Susan Senator

This blog post made me think about beauty and ugliness, and what we women put ourselves through unconsciously every single day.

As always, when I got out of bed I took a look in the mirror and assessed the “damage.” Face getting fat, hair whacked out (flat and curly at the same time) and in need of new highlights to cover emerging gray, this is too that, etc. Then I thought, “Too__? For whom? Why?” Thinking about it logically, it’s not about what Ned thinks. He loves me completely and as I am. So is it about others? Strangers? Other men? Why????

And then how to explain trying to look good at the gym, which is all women? Is it about trying to look a certain way, not for others, but because this is the Standard in my head, created by the fashion industry?

When you think it all the way through, it makes no sense at all. If a person is in a love relationship, and is healthy physically (not obese), then one is obviously fine-looking the way they are. One would think that would be enough? But of course we/I never feel like it is. I — and pretty much all of my friends — hold ourselves to that Standard. For me, I suppose it comes from television and magazines. I’m supposed to be making every effort towards that Julia Roberts/Demi Moore/Catherine Zeta-Jones look, or I’m letting down the team! I have yet to hear a woman friend say, “I’m fine just the way I am!” If we’re not working towards that Standard, then, we’re disgusting (to ourselves or maybe even to others!). Every single one of my friends, with maybe one or two exceptions, is the same, and we are not unusual. We are typical upper-middle class, college + education, raised by feminists for the most part, reasonably healthy, good relationships/marriages. So are family members. I have a cousin who dreams of a tummy tuck, which one blog friend told me she just had (post C-section) and that it is like being hit by a truck. Why does this cousin need a tummy tuck? And why am I jealous of her? I hear it in my gym, too, the whisperings of “going to do do it… ” and the only thing getting in their way is that they might die from the anesthesia. For me, it’s the death thing and the money.

Why? Why? Why? The Body Impolitic, et al., would say that this is a culture that hates women, and seeks to keep us down one way or another. A culture that teaches us to hate ourselves, to maim, cut up, diet to death, paint over, ourselves. I say that is nuts!

Or is it?