Empowered Traditionalist

In an article titled “The price of perfection” NY Times author, Marantz Henig gives an overview of the dangerous and mutilating treatments women have undergone in their quest for beauty.

Over the centuries, women have mauled and manipulated just about every part of their bodies—lips, eyes, ears, waists, skulls, foreheads, feet—that did not fit into the cookie-cutter ideal of a particular era’s fashion. During the Renaissance, well-born European women plucked out hairs, one by one, from their natural hairline all the way back to the crowns of their heads, to give them the high rounded foreheads thought beautiful at the time…

In China right up until World War 2, upper-class gilrs had their feet bound, crippling them for life but ensuring the three-or four- inch long feet that were prized as exquisitely feminine. In Central Africa, the Mangbettu tightly wrapped the heads of female infants in pieces of giraffe hide, to attain the elongated cone-shaped heads that were taken to be a sign of beauty and intelligence. (though that surely couldn’t have been aiding the intelligence of their brain!)
But, one factor has held relatively constant: most cultures, through the centuries, have wanted their women to be slim…

In England in 1665, a health pamphlet entitled “To reduce the body that is too fat to a mean and handsome proportion” noted that one handy technique for losing weight was bloodletting…women, according to this pamphlet, should be bled “largely, twice a year, the right arm in the spring, the left in the autumn”

In the 1930s women actually swallowed tapeworms to lose weight;
I could go on and on and tell you of numerous horror stories, but I bring these examples to demonstrate that the pressure for perfection is nothing new!
The temptation to become absorbed with our physical appearance has always existed.
Women have always been susceptible to being totally preoccupied with the physical ideal as defined by the culture in which they live.

Today women are driven more than ever before

80 years ago girls would compare themselves with the other 10-15 girls in their town. Today women compare themselves to the pictures of the top supermodels on the magazines racks put on the by the world-wide fashion industry.

And what is this ideal? What standard of beauty by which every woman is to compare herself?

1. Bodies that are perfect without defect.

That pretty much illuminates all of us.
scar, birth mark, skin disease, acne or spider veins, nose is too big, if you are too tall or too short these are considered defects by our society.
2. To be beautiful you must be young
now we are still young…may I remind you of something? We may be young, but our youthfulness is shortlived! In fact, have any of you been with your grandmother or great gramma recently? Stop and picture her in your mind. Guess what? Yea, someday you will resemble your gramma or great gramma. Now I know that may be difficult for some of you to fathom, but it’s true. It’s a flower that quickly fades-no exceptions
3. Having a perfect figure.

You must be the Perfect height, large bust, skinny waist, shapely legs, all packaged in a thin body. And again, the majority of us , don’t measure up.
4. We must have that covergirl face.

We must look like the faces on the magazine racks, or this seasons most glamorous model or movie star.

The fashion industry creates a definition of beautiful so narrow that in comparison the majority of women and girls feel ugly and unattractive.
…To be Continued…

sources: Carolyn Mahaney, Girl Talk