Beauty comes in many avatars – the smell of first rain, a bellyful of laugh, the patter of toddler feet, Michelangelo’s Pieta, Taj Mahal, mother’s face, the written word, a melodious ghazal – and yet, when the word is mentioned what springs to the minds of most people is female physical beauty. Since that aspect of beauty hogs the mind share, let’s address it first.
A young woman has a great time partying with her friends. Once back in her apartment, she heads straight to the bathroom where she puts a finger down her throat. Scraping it right in, she hits the gag spot. This wrenches her stomach and she throws up. So, she got to eat and drink copiously but she purged her body, and there’s no weight gain. Problem solved!
Or is it?
She is heading to bulimia nervosa, and while she’ll not gain weight she’ll gain myriad other ailments: eroded teeth, sore throat, ruptured esophagus, weakened heart muscle- what, you want me to stop! Okay, but know that bulimia is classified as a disorder.
Question is: how did she get into it?
Because she wants to be beautiful, and thin is in. Besides, if she didn’t starve herself, how would she fit into that ubiquitous bandage dress?
She is drowning in a sea of images, of long-legged high-heeled divas who have poured themselves into these skin-tight sheaths while she, in her flowing salwar kameez, has abruptly acquired the proportions of a tent.
Kareena Kapoor’s size 0. Bipasha’s yoga-sculpted body. Shilpa’s sexy figure. Katrina Kaif as the face of Indian Barbie. Ahem!
Our Prime Minister, when he was the Finance Minister in 1991, launched India into the age of economic liberalization. Since then we have opened our borders, become a tiger economy, and since any economy that grows at an 8% clip needs domestic consumption, we are consuming voraciously. As we joined a globalizing world what came in its wake was a relentless assault of images – images transplanted from the developed world to the developing as a marker of what we can aspire to.
And when Kate Moss is the iconic model to have graced the cover of Vogue a record 30 times you know what I mean. When rail-thin models whose spine could be felt through their stomachs define beauty, a herd of anxious women follow. Barbie, the cherished toy for all little girls in the new India, is so ridiculously proportioned that if scaled up to human size she would be unbalanced enough to topple over! Apparently the likelihood of a woman having Barbie’s shape is one in 100,000. For the rest, well, there is anorexia, bulimia, dieting, as they worship at the shrine of unachievable beauty.
How did we reach this point of killing ourselves to attain some beauty badge?
First, lets acknowledge to ourselves that the images we see are of models that are used to sell products. It is purely commercial. And over the years, the models have changed because of a changing fashion aesthetic that in turn is controlled by marketers, advertisers, stylists – people who run the beauty business. Consequently, images that sell everything from cars to cigarettes come to define beauty in that day and age.
Don’t believe me? See for yourself.
In the ‘60s Twiggy, with her androgynous looks, became the ideal mannequin for the mod looks of that decade. While the Russian Veruschka – once considered too tall, at more than six feet – played up her Valkyrie proportions by occasionally appearing in nothing but body paint. Modern times, eh!
In the ‘70s Iman, the stunning Somalian, became the exotic appeal. The ‘80s were all about glamour and Australian Elle Macpherson “The Body” defined it. Cindy Crawford, fresh-faced American, was symbolic of the pared-down minimalism of the ‘90s.
Then arrived Kate Moss – at five foot eight she was the antisupermodel whose arrival heralded the waif look. Which, in turn, spawned a legion of healthy women starving themselves to attain the Fellowship of Moss.
What does it tell us? In this obsessive pursuit of beauty are we missing something staring us in the face? That the idea of commercial beauty is constantly changing, at best, and shifty, at worst, as marketers have crossed continent/ethnicity/race in their search for the ‘look’ that’ll define the zeitgesit of the era and convey an impossible beauty.
No woman can live up to the ideal beauty, though many have died trying to do so. (Ironically, the universally admired beauty, Marilyn Monroe, is one.) That’s because supermodels, fashion models, catwalk models are not meant to be ‘pretty’ or beautiful. The requirement is for edgy, distinctive, non-traditional looks. Which can then be broadcast as some unattainable ideal of beauty. Which, statistically, is what it is!
And yet, as science will tell you, it is all so wrong. Because Beauty boils down to a simple average. Yes, average!
Research has illustrated a phenomenon called beauty-in-averageness in which a composite of faces – essentially an average of those faces – was more attractive than any of the faces individually. Which shows that we humans are attracted to average beauty more than individual beauty. An explanation for this is that averageness is a sign of health and fitness – a quality that attracts the opposite sex for successful breeding. Unusually protuberant eyes might clue a disease – and so signal the (low) value of a potential mate. And yet, a Smeagol-like face with bulging eyes is popular on current catwalks.
The world is a confusing place when white people prize mocha skin and the brown folks want fairness creams; when you are a curvy woman whose body is ideal for a sari but you want to pour yourself into a bandage dress; when you are a Chinese woman with radish legs and you’ll undergo torturous surgery to get European legs …
So, next time you doubt your beauty, stop and think. If you think you are average know that you are beautiful – you have science on your side. Not sufficient? A tad too dry for conviction?
Look at nature for inspiration. Does a rose desire to be more like a narcissus? Is a palm more attractive than a peepul? Is dusk more alluring than dawn? A full moon or a crescent? Each element is there and content in its beauty – no one’s faking it. If there’s one thing we can learn from nature, it is this: there is no beauty standard.
The moment we stop benchmarking ourselves against some given beauty-industry/fashion-magazine/Holly-Bollywood standard is the moment we can look at ourselves in the mirror and realize our own beauty. Confucius said: Everything has beauty; not everyone sees it. So how about sending some positive vibes to our self? Healthy skin, clean teeth, clear eyes, a wide smile, erect posture, wearing clothes that suit our body – 90% of beauty is covered there. And all of us can have it. Exercise, eating well and in moderation will keep us healthy and fit. Top it off with a quiet self-confidence.
Real beauty is within each of us and the moment we start believing that, it lights up our soul and our eyes and our face and becomes visible to all. And then it will extend to our work, our interactions with others, the way we live. Beauty is never skin deep – it is an extension of our very self. As Professor Denis Dutton says, prehistoric man was creating objects of beauty before we could even talk.
The first step to real beauty is choosing to be You – you with all your foibles and strengths. And then you’ll be surprised by what your self will reveal to you.
So, who will you be: Kat/Kate/Kareena-counterfeit. Or the authentic you? The choice is yours. Is a cool chick hot or a hot chick cool – for once, the chick shall decide!
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I wrote this blog post because I believe in the need for a passionate debate on the idea of beauty and how we use it to constrain ourselves. This also forms part of the ongoing debate on Beauty that Dove is running via its Yahoo! Dove Real Beauty Contest.
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