the end, do not expect diversity as value will come from the outside, as long as you keep the only standard of beauty in a golden frame and think that you can buy it, spread it and eat it. Magazines and advertising are infected with ideas from living people and connections between them, and not the other way around. And while the most readable articles among girls will be the constant "10 ideas how to lose weight by the summer," it's hard to expect something to change.
books on the topic:
Philip scranton "Beauty and Business: Commerce, Gender, and Culture in Modern America"
Geoffrey jones "Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry"
Linda mizejewski "Pretty / Funny: Women Comedians and Body Politics"
Shari L. Dworkin, Faye Linda Wachs "Body Panic: Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness"
Anne fausto-sterling "Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality"
Stacy maalkan "Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry"
Kathy peiss "Hope in a Jar: The Beauty Salon"
Alex Kuczynski "Beauty Junkies: Inside Our $ 15 Billion Obsession With Cosmetic Surgery"