The Myth in the Mirror

RITA FREEDMAN

(Paimta iš knygos: Women: Images and Realities, Mayfield Publishing Co., 1999)

When a sixteen-year-old blonde was crowned in 1921, she launched America's longest running, most popular beauty contest. Nearly half a century later, demonstrators gathered on the Boardwalk of Atlantic City in what many consider the public birth of the current women's movement.

Why was the Miss America Contest chosen for the site of the first contemporary feminist demonstration? A group of women had discovered that while they outwardly denounced the pageant, they somehow ended up watching it. They chose to picket the contest because it seemed to epitomize woman's role as a passive, decorative object. The message was that all women are hurt by such contests in a culture that substitutes the worship of female beauty for the recognition of women as human beings.

When questioned about the meaning of beauty, some women say they enjoy its challenge- others say they resent its domination. Most find it hard to admit just how much they value beauty and how much they fear its loss. The triumphs and tragedies of their daily beauty quest are shrouded in silence.

This is why beauty reform remains part of the feminist agenda. How does beauty influence self esteem and independence? Is adornment an asset or a liability in achieving equality? Questions of equal pay or equal rights seem clearer and safer. Equal looks are harder to define.

When demonstrators tossed their bras into a trash can in Atlantic City, the response of outrage was disproportionate to the sight of a few sagging bosoms. Bras were correctly identified as part of a crucial support system, as props for a much larger social issue. At stake was not the shape of the breast but the shape of the myth that women are specially endowed with beauty. The unbound liberated breast (like the unbound foot) was quickly recognized as a threat to the idea that feminine beauty should be cultivated and displayed within certain bounds.

At risk was the belief that women are objects of visual pleasure, that their breasts ought to be contained and reshaped to look pleasing, that they are unaesthetic and unacceptable as they are. When great attention is paid to preserving such customs as opening doors, putting on makeup, or wearing bras, it is because these simple acts symbolize more important values. If bras, as symbols, are allowed to be stripped away, then woman's role as a beautiful object may come undone as well.

Beauty is not a gender-neutral trait. There are no televised pageants in which men parade in bikinis to be crowned Mr.America on the basis of their shapely legs and congenial smiles. Because beauty is asymmetrically assigned to the feminine role, women are defined more by their looks than by their deeds. Good looks are prerequisite for femininity but incidental to masculinity. This asymmetry produces different social expectations and different psychological consequences for each sex.

Appearance is important and it will continue to be. Beauty is not the enemy. Rather we are all, men and women, bound by a system that encourages obsessive preoccupation with the female body. By calculating the power of beauty to both enhance and undermine human relations, we may achieve a more realistic view of it. Through greater awareness, reform becomes possible.

As women strive to break free of constricting stereotypes of who they are and what they want, idealized feminine beauty must be identified as part of that challenge. It is not merely a decorative diversion. The sense of self resides within the body. False beauty images generate false body parts-remodeled torsos, remade faces-reconstructions that are wom like acquired accessories. As long as women remain hidden behind these distortions, they will be controlled by them, no matter how safe they feel.

DEFINING BEAUTY

Beauty is many things-an external radiance, an inner tranquillity, a sexual allure, a fact of social exchange. Contradictory definitions of the nature of beauty abound, indicating widespread ambivalence about its meaning. On the one hand, beauty is dismissed as mere facade a superfical trait of little consequence. On the other hand, it is infused with supernatural power- a spellbinding, dazzling, irresistible princess can capture hearts and control kingdoms.

Beauty norms are in constant flux as new standards are adopted and abandoned. Worship of curves gives way to straight hair,- legs replace breasts, and vice versa, as the fashion focus moves down or up. When beauty images change, bodies are expected to change as well, for nature cannot satisfy culture's ideal. Lashes must be longer, hair silkier, cheeks rosier.

As a psychological experience, beauty is an interactive process. It derives as much from the beliefs and perceptions of the beholder as from the face of the beheld. This is why its definition is so elusive and its influence so hard to determine. We can never be sure where it comes from or who possesses it. Does it depend on physical dimensions or on psychological ones? Is it housed in the flesh or created through fantasy? Who owns and controls it, the beholder or the beheld?

One popular misconception about beauty is that it counts most at initial encounters and becomes less important with familiarity. In fact, evidence suggests just the opposite (Berscheid & Walster, 1974). Appearance continues to have a significant influence even on long-standing relationships. Another common misconception is that beauty is democratically distributed so that every person is considered attractive by someone or other. Again the data suggest the opposite conclusion. Certain faces are consistently admired, while others are consistently rejected. Appearance therefore makes a real difference over the course of hundreds of daily encounters (Wooley, 1994). Herein lies the power of beauty to define us.

It is clearly untrue that we regard beauty as merely skin-deep. There is a strong belief that what is beautiful is also good. We may give lip service to so-called higher moral values and dutifully insist that beauty lies within, that looks are superficial, and that character is what counts. But such sanctimonious maxims only cover up a strong unconscious worship of appearance. Furthermore, research indicates that attitudes about attractiveness are applied differently to each sex. Beauty counts for everyone, but more so for women (Garner, 1997).

From the moment of birth, beauty is sought, perceived, and projected onto girls. When parents were asked within twenty-four hours after delivery to rate their first-born infants on a variety of characteristics, daughters were described as beautiful, soft, pretty, cute, delicate, and little. Sons were rated as firm, strong, large-featured, well coordinated, and hardy. The baby boys and girls in this study had been carefully matched for equivalent length, weight, and level of responsiveness. Despite the physical similarities of these infants, their parents nevertheless brought home "beautiful" daughters and "strong" sons. A baby dressed in blue was described in another study as bouncy, strong, activethe same baby dressed in pink was called sweet and lovely. Studies confirm that throughout childhood girls receive more attention for their appearance than do boys.

A growing body of evidence confirms that beauty is a gender-related trait. At every age, appearance is emphasized and valued more highly in females than in males. Women are more critically judged for attractiveness and more severely rejected when they lack it. A woman's beauty is constantly anticipated, encouraged, sought, and rewarded in a wide range of situations, including the romantic arena (Pliner et al., 1990).

Analysis of personal advertisements' for example, shows that women are more likely to offer physical attractiveness, while men are more likely to seek it. The reverse holds true for financial security, which men are more likely to offer and women are more likely to seek. Clearly, the link between beauty and femininity influences dating and mating preferences. It is not merely an abstract concept but a reality that has social importance.

Because beauty is linked with femininity, the influence of body image on self-concept is greater for females than for males. A woman is more likely than a man to equate herself with what she looks like, or what she thinks she looks like, or what she believes others think she looks like. Studies show that womeiys self-concepts are correlated with their own perceptions of their attractiveness, whereas men's self-concepts relate more closely to perceptions of their effectiveness and their physical fitness (Freedman, 1989).

THE ROLE OF MYTHS

There are as many contradictory myths about the nature of women as there are about the nature of beauty. Like beauty, women are viewed as both good and evil. Both beauty and women are considered dangerous and seductive. Both are seen as a mysterious enigma, feared as powerful but dismissed as ineffectual.

Myths about beauty alter its impact. They are used as yardsticks for self-evaluation. People measure themselves against a mythical ideal and then remodel themselves to fit that pattern, becoming what they believe they should be. If, for example, women are taught that feminine beauty means having full, softly rounded breasts, they judge themselves against this standard. Missing the mark, they put on padded bras or suffer silicone implants. As flat chests disappear, reality is replaced with a replica, and the truth of the myth is confirmed. Myths thus function as self-fulfilling prophecy and are therefore dangerously self-perpetuating.

How can a myth that equates woman with beauty survive alongside a myth that brands woman as deficient? How can woman be glorified as the fair sex while at the same time be demeaned as "the other sex"? In fact, myths about gender, like myths about beauty, are often linked in just such counterbalanced pairs. Together, contrary myths create an equilibrium that helps preserve them both.

Women are crowned with beauty precisely because they are cloaked in difference. The idealization of female appearance camouflages an underlying belief in female inferiority. just as excessive narcissism has its roots in self-loathing, the myth of female beauty grows from the myth of female deviance. Beauty helps to balance woman as a misbegotten person. It disguises her inadequacies and justifies her presence.

At the same time, beauty clearly distinguishes woman as different, as a member of the other half of humanity. But beauty is only a temporary equalizer. Ultimately, it exposes the fair sex once again as the other sex. For the symbols of contrived beauty-the lacquered nails, the crimson lips-exaggerate gender differences. They elevate woman onto a pedestal while paradoxically defining her separate role. In lieu of equality, beauty serves as a kind of prop, or consolation prize. In the end, props and pedestals make poor equalizers. They cannot substitute for full personhood.

The myth of woman as the fair sex perpetuates the feminine mystique. Petticoats and veils, padded bras and packaged bodies, everything that accentuates difference confirms woman as the "other." Recall the scene when Cinderella arrives at the ball. Even her stepsisters fail to know her, so blinding is her beauty. Camouflaged as a lovely enigma, she becomes unrecognizable. Unknown and unknowable, she is all the more desirable. Like Venus, a goddess of beauty but also a planet wrapped in steamy clouds, her core is hidden in a romantic mist. Beauty maintains the mystery of a woman by concealing the human being beneath.

LOOKING GOOD AND FEELING BAD

Belief in one's own attractiveness can be as hard to achieve as physical beauty itself. Members of the fair sex tend to view themselves unfairly. Ashamed of cellulite, limp hair, and age spots, plagued by selfconsciousness, distorted body image, and appearance anxiety, women judge their bodies as unworthy of self-love. Many equate what they look like with who they are.

In an interview a woman is asked to "please describe yourself in some way that would give a good sense of who and what you are." She sits for a moment in silent confusion and then says tentatively, "Do you mean physically, or what?" When told that she is free to choose, she begins her response with a list of physical characteristics: "I'm short and blond, a bit overweight." Sociologist Lillian Rubin conducted dozens of these interviews and found again and again that women started by describing their bodies. Although more than half of that sample worked outside the home, some in high-paying professional jobs, not even one began by discussing herself in relation to her career.

Although females have long been stereotyped, like Narcissus, as being enchanted with their own reflections, just the opposite seems rue. Asked to evaluate photographs of themselves, more women voice criticism than satisfaction. When psychologist Marcia Hutchinson (1982) selected over one hundred subjects for a project on body image, she carefully chose women who were of normal weight, with no history of eating disorders or of mental illness. Further assessment, however, showed that only one out of the entire sample was not "actively waging war against fat." None of the women was seriously overweight, none was emotionally disturbed, yet all were dieting, all were self-rejecting, and all suffered from poor body image. Hutchinson was forced to conclude that "flesh loathing exists in epidemic proportions among women."

The problem is quite evident by adolescence, when teenage girls say they feel relatively less attractive in comparison to their peers than do boys. More women than men describe persistent feelings of physical inferiority. One out of three report feeling anxious, depressed, or repulsed when they look at their nude bodies in the mirror.

The mind does not remain a blank slate for very long. An idealized image of feminine beauty is soon etched upon it. In our culture, this image is built on a Caucasian model. Fairy-tale princesses and Miss Americas have traditionally been white. This fair image weighs most heavily on the brown shoulders of women of color who bear a special beauty burden. They too are taught that beauty is a feminine imperative.

Even those who are born with the "right" look discover that beauty can be problematic. Positive pleasures are confounded by negative pitfalls. In fact, one complaint voiced by pretty women is that no one takes the problems of being pretty very seriously. Since beauty is associated with goodness, its advantages are assumed to outweigh its disadvantages. But this is not always the case.

"Beautiful" women do attract more attention, but some of it is unwelcome and some of it is quite destructive. They are more likely to become targets for the anger of men who fear the power of their beauty. "They say it's worse to be ugly. I think it must only be different. If you're pretty, you are subject to one set of assaults; if you're plain, you are subject to another," writes Alix Kates Shulman in her novel Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen.

Film stars and pageant winners who personify the myth also suffer, for they too are worshipped from inside someone else's head. They too remain vulnerable as they strive for a permanent state that is impossible to preserve.

While many roles are denied to females, that of beauty object is subtly as well as overtly encouraged. To enact femininity is to become a kind of exhibitionist, to display oneself as a decorative object. Few women are consciously aware of their objectification. Even fewer are concerned about it. After all, adornment is fun. Dressing up and showing off are ways of pleasing oneself and others. It seems a lot easier to be a sex object than a surgeon; certainly better to be looked at than overlooked. Attention, admiration, and compliments all feel good.

As people watch women, women become preoccupied with being watched. Many become obsessed with some body part they think needs correction. Nancy Henley (I 977) concluded that:

Insociety in which women's clothing is designed explicitly to reveal the body and its contours; in which women are ogled, whistled at, pinched while simply going about their business- in which they see ads ... showing revealingly clad women ... their bodies accessible to touch like community property ... in such a society it is little wonder that women feel observed. They are. (p. 167)

A mere whistle can insert a wedge between mind and body, reducing a person to an object. Street hassling is generally not intended to make women feel good about themselves but to make them uneasy. Those males who hassle are not motivated simply to compliment, but to assert their right to judge a women, to invade her awareness, to make her self-conscious, to force her to see herself as an object in their eyes. Girl-watching and street hassling perpetuate the belief that female appearance is public property and that female objectification is legitimate.

The everyday objectification of women on Main Street, in the media, and in the mind supports the multimillion-dollar graphy industry. graphy is a mixture of objectification and hostility. Like the myth of female beauty, graphy also masquerades under the pretense of admiration. It too displays woman as vision, while disguising woman as victim. In both cases, the victim in the vision is hidden behind her makeup and her seductive smile.

The centerfold figure is held out like a ripe fruit ready to be plucked and devoured. Her cheeks are luscious, her cleavage is compelling, and she seems powerful in her airbrushed beauty. By infusing womarfs body with a mystical element, the myth of female beauty enhances the power of graphy. Without the beauty mask, there would be less mystique to strip away. A centerfold model, a Miss America, and an everyday woman all share a similar role. A woman who is ogled on the street is being visually "had," much like a graphic model. She too is split off from herself, reduced to a facade, seen as prettier but less human than she really is.

A fine line divides the legitimate display of beauty from the illegitimate display of graphy. Those who seek admiration as a beauty object but fear exploitation as a sex object must be careful not to cross the line. The demands of beauty and the taboos of graphy require a balancing act that often throws women off balance. Vanessa Williams, Miss America 1984, was loudly applauded on the pageant runway but promptly censured when someone discovered that she had once strayed across the border into graphic territory. Miss America must be provocative but wholesome. Her message is, "Look, but doiyt touch."

Feminists have actively protested against graphic and commercial images that degrade women. But paradoxically the women's movement may have increased appearance anxiety even while trying to combat it. Feminism encourages reexamination of one's identity. It fosters an active approach to problem solving and teaches personal control through assertive behavior. Yet this message can easily be misconstrued as a new mandate for physical makeover.

Eager to reshape their lives, some women focus excessively on reshaping their bodies. Ultimately, they become trapped in a cycle of narcissistic selfabsorption and masochistic self-rejection. These dynamics are evident in such disorders as anorexia, weight obsession, and compulsive exercising, disorders which have all increased in a climate of feminist reform. Women describe feeling tossed between traditional feminine images and liberated feminist models. As one observed, "It's scarier to be a woman these days ... because we are still expected to be svelte, beautiful, and downright delicate while we're running huge corporations with an iron hand. It's a schizophrenic kind of existence."

PROPS AND PAINT

Women are not really fairer than men. Their special beauty is not innate but an acquired disguise. To act out a myth is to impersonate a caricature. And so the ladies' room becomes the powder room, where the costumes of femininity are applied. 9

Props and paint are essential elements of the female role, as basic to the culture as to the economy. Though a woman may feel powerless in many ways, her body is an arena she can try to control. Cosmetic rituals serve as a source of salvation. They can change the person as well as her image.

What motivates females to transform themselves? The answer is a strong human need to conform to social norms. A personal decision-to havea perm or a face-lift for example-is dictated partly by group pressure. Women enact the popular image of being like others and of being a liked by others. Beauty transformations produce the security of group acceptance while they reduce the the fear of social rejection.

Cosmetic strategies do help to normalize women. But they insidiously confirm female deviance even while counterbalancing it. Paradoxically, the more attractive a woman makes herself, the more deviant she often looks in her feminine drag.

Body beautification is a universal social gesture apparently stemming from a deep human need. Practiced by both males and females in virtually every culture, it traces back to ancient civilizations.A staggering variety of decorative rituals are found worldwide. To the western eye, some of them-such as the stretched necks of the Burmese or the elongated heads of the Senegalese-seem quite grotesque.

None of these cosmetic transformations are inherently more pleasing than others. Their aesthetic value depends on their social context. Black teeth or r ed nails seem attractive to someone conditioned to appreciate them as such. Who can say whether scarring one's face is elegant or hideous? Whether stretching one's lips with bone or implanting one's breasts with silicone is an aesthetic improvement or a monstrous mutilation?

Remember that beauty is defined as a unique and unusual quality-something beyond the ordinary. The distortions fashioned through cosmetic transformations produce an unnatural extreme. Redder lips, longer necks, blonder hair, flatter heads are loud signals that go beyond the boundaries of nature. And pain is often part of the decorative process. Pain signals an extreme commitment; the greater the pain, the more unique the product.

It is only a short step from deceiving others to deceiving oneself. Beauty rituals, initially used to disguise a defect, eventually screen us from selfscrutiny. As the real face becomes fused with fantasy and myth gives the illusion of truth, women end up feeling ashamed when caught unadorned. They learn their parts so well that they forget they are impersonating the role of fairy princess.

This works in several ways. First, props and paint accentuate gender differences, creating some that have no basis in nature (blue eyelids) and exaggerating others that are minimal (hairless legs). Shape of brows, contour of feet, style of hair become potent substitutes for natural sex differences. Lacquered nails and frosted lips flash like neon signs instantly advertising femininity. They transform abstract notions of beauty into something tangible, something we can see and feel. Once grounded in anatomy, these beauty symbols acquire the illusion of biological truth, and we start to think of them as fixed and permanent gender differences. While blue eyelids are pretty and feminine, they are peculiar distortions that affirm female otherness in the flesh.

Finally, beauty transformations maintain female deviance by associating femininity with phoniness. Props and paint may undermine credibiility, evoking suspicion and mistrust. Cellophane nails, silicone breasts, bottled blush, all link women with the false and the trivial. When a woman resembles a mannequin, she is not taken very seriously. Nietzsche associated deception with the feminine nature and wrote, "What is truth to woman? ... her great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance

The artifice inherent in cosmetic rituals has been used as proof of female inferiority. For example, with the revival of corsets in the nineteenth century, critics labeled women not only deceptive but also stupid. Anyone who would subject herself to the senseless torment of corsets was considered "brainless and inferior."

What's a woman to do? If she ignores the demands of the beauty myth, she feels like an outsider, for unadorned means unattractive. If she capitalizes on cosmetics to normalize herself, she only exaggerates her caricature as the other sex. A sense of balance is hard to achieve.

New beauty images are needed-comfortable and potent images that will permit uncorseted movement on unbound feet, and that can lead toward unrestricted goals. By peeling off the beauty mystique, like yesterday's makeup mask, we may uncover faint traces beneath, closer to the skin, closer to reality. By cleansing the surface we can reveal hidden images. Who knows? We may even like what we find there.

If the myth of female beauty is a by-product of female deviance and subordination, as I have tried to show' then the pretty postures of oppression will diminish as sex roles are equalized. "The more women assert themselves as human beings, the more the marvelous quality of the Other will die out in them," predicts Simone de Beauvoir (1953). Giving birth to a new self-image entails work, risk, and commitment. Undoubtedly, independence is woman's greatest asset. An economically, emotionally, and sexually independent woman is armed to be a myth slayer. She is less likely to embrace the static image of a mannequin; less likely to use her body as a gesture of appeasement; less likely to depend on appearance as her primary source of power. As women gain access to the institutions that control society, they gain the means to shift beauty off the back of femininity and onto the genderneutral position where it belongs. We will be released from the bonds of the beauty myth when women can look as ordinary as men, and still be valued as normal, lovable human beings. [1998]

REFERENCES

de Beauvoir, S. (1953). The SecondSex. New York: Bantam.

Berscheid, E., & Walster, E. (1974). "Physical Attractiveness.” In L. Berkowitz (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 7 (pp. 158-216). New York: Academic Press.

Freedman, R. (1986). Beauty Bound. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.

Freedman, R. (1989). Bodylove. New York: HarperCollins.

Garner, D.M. (1997, Jan). “The 1997 Body Image Survey Results,” Psychology Today, 30-84.

Henley, N. (1977). Body Politics: Power, Sex and Nonverbal Communication. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall.

Hutchinson, M. (1982). “Transforming Body Image: Your Body, Friend or Foe?” Women and Therapy, 1(3), 59-67.

Pliner, P. Chaiken, S. and Flett, G. (1990). “Gender Differences in Concern with Body Weight and Physical Appearance over the Life Span,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 16, 263-73.

Wooley, O.W. (1994). “And Man Created: ‘Woman’: Representation of Women’s Bodies in Western Culture.” In P. Fallon, M. Katzman and S. Wooley (eds.), Feminist Perspectives on Eating Disorders (pp. 17-52). New York: Guilford Press.