In her essay "Woman as Other," Simone de Beauvoir describes how women are regarded in male-supremacist societies; "She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her, she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, the Absolute - she is "The Other."
Unfortunately for women, patriarchy (affirmative action for men) spans the globe. As a result, men define the "perfect norm" against which women are measured and found lacking. Women's bodies are the blank screens upon which men's standards of beauty are projected. Women are at risk if they internalize these standards.
Surveys by the Kinsey Institute revealed American women have more negative feelings about their bodies than women in any other culture studied. The beauty industry exploits these feelings to boost profits. Susan Faludi in her book "Backlash" wrote, "During the late Victorian era, the beauty industry glorified a cult of invalidism and profited from it." The wasting-away look fueled America's first dieting mania and caused fatal eating disorders in many young women.
Many Victorian women died after taking toxic potions to achieve a chalky looking complexion. "Fowlers Solution," used to "revitalize" aging skin, contained arsenic.
Over a century later, the cult of beauty still pressures women to risk their lives for "beauty." In the 1980's, Retin-A, which causes cancer, birth defects and severe dermatitis was prescribed by doctors to combat wrinkles.
The corpse-like appearance sought by Victorian women is now the "waif look" as seen in "Opium" perfume ads. Impossibly thin models stare out at us, gaunt and death-like, from the pages of many male-owned "women's" magazines.
A recent ad for Woodland Park Hospital's Cosmetic Surgery Center reads, "A normal shaped bust, A flat tummy. Regular shaped thighs. We all know what would make us look right but a lifetime of wishing won't make it so."
A "normal" bust? "Regular" shaped" thighs? Looking "right?" By what gender's standards?
In the 1970s, the second wave of feminism lowered the beauty industry's profits. "The industry aimed to restore its own economic health by persuading women that they were the ailing patients," Faludi said. Beauty became medicalized and a lab-coated army of doctors prescribed many bizarre and expensive treatments including skin injections, face lifts, liposuction, hormone treatments, silicone implants, injections of mares' urine and "plastic surgery for virtually every inch of the torso," said Faludi.
One doctor even promised to reduce women's height by sawing their leg bones!
The cult of beauty also has serious social implications for women. Faludi notes that in times of backlash against women's rights, unhealthy beauty standards converge with social campaigns against women. By contrast during periods when the culture is more receptive to women's rights "athleticism, health and vivid color define female beauty."
In the late 1910s and during the 20s, female athletes outshone movie stars and set healthier standards of beauty than those of today. However, when women gained political power in 1920 by winning the right to vote, the first Miss America "beauty" pageant was established; the backlash began and continues today.
The cult of beauty attributed the source of women's discontent to personal negative feelings about body image. However,the actual source of discontent comes from women's second-class status in a male-supremacist society.
Thus, the energy women could have spent creating a a society less hostile to women is turned against them and consumed by the quest for beauty. The message is, in order banish discontent, women must conform to "the perfect norm" and change themselves by altering their bodies.
Health requirements vary for each individual woman. Moderate exercise and maintaining the weight necessary for cardiovascular health should always be encouraged. Unfortunately, women often endanger their health by jogging obsessively, losing dangerous amounts of weight and even going under the knife to become "beautiful."
Drs. W. Earle Matiry Jr. and Patrick Chavis have had women patients die during liposuction. Lucha Villa, one of Mexico's most popular singers and film stars, went into a coma and barely survived after her surgeon performed liposuction. Dr Robert Harvey became known as the "breast man of San Francisco." During a luncheon at the all-male Bohemian Club, he showed slides of Asian women whose breasts he had "occidentalized", making them, in his opinion, "more feminine."
For women nervous about surgery, Harvey's associate suggested facial injections of collagen; "It's a good way for them (women) to get their feet wet -to cross the bridge to surgery," he said.
A 1988 study by Dow Corning Corporation found that silicone gel implants caused cancer in more than 23 percent of rats tested but the Food and Drug Administration dismissed the findings. Recently, a class-action suit against Dow Corning was filed in behalf of the thousands of women who were seriously injured by these implants.
We live in a society that regards women's living, breathing bodies as inanimate objects to be "sculpted." The fact that women can experience pain and die is ignored.
The beauty industry reaps billions of dollars annually by inflicting physical and psychological abuse upon millions of women. How many precious women-hours (remaining after a hectic day of work and child care) are wasted obsessing about body image? Imagine how our society would benefit if the billions consumed by the "cult of beauty" were spent on housing, education, child care and job training for women, especially those stuck in the welfare trap.
These billions would be better spent for battered women's shelters, health clinics and child care. This could set millions of women free to obtain their goals and have better lives.
Joules is a women living in Washington state who loves and accepts her body the way it is.The following verses are from her poem published in We' Moon'95 -Gaia Rhythms for Womym. Used with permission.
My belly's rounded room, holds the full and glowing moon
My hips so soft and wide hold the universe in side
Oh what a lucky chance to be blessed with such expanse
To take my womanly stance in this universal dance!
Now some would try to strip and starve me
Some would try to mold and carve me
But nothing is more belittling
Than that narrow-minded whittling!
It is not my bound duty to befit the little beauty
My thighs are thick and thunderous!
my waist is wide and wondrous!
This body that was sent to me,
Is the form that it is meant to be!
Aho!