So, this is something that has been irritating me for a while, but this morning, the internet sealed my fate, and yours, by showing me this:
This particular bit of internet humor puts it’s finger right on the pulse of a particular social/cultural viewpoint that has become popular in the last decade or so — the ‘stop trying so hard and be your beautiful, natural selves, ladies!’ viewpoint.
In theory, this sounds great, and even empowering. I remember, as a teen, reading some chick magazine or other that contained advice about how, if you went on a date with a boy, he didn’t want to see you picking at a salad, he’d rather see you enjoying real food, because if you had an appetite for food, you probably would for…other things as well. It became common knowledge that most guys preferred fresh-faced beauties to those girls that applied makeup with a palette knife. We should stop worrying so much about our hair, our makeup, our outfits, and just have fun, for gosh sake! Boys would love a girl they could pal around with and touch without reenacting the train station scene from Young Frankenstein.
This makes a lot of sense, coming on the tail-end of the 80′s, an era of hair sprayed to the sky, aroebicizing, and the mainstreaming of many new diet foods and drinks. The 80′s feminine vibe wasn’t very…well, feminine. It was hard and cold and untouchable. So, in contrast, a girl that wears comfortable clothes, has silky, touchable hair and, eats a chili dog with her man at a ball game instead of dragging him to a weird french restaurant and fake-laughing at his jokes comes out a pretty clear winner. Queue a whole revolution in how us ladies were to present ourselves. As OURSELVES. Le gasp!
Movies and tv shows began regularly ridiculing girls obsessed with what they put on or in themselves. In the modern fairytale retelling, ‘A Cinderella Story’, one of the antagonist ‘ugly stepsisters’ comes into the diner and is waited on by our ‘Cinderella’, and asks what she can get that contains ‘no fat, no carbs and no calories’, to which she is told ‘Water.’ A hilarious set down to a girl who is clearly only interested in her superficial physical appearance! A point driven home by the sweet, beautiful and down-to-earth protagonist later happily chowing down on something fattening and delicious. In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, Wild at Heart, Oz meets another werewolf, the sexy, sexy Varuca, who informs him, as she stuffs her face with a cheeseburger, that she ‘Likes to eat,’ and ‘hates those girls who are all, ‘does this have dressing on it?’ Oz is taciturnly intrigued by her healthy attitude. Faith, the ‘bad slayer’ also proves her sexy vitality with a desire to eat awesome fattening food after a night’s slayage. In the romantic comedy ‘How to Loose a Guy in 10 Days’, Kate Hudson (a lanky, leggy blond with an athletic build) likes sports and chili dogs, and keeps her sexy tomboyish nature secret from her love interest in an attempt to chase him away by being a ‘typical female’ — an over the top, clingy, girly girl that, among other things, is super conscious of what she eats and wears girly dresses rather than jeans and sports jerseys.
The problem with this is as follows:
It’s bullshit.
I apologize for the strong language, but I see this attitude as unhealthy and possibly sexist as expecting women to wear hose and heals and spend their Fridays at the salon ever was. I think it may be worse, because it’s darn near unattainable.
Yes, there is a small percentage of the female population that wake up with lightly tousled locks falling sexily over their shoulders, eyes bright and skin uncreased by the pillow. Women with metabolisms high enough or lives active enough to easily dispose of those stuffed waffles with whipped cream they ate for breakfast. I call them freaks of nature. And even THEY occasionally agonize over what to wear.
Most of us, however, aren’t so lucky.
Yes, we are told that having a few curves is a good thing (and that our personality matters way more than our looks), but for the majority of females in this society, regularly chowing down on pizza with the bros will result in curves where no one wants them, turning us into ‘that fat chick that hangs out with the guys’ rather than ‘the pretty tomboy that is happy with who she is’ that the movies promised we would be. Most of us wake up looking bedraggled with our hair sticking up (and not in an endearing sleepy way…in an ‘oh, god..get that woman a brush’ way). Our ‘fresh faced and natural’ faces include dark circles, uneaven skintone, Brook Shields eyebrows, or lashes so light that they don’t show up without a coating of mascara. We have occasionally thrown on the first thing our hand touches in the closet and left the house without any maintenance for an emergency run to the grocery store, and we know full well how we looked. ‘Lovely’ is not an adjective that would have been used. Nor, ‘Glowing’.
However, due to societal opinion at large, we are made to feel bad about the personal upkeep that makes us look pretty (And there is nothing wrong with wanting to look pretty.) Any time spent trying to get cranky hair to behave or putting on makeup feels like vain primping…especially in a situation that involves living with another person, romantically or not…they are witnessing the shameful fact that we make an effort to look good. Having a regular exercise routine rather than simply burning calories in gleeful games of pick-up football with your boy bros, or with marathon sexcapades makes you kind of crazy and obsessive, and again, totally vain. And eating! If you are eating with other people, you darn well best be ordering something greasy…dressing-free salads are for eating alone in your room in the dark, while crying.
Now, I’m all for an occasional treat, and for taking a break from time to time, but while that girl eating the funnel cake may not blow up to the exaggerated proportions of the heavy honey in the upper right, unless she is blessed with a metabolism that most of us lack or is a surfing and rock-climbing instructor that goes mountain biking in her free time, she’s going to put on a few pounds. But us girls who know how our bodies react to a payload of sugar and fat like that are told that we are high-maintenance freaks for choosing to say no to delicious fried pastries.
At least in the 1950′s, women were expected to put effort into their appearances.
hand, awesome — I had a few days of not really feeling the creativity bug, which is always frustrating, not to mention, the spark is a little less sparkly after a full work week creating. But this morning, looking at the super cute and sexy pin-up art of Bill Pressing, I just want to curl up with a sketchpad. Not just due to his adorably curvy ladies, but also ’cause of his wonderful use of color and value and composition. But, I’m gonna rein it in and work on making some packaging. Then at lunch, I can peck away a little more at my ongoing personal piece that is taking a year and a day, since I have mostly just been working on it on my lunch break. (Almost there, though!)
