i***@yahoo.com
2006-04-18 20:48:10 UTC
Allow me to make commentary about an aberration that took place in
1990s, in order that it be dealt with once and for all. The idea,
expressed in Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, was that the concept of
beauty was a media-manufactured artifact used for control. Her belief
falls apart when put against historical fact - which says that every
civilization with any kind of accomplishment had a well-defined concept
of beauty; and that this ideal extended not only to female form, but
also to architecture, music, literature, graphic arts and nature.
It is true that different civilizations had different concepts of
female beauty. The Greeks worshipped perfection of form; the Japanese,
elegance; the French, delicacy and sensuality; the Russians, tenderness
and voluptuousness; the Africans, fertility; the Latinos and African
Americans, sex appeal. Does that mean that there is no such thing as
beauty? No, it means that beauty takes different forms. And of course
the variety of beauty we see in nature, as well as in people, as well
as in manmade creations, is testimony to that fact. So my stance is:
Yes, there are many different forms of beauty. The only criterion is
that they in fact be beautiful.
The experience (supported by evidence) is that beauty - like
intelligence, like character, like many other abilities that can either
be developed or lay fallow - spans the gamut, from things that nobody
will regard to be beautiful, to things that some and not others will
regard to be beautiful, to things whose beauty everyone will see. In
the same way, we go in art from "Piss Christ" to Jackson Pollock to the
Sistine Chapel. Judith Langlois, a psychologist, conducted a scientific
study in which she showed that faces with certain proportions
invariably were recognized for their beauty by everyone. So there
appears to be a mathematical formula for absolute beauty - beauty that
everyone will recognize as such. What the Renaissance artists believed
("beauty is a manifestation of the divine") and what John Keats
intuited ("beauty is truth, truth beauty"), mathematics has now
demonstrated to be true: There is a mathematical formula for absolute
beauty - which makes it a logical lead into further inquiry of cosmic
processes.
That of course does not mean that everyone who does not fit those
proportions is forever banned from beauty. That is not true; in
addition to the absolute beauty, there are many relative forms of
beauty that appeal to one or another taste. Nor does that mean that
every cultural conception of beauty is right. That is emphatically not
the case, and I would like to propose a more sane explanation for the
frustration of many women in America, that many people either
mistakenly or manipulatively take to wrong places. That explanation is:
The fashion industry standards of 1990s were, quite simply, horrible;
and it is those standards, rather than beauty itself, that anyone with
any kind of honesty should attack.
What standard am I talking about? An exploitative standard. An
unhealthy standard. A horrible standard. Essentially, the emaciated
look: The look that few women could possibly meet at all - and those of
my acquaintance who had, all said, had felt horrible physically the
entire time they had done so.
Now I take an issue with positing an unhealthy standard as beauty of
any kind. It is simply not right to make people live an unhealthy
lifestyle in order that they be seen to be worthy of love. It is not
compassionate, it is not responsible, it is not humane and it is not
ethical. And the effect, far from encouraging women to be thin, instead
was the opposite: Most women decided that they could never be beautiful
and let themselves go. With the result being that, from 1992 to 2004,
the obesity rates in America doubled: a situation for which many people
blame sedentary lifestyles - but for which I, seeing sedentary
lifestyle to have existed in America before 1992, blame an impossible,
exploitative and indeed horrible standard of beauty shoved down
people's throats by the media, and the confused and malicious version
of feminism developed in reaction to it.
The problem once again, is not with the idea of beauty and certainly
not with those who seek beauty and appreciate beauty and value beauty.
The problem is with the rubbish spewed out by 1990s fashion industry as
beauty - rubbish that, as far as I am concerned, was not beautiful in
any way whatsoever, but rather had the social effect (if not the social
function) of making most women believe that they could never be
beautiful. And while we are at it: No, I do not regard the Kate Moss
look to be beautiful; I regard it as a sick and horrible thing to
inflict upon a woman.
I am encouraged by the more recent trends in the media. They are
finally beginning to market the healthy weight - the weight that is
good for the woman to have; the weight that is healthy for her; the
weight that makes her feel good as well as look good; the weight that
is sustainable, that is achievable, and that is ultimately good for the
woman to have. It is a weight that makes the woman feel good - and, by
likewise making her look good, in a way that is achievable without
self-starvation or self-disfigurement, makes her feel good doubly. It
is a weight standard that is humane, achievable, healthy and indeed
benevolent. And if the feminists had any say on the subject, then it is
this change in standards - and not the baboonish screeching against
beautiful women and men who love them - that is its true achievement on
women's behalf.
Perhaps paradoxically - but not unreasonably - this change from the
impossible standards to healthy standards can and should reduce the
obesity epidemic. With beauty standard more easily achievable (and less
traumatic or unhealthy to keep), more women will see themselves to be
capable of beauty - and would make the requisite effort in that
direction; effort that will make them healthy, make them feel good
physically, and make them feel good likewise by looking good. I have
repeatedly heard intelligent women say that they feel good when they
look good. Being beautiful is one of the greatest joy of being a woman;
and anybody, male or female, on the Right or on the Left, who seeks to
take that away, is a monster. So to the sincerely misinformed people
who claim the idea of beauty to be the cause of social and self-esteem
problems affecting women, my answer is: It is not beauty you want to
attack, any more than you want to attack Yosemite Park or Tchaikovsky's
First Piano Concierto or the Sistine Chapel or the snow leopard or
figure skating. What you want to attack is the malignant, cruel and
exploitative standard created by 1990s fashion industry. It is them,
and not the beautiful women or romantic idealists, that are responsible
for the horrors experienced in 1990s by American women and girls. And
once the media gets a grip on itself, beauty again become what it was
intended to be - a joyous, healthy and bountiful celebration of life
and all that exists in it.
Ilya Shambat.
1990s, in order that it be dealt with once and for all. The idea,
expressed in Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, was that the concept of
beauty was a media-manufactured artifact used for control. Her belief
falls apart when put against historical fact - which says that every
civilization with any kind of accomplishment had a well-defined concept
of beauty; and that this ideal extended not only to female form, but
also to architecture, music, literature, graphic arts and nature.
It is true that different civilizations had different concepts of
female beauty. The Greeks worshipped perfection of form; the Japanese,
elegance; the French, delicacy and sensuality; the Russians, tenderness
and voluptuousness; the Africans, fertility; the Latinos and African
Americans, sex appeal. Does that mean that there is no such thing as
beauty? No, it means that beauty takes different forms. And of course
the variety of beauty we see in nature, as well as in people, as well
as in manmade creations, is testimony to that fact. So my stance is:
Yes, there are many different forms of beauty. The only criterion is
that they in fact be beautiful.
The experience (supported by evidence) is that beauty - like
intelligence, like character, like many other abilities that can either
be developed or lay fallow - spans the gamut, from things that nobody
will regard to be beautiful, to things that some and not others will
regard to be beautiful, to things whose beauty everyone will see. In
the same way, we go in art from "Piss Christ" to Jackson Pollock to the
Sistine Chapel. Judith Langlois, a psychologist, conducted a scientific
study in which she showed that faces with certain proportions
invariably were recognized for their beauty by everyone. So there
appears to be a mathematical formula for absolute beauty - beauty that
everyone will recognize as such. What the Renaissance artists believed
("beauty is a manifestation of the divine") and what John Keats
intuited ("beauty is truth, truth beauty"), mathematics has now
demonstrated to be true: There is a mathematical formula for absolute
beauty - which makes it a logical lead into further inquiry of cosmic
processes.
That of course does not mean that everyone who does not fit those
proportions is forever banned from beauty. That is not true; in
addition to the absolute beauty, there are many relative forms of
beauty that appeal to one or another taste. Nor does that mean that
every cultural conception of beauty is right. That is emphatically not
the case, and I would like to propose a more sane explanation for the
frustration of many women in America, that many people either
mistakenly or manipulatively take to wrong places. That explanation is:
The fashion industry standards of 1990s were, quite simply, horrible;
and it is those standards, rather than beauty itself, that anyone with
any kind of honesty should attack.
What standard am I talking about? An exploitative standard. An
unhealthy standard. A horrible standard. Essentially, the emaciated
look: The look that few women could possibly meet at all - and those of
my acquaintance who had, all said, had felt horrible physically the
entire time they had done so.
Now I take an issue with positing an unhealthy standard as beauty of
any kind. It is simply not right to make people live an unhealthy
lifestyle in order that they be seen to be worthy of love. It is not
compassionate, it is not responsible, it is not humane and it is not
ethical. And the effect, far from encouraging women to be thin, instead
was the opposite: Most women decided that they could never be beautiful
and let themselves go. With the result being that, from 1992 to 2004,
the obesity rates in America doubled: a situation for which many people
blame sedentary lifestyles - but for which I, seeing sedentary
lifestyle to have existed in America before 1992, blame an impossible,
exploitative and indeed horrible standard of beauty shoved down
people's throats by the media, and the confused and malicious version
of feminism developed in reaction to it.
The problem once again, is not with the idea of beauty and certainly
not with those who seek beauty and appreciate beauty and value beauty.
The problem is with the rubbish spewed out by 1990s fashion industry as
beauty - rubbish that, as far as I am concerned, was not beautiful in
any way whatsoever, but rather had the social effect (if not the social
function) of making most women believe that they could never be
beautiful. And while we are at it: No, I do not regard the Kate Moss
look to be beautiful; I regard it as a sick and horrible thing to
inflict upon a woman.
I am encouraged by the more recent trends in the media. They are
finally beginning to market the healthy weight - the weight that is
good for the woman to have; the weight that is healthy for her; the
weight that makes her feel good as well as look good; the weight that
is sustainable, that is achievable, and that is ultimately good for the
woman to have. It is a weight that makes the woman feel good - and, by
likewise making her look good, in a way that is achievable without
self-starvation or self-disfigurement, makes her feel good doubly. It
is a weight standard that is humane, achievable, healthy and indeed
benevolent. And if the feminists had any say on the subject, then it is
this change in standards - and not the baboonish screeching against
beautiful women and men who love them - that is its true achievement on
women's behalf.
Perhaps paradoxically - but not unreasonably - this change from the
impossible standards to healthy standards can and should reduce the
obesity epidemic. With beauty standard more easily achievable (and less
traumatic or unhealthy to keep), more women will see themselves to be
capable of beauty - and would make the requisite effort in that
direction; effort that will make them healthy, make them feel good
physically, and make them feel good likewise by looking good. I have
repeatedly heard intelligent women say that they feel good when they
look good. Being beautiful is one of the greatest joy of being a woman;
and anybody, male or female, on the Right or on the Left, who seeks to
take that away, is a monster. So to the sincerely misinformed people
who claim the idea of beauty to be the cause of social and self-esteem
problems affecting women, my answer is: It is not beauty you want to
attack, any more than you want to attack Yosemite Park or Tchaikovsky's
First Piano Concierto or the Sistine Chapel or the snow leopard or
figure skating. What you want to attack is the malignant, cruel and
exploitative standard created by 1990s fashion industry. It is them,
and not the beautiful women or romantic idealists, that are responsible
for the horrors experienced in 1990s by American women and girls. And
once the media gets a grip on itself, beauty again become what it was
intended to be - a joyous, healthy and bountiful celebration of life
and all that exists in it.
Ilya Shambat.