A Series of Writings that Celebrate Sexuality and Gender Expression
Let’s get real about “beauty”
by Molly Goulet
There are lots of things available for purchase in the United States, and mainstream physical attractiveness is one of them. With enough cash and spare time, one can hire a nutritionist, personal trainer, dermatologist, makeup artist, wardrobe assistant, and cosmetic surgeon to sculp the “perfect body.” But does that make someone beautiful? There is a gap between wanting to love our bodies once we have lost ten pounds or added an inch of muscle and simply loving our bodies.
Revlon, Rogaine and the hoard of men’s and women’s magazines emphasize the need for an uncommon body in order to be attractive. Few women could ever attain the stature of a model (how many women do you know who are 5’10” and 120 pounds?), and concern over body image drives many women to eating or exercise disorders. The obsession with body extends to men’s socialization too. It doesn’t take a Jackson Katz workshop to see how men’s bodies have changed in Hollywood in the past 50 years. Compare photos of Cary Grant to Brad Pitt. Even James Dean, a masculine icon, didn’t have the muscular build of men in GQ today. Six percent of men self-report steroid use—which leads to serious health consequences. We do not diet and exercise, as a culture, to be strong and healthy. In fact, these lifestyle choices often cause health problems. The health concern over obesity is not the same as the cultural imperative to be thin. One issue focuses on well-being and disease risk; the other on restriction to a gendered ideal of physical attraction.
The dividends of beauty, from advertising and media, aren’t self-esteem, confidence in ability or happiness; physical attractiveness brings (heterosexual) sex partners, public status, and attention. Attracting women (for straight men) is as simple as using the right body deodorant, driving the right car, chewing the right gum. Attracting men (for straight women) involves lipstick, shampoo, belly-bearing clothes, or drinking the right beer. Advertising sells satisfaction through sex through products. That’s a pretty low standard for a complete life.
If being beautiful is part of a fulfilling life, we might redefine beautiful. Failing with grace; celebrating other people’s joy; laughing and finding humor in life; exploring and embracing cultures and people that you perceive as different; exploring spiritual identities and cultural heritage; learning new skills; creating joy from the immaterial; teaching children their value and potential; these things bring more fulfillment than possessing standard dimensions.
Appreciating beauty also requires appreciating diversity. Advertising standards focus on young, thin, physically abled, presumably heterosexual, white women. Certainly, diverse ad campaigns exist, but big audiences and big dollars are geared toward that narrow image. Until we honor the spectrum of skin tones, different body shapes and sizes, and various facial structures, beauty in American culture will not represent most of us. One mass marketing scheme will never satisfy the diversity of human experience—for beauty, or anything else.
Being beautiful requires self-understanding. We cannot mold ourselves first and then promise to love that perfect” form; we must adore ourselves and work on health, joy, and relationships if we are ever to attain lasting beauty. Eventually, muscles shrink, breasts sag, wrinkles appear. There is great beauty in wisdom and experience, if we choose to honor and acknowledge them.
Buying into the mainstream advertising standard of beauty might improve your complexion, lighten your hair or reform your body, but it won’t make you beautiful. They have it all backwards: when you do good, you look good. That’s attractive.
Molly Goulet is a UNH graduate.
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