Beauty - the Very Definition

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“Beauty” is a loaded word.

Sitting there by itself, it could mean many things — a pleasing natural sight, like a sunset; a particularly elegant process; an industry that sells aesthetic products; the inner light radiated by someone at peace with themselves; or the transient, physical, appearance of a human body in what we might call “it’s prime.”

It’s this last one I want to talk about because, as a culture, we’re kind of obsessed with it. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, we in the United States spend more than $26 billion on cosmetic procedures in 2022. And while historically, women have made up the majority of this market, men are increasingly investing in things like neuromodulator injections, commonly called “Brotox.” (Cue eye roll; it seems condescending to men to inject the word “bro” into things in a transparent attempt to shout at them “Look! This is for bros! It’s not a girly thing! You can tell because, you know, “bro!”)

One response to our cultural obsession with youthful looks has been “beautiful at any age.”

This approach insists all people are beautiful. I was on board with this at first because it seemed like a redefinition of the understanding of beauty. Maybe we were going to approach beauty for people much like we do a well-oiled machine. Maybe we were going to talk about beautiful minds, emotions, etc. But it turns out, we just sat inside the same boring definition of physical beauty as media made use of older women who were particularly conventionally attractive. See the Sports Illustrated spread with Martha Stewart, for example. Is it branching out that they featured an older woman? Yes. Is it about celebrating age? No. It’s about making an older woman look as much like a younger woman as possible, with the right makeup, lighting, poses, etc.

Why do we have to insist that everyone is physically beautiful?

Why are we compelled to cram all of us inside the conventionally attractive box? Because we have erroneously tied our worth as people to it. If we admit that not everyone is conventionally attractive, then we think we are saying they are worth less, we are worth less, that those who are. But what if, instead, we let go of attaching all that importance to physical beauty?

Decades ago now, when we were both more youthfully gorgeous than we are now, my sister declared to me in a conversation we were having about beauty, “You know what? FUCK pretty!”

Fuck all the time we spend trying to look right. All the money on Botox and lip filler, all the discomfort stuffing ourselves into Spanx, all those messed-up feet from tottering around in heels, in a slightly less dramatic version of foot binding. All those creases in our shoulders and backs from push-up bras. If we, as a culture, were not so obsessed with beauty, imagine what could we accomplish with all that extra money, time, and brain space.

I’m not saying physical beauty doesn’t exist.

Obviously as humans, we have aesthetic preferences. And it is a futile task to tease out which of these preferences are in-born and which are cultivated and warped by advertising. I’m not saying you should never look at yourself in the mirror (though maybe we should all do it less), and I’m not saying we should all wear paper sacks as clothing. I LOVE clothes — all the colors, fabrics, options. I’m just saying we could stand to spend a lot less time, energy, and money on worrying if we look too old, too frumpy, too fat, too thin — whatever “too” is our particular sticking point.

Beauty is a double-edged sword.

In my younger days, I was often told I was pretty. And while the compliments pleased me, they also made me uneasy. It seemed I needed to hold onto this beauty thing I had — make sure it didn’t slip away. Because of this, I was obsessed with my weight and developed, not an eating disorder exactly, but definitely an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise.

Fast forward years later, and I am visibly aging. I have not been whistled at on the street (which is kind of a relief) in a while. It is, no matter what interventions we spend our money on, impossible to hold on to the youth part of the beauty equation. Time marches on, no matter how much we deny it. I look at myself in the mirror, and I see skin beginning to sag, bags under my eyes, a few gray hairs…

Last night, at a restaurant, a large family came in — people of all ages — toting giant shiny balloons in the shape of a 69. After the part of my mind that’s still thirteen stopped snickering, I scanned the group for the person whose birthday it was. It took me a while to land on the oldest-looking one in the group because she was camouflaged in dyed hair and makeup. It was only when I studied her, I could tell her likely age. This led me back to my own aging…

I am almost 50.

I could dye my hair blonde and cover the grays. I could spend more time putting on makeup. I could even get some sort of minor cosmetic lift to my face and probably pass for someone ten years younger. It’s tempting. Tempting to play into the cultural idea that youth and beauty are currency and things you can use to get attention, get your needs met, get respect. And I’ll admit, I am far from totally above that. Sometimes I put on makeup because it seems fun, but sometimes I do it because I feel insecure and like maybe I look a little “too” old. Oftentimes, it’s hard to parse out one feeling from the other.

We could be so much more if we let go of our obsession with youthful looks and conventional ideas of physical beauty.

Maybe instead of spending time insisting everyone is the version of beauty that is conventionally attractive, and then endeavoring to keep ourselves that way, stanch the inevitable flow of time, we could reclaim that time and attention. We could work on seeing the value in all human beings simply for the sake that they are human — that common respect all people deserve because they are here on this planet. And then we could not just tolerate but embrace all the things that make one person unique from another. Diversity — all the different ways people are, their varied backgrounds, their different looks, different thought patterns, different ideas and proclivities — is humanity’s greatest strength.

You probably thought this one was not about politics, didn’t you?

This idea that we spend so much time, money, and brain space on physical beauty is a distractor from what is going on in our world and it divides us further, adding to race, sexuality, and ability. It divides the pretty from the un-pretty, and gives us yet another reason to scorn each other instead of bring us together.

If we could relegate physical beauty to the place it belongs — as one small part of who we are as humans, one that is constantly changing and also not one of our more important aspects, we’d be getting somewhere. It’s hard, I know. We are physical beings with eyes. Giving import to aesthetics comes naturally. But we, as humans, have accomplished so many things, grown so much over the eons we’ve been on this planet. I think we’re up to the task.

I believe the work of subverting beauty standards is the work of liberation, equality, and wellness. It is self-care and community-care. It is spiritual. It is political. It is essential. Because when beauty standards change, the world does too. ~ Jessica DeFino

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Fun Facts from History:

Feminists were stereotyped as “ugly” in an effort to undermine their message. The number of diet-related articles in women’s magazines rose 70 percent from 1968 to 1972. In 1975, Xerox withdrew a job offer based on a woman’s weight. Throughout the ‘60s and ’70s courts consistently upheld the right of employers to enforce appearance-based policies on female employees. Politically, psychologically, and legally, the message was clear: Women were only as valuable as they were beautiful, both in the world and in the workplace.

(source: How White Supremacy and Capitalism Influence Beauty Standards, Teen Vogue, Oct. 2020)