I find the following quote I came across last week inspiring, curious and troublesome. “If tomorrow, women woke up and decided they really liked their bodies, just think how many industries would go out of business.” These are the words of Dr. Gail Dines, sociology and women’s studies professor at Wheelock College in Boston. And I’m inclined (however naïve the notion may be) to believe she ?is right.
The culturally refined rebuttal often voiced after more radical thoughts like Dines’s is, while not exclusive to women, affecting for them in ways not comparable to the experiences of men. The pressure on women to look and behave in a certain way is insurmountable. This isn’t inaccurate, but I think it’s time this argument was reassessed.
Naturally, the beauty industry has serious incentive to consistently maintain standards for physical appearance. I would say next in line behind them are men. Before our culture permitted the beauty industry to cater to the grooming needs of men, it was simple for men to pigeonhole women into two categories: flaunting and desirable, and then unkempt and thus undesirable.
Don’t misconstrue: this is a man’s world. We men can afford a comfort of casual indifference that many women only daydream about. How many hours do you have to give every day before you leave the house or go to bed?
Now, or so one would hope, our perceptions of one another are more civil and nuanced. Men and women both have access to a vast beauty market. But that access, however equal, does not lend to our culture presupposing that men and women should treat that access equally: standards of beauty and touch are undeniably more rigid for ?women than men.
As anyone will tell you, how you look matters almost as much, if not more, than what you think or have to say, for men and women.
Appearance is everything anymore. News itself is inundated with shoddy and shallow news coverage voiced by anchors made up as celebrity look-alikes. Social media is feeding everyone with the idea of becoming obsessed with appearances. These are all images that ask us all to put beauty in the same, ?well-defined confines.
But my thinking is, while the pressure to maintain a culturally acceptable image is great, and arguably greater — or perhaps more restrictive — for women, the choices are still ours.
It isn’t exactly a complex dynamic for those who seem repelled at the thought of having a choice in the matter of looking one way or another. But in America, this misguided belief that we can’t influence our perception on standards of beauty, and by extensions, acceptance, is childish at best.
Because today the rationale to look one’s best isn’t normally for ourselves or to impress the peers we identify with, but to gain a sense of status outside of our usual acquaintances; we’ve been sold our own insecurities. I think Dines’ quote is so powerful because of the immediacy she purposes: entire industries wiped out overnight because people were tired of being perpetually insecure. Overnight may be unrealistic, but the idea has to start somewhere.
michoman@indiana.edu
