Beauty and the Relentless Beast
A chilling reflection on the history of beauty standards
A weird thing happened to me this week. You won’t believe me if I tell you. But of course, I’ll tell you anyway.
I was chatting with a friend over a glass of wine and talk soon turned to female body image - what society tells us is the ideal, and the slow suffocation of media messages reinforcing that standard. I said I was tired and saddened by how much time and effort gets wasted trying to maintain the ‘right’ aesthetic. She just laughed and said, “You think this is tiresome? Try living for millions of years!”. I hadn’t realised my friend was immortal, and she continued to tell me her most fascinating life story. She kindly gave me permission to share it with you here…
My life first began 2.5 million years ago. Born to the Palaeolithic Era, I was raised in a village where women were worshipped. Celebrated for their powers of fertility, women were encouraged to rest, nourish their bodies and explore their sexual desires. As a child this seemed wonderful to me. But as I became a woman myself, I found that my body didn’t develop in the way that was considered beautiful. My breasts weren’t big enough and no matter how much I ate, I couldn’t achieve the rolling flesh that the men craved. (Ironically, I looked like I was on a Paleo diet!) I felt ashamed of my body and I banished myself to the forest where nobody would see me.
I didn’t know it at the time, but it would be in this forest of shame that I would discover the herbs to arrest my development. And although life would continue around me, I would never grow older.
As the centuries rolled by, I grew restless and started to travel. I visited Ancient Greece where people were starting to fixate on ‘the perfect body’. Mathematicians had developed ‘the golden ratio’ which dictated perfect proportions for the body and face. According to the society of the time, asymmetry was true beauty, and images of the perfect Gods filled the temples and the heads of civilians.
Here it was the male physique that was preferred, women being the deformed version of the male. Yet women were still expected to be beautiful and symmetrical in their deformity. The female aesthetic was what we’d now call ‘plump’ and I fell short again to this ideal. Too slender to be a woman, not pretty enough to be a boy. But I was so tired of hiding, and desperate to integrate. I applied make-up to balance out asymmetry. I charcoaled the perfect unibrow, revered as a sign of purity and intelligence. And I padded out my flesh so it was worthy of being grabbed and squeezed. I became an object of desire, but I loathed myself inside, knowing it was all fake.
Having painted and eaten my way into acceptance in Greece, it turned out that beauty was once again beyond my reach in the Italian Renaissance. The men of this time were dogmatic and the beauty standards rigorous. I needed bigger boobs, fuller hips, and a round stomach to show a love of pleasure. Women were encouraged to pluck their hairline to achieve a higher forehead, and I painfully tweezed every day until the hair no longer grew. Women were also encouraged to wear wigs or dye their hair to provide the luscious blonde curls that men desired. To powder their skin to white, and to eat beyond comfortable satisfaction to ‘stay in shape’. To be thin at this time was to be considered physically revolting. The Italians also placed huge importance on the way a woman dressed and styled herself. For example, women who were single were expected to wear their hair down, whilst hair tied up signified being spoken for. Women were conditioned to adhere to men’s expectations of them and do whatever required to be desirable.
Then came Victorian England and with it the invention of the corset. A rib-breaking device to synch the waists of women to sometimes half their natural size. I, like many others, passed out a lot in those days. But fainting in public simply fanned the flames of inequality, reinforcing the idea that women were fragile and delicate. The truth is we just couldn’t breathe!
A time I did briefly enjoy was the Roaring 20’s. Women were now drinking and smoking like men. They wanted nothing to do with their curves and femininity, instead flattening their silhouette and cropping their hair short. However, now I was considered fat and was taught once again to be ashamed of my frame. Boyish was now beautiful, the fashion androgynous.
By the 1930’s it had all changed again. The hourglass figure made a comeback, but with corsets no longer part of the dress code, women were expected to have a naturally small waist whilst maintaining voluptuous breasts and a sizeable arse.
Then came the Swinging Sixties. Peace and love and fornication. Women were supposed to be sexually available, which ushered in the age of the mini-skirt. Such short hemlines suit very few people and I once again found myself outside of the beauty ideal. Twiggy was the face of the perfect body, and legs surpassed boobs and bums on the desire-o-meter!
The 80’s was the age of the Supermodel. Big hair, big make-up and a tight toned body worthy of an aerobics instructor. I worked out day and night until my muscles screamed but still never got ‘the look’.
In the 90’s things took a drastic turn for the worse. Weights plummeted and ‘heroin chic’ was beautiful. Starvation was sexy. Everything for women started shrinking, from crop-tops to low-rise jeans, to bikini lines - even eyebrows were emaciated. There was no such thing as too thin. Women were disappearing in plain sight, and those who could survive a size-0 body were cheered right through the noughties.
And here we are today. The era they’ll call ‘Kardashian’. Where the money saved not buying food in the 90’s can now be spent on plastic surgery. The latest ideal now more akin to Ancient Greece in its unachievable ‘perfect’ proportions. **Sigh!** You think you’re tired?! I’ve been doing this shit since the Stone Age!
Because I’d had a glass of wine (and because she was imaginary) I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. “You mean to tell me that you’ve lived for millions of years and you’ve never felt good about your body?”. It was a clear but horrifying realisation - it’s all meaningless. The relentless quest for a moving target. An ideal that keeps changing. Who the hell is deciding what people should look like? And why are we going along with it?
It isn’t just women. Men are also falling prey to socially-imposed transformation. Bigger here, tighter there. Dehydrated and ripped to shreds. When I thought about what my immortal spectre had shared, I noted the terrifying constant. No matter the time or trend, people were endangering their own health in the hope of being accepted for a ‘beauty’ prescribed by others. Respected more as a clone than an individual. While we may think it’s progressive that women are embracing their curves again, there’s still a ‘look’ that defines the time we’re living in. And how many people are damaging their physical (and mental) health trying to get it.
We’re visual creatures, so aesthetics will always be important. But we have to stop benchmarking beauty. Collectively deciding what makes a person attractive or otherwise.
It may have taken me 36 years and a visit from the Ghost of Beauty Past, but my imaginary friend showed me I’d been measuring myself against an imagined perfection.
So I’m officially done with it all. No longer willing to put my health at risk for a version of me that isn’t real. It’s time to put my own ghosts to rest and retire from social expectation. Because the reality is that none of us are immortal, and I intend to spend my future years filling my life with things that actually matter.
The Spin
True beauty is vast and varied and undefinable. We shouldn’t be conditioned to think there is a hierarchy of appeal when it comes to how attractive a person is.
What is perceived as beautiful is a nonsense, evidenced by the ever-changing standards of socially constructed ideals.
OBVIOUSLY the most beautiful parts of a person are not those most visible on the outside.
Imaginary friends make some really good points 😉
Adding More Weight
What Sabu’s Arrest Tells Us About Bangali Beauty Standards
10 Imposed Beauty Standards Women Should Ditch
Celebrities Share Pictures to Challenge Beauty Standards
The New Belle Shattering Princess Beauty Standards
And this shocking (not shocking) article about Pierce Brosnan’s wife’s body
Option to Go Deeper
Think about a person you really love or admire
Make an exhaustive list of all the things you love/appreciate/respect in that person. Now review the list and make note of how many of these things relate to physical appearance.