Why, in pursuit of beauty, intolerance is born
Masha Vorslav
Over the past week, our patience and complacency has been tested many times: we wondered how the hair color of the actress could affect the decision to watch a new movie with her, then clutched at her forehead, reading the discussion about the news about Instagram policies regarding fat. All this is all the more surprising that we dealt with issues of appearance, its correction and self-assessment more than once or twice, but we feel that it is too early to leave them. First, it is important for us to remind once again that learning to take your own body does not mean to do nothing: that's just not eating healthy, playing sports or skin care does not guarantee that your legs will grow from the cover of a glossy magazine (most likely not) . Secondly, to accept the body means to learn to accept others as well: we all know how easy it is to convict a passerby or a celebrity caught in the lens of a paparazzi. So this time we are thinking about tolerance: how to perceive the body (ours and others), why it is worthwhile to educate ourselves and if we didn’t get too far in pursuit of everything perfect.
Remember the bitter monologue of Rast Cole over archival photographs of mutilated corpses that a person thinks too much about his being while he is just a piece of meat? It’s not that you want to adopt the detective’s worldview and life experience that gave rise to it (that is, you don’t want to do it at all), but it’s difficult to disagree with it.
We are simultaneously too much and too little attention to the body. Armed with the indisputable formula "I have the right to my own opinion," we appeal to it in every dispute, when logical arguments end and the subject of conversation is imperceptibly drowning in the personal preferences of each participant. In the debate about beauty, its standards and appearance, logic works for the time being, and you should not even try to look for objectivity in them - because everyone has their own beauty, and the requirements that an individual places on them cannot apply to others. But there is one exception.
When a person’s work is closely related to the appearance of other people (for example, he is a make-up artist, photographer, retoucher, clothing designer, or author of texts), one cannot avoid influencing it - this is the essence of the work mentioned. The fact is that all the modifications that make up it, in fact, are separate from the human body (but related to it) and should not affect the perception of the body - but should be evaluated in a vacuum and as a thing in itself: here is smoky eyes, here is beautiful waistline on the cover, that's slim dress. And it must be remembered that under all these shells - naturally pigmented eyelid skin and non-black eyelashes; the rib, waist and hip are not connected by an ideal sine wave, and the figure without a dress does not look like it does in it. First of all, such an approach does not take away the possibility of creating something beautiful and enjoying it, but it sets a saving shield between illusions and reality, without which we all, obviously, feel bad.
Constant attention to the human body can be compared with racism, homophobia, sexism and other discrimination.
With tolerance are not born, but she grows up. In order to drown out and rehabilitate the inner voice, which, in addition to our will, sometimes notices "wow, what cellulite" or "wow legs", efforts should be made - however, tolerance and understanding come much faster than you would expect. We have already talked about anonymous blogs, in which readers share photos of body fragments for which they are most worried; we recently stumbled upon another, Our Skin. His reading can be viewed as a process of self-education: a blog is a unique gallery of unretouched photos of the body and the most non-standard parts of it; this nowhere else seems to be seen. The authors not only allow us to look at their most problematic parts, but often share the pain and the victories behind them - such sincerity softens the heart and makes all the accusations that we no-no and yes we address to non-ideal, non-standard bodies feel ashamed of. .
Constant attention to the human body can be compared with racism (homophobia, sexism and other forms of discrimination): he who does not condemn, but constantly turns his attention to one or another sign, is in fact a racist, homophobic and sexist. Gender, orientation, age and nationality as personality traits matter in an undoubtedly smaller number of situations than it is now - and so far unfortunately - it is customary to think. The same is true of the weight, good looks of facial features, the cleanliness of the skin, the cut of the eyes and other attributes of the exterior - it is believed that they can and should be discussed, although only those whose profession is connected with the body have the real reason for this - and in the "working" volume and the above-mentioned vacuum. Our own personal ideas about what is beautiful and what is not (in most cases, however inconvenient it is to admit, arising from the generally accepted ones), are important only for ourselves - and if everyone learned this, the author of this news would not have clenched his fists alternately and heart every time a comment arrived on the mail.
I still can not understand why we do not have a body culture, why they always want to transform it into something inhumanly refined, instead of trying to accept it. Man will always strive to make everything more beautiful and better - and these are wonderful aspirations - but it will not work to build a strong castle on quicksand. All physiology is peculiar to humans, from which they wrinkle their noses; we looked at the rendered pictures, but we twist our lips when we see folds on the beach, we want to put on make-up specifically, before having sex, and we extinguish ourselves when we hear “stool”. A person is drawn to beauty, everyone always wants to be beautiful, there is a rainbow and produce butterflies instead of shit, but this is impossible - because, anyway, we are pieces of meat (Rast Cole says hello again). It seems to us that it is time to let go and lower the bar from the inaccessible height to which we pulled it up to the one that will not make us and the people around unhappy and will not provoke indiscriminately to condemn others and ourselves for imperfections.