Tag Archives: beauty

 
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Mirror, mirror…


 

This afternoon my two sons and I saw the newly released Fantastic Four. At the risk of sounding plebian, I found that I enjoyed the movie, which had a bit more of a plot than its original. Another surprise was my unexpected fascination with the actress, Jessica Alba. There are some films and some actors that absolutely captivate me. Meryl Streep immediately comes to mind. Her beauty, voice, and inner motivation make her compelling to watch. Jessica Alba is no Meryl. What I found so striking about her was her unrealness. About five minutes into the movie, I turned to my ten-year-old and asked, "Does she look normal to you?" I must admit, his "Huh?" and look of "What are you talking about?" left me a bit concerned. For in today's world, Jessica looked anything but normal. Her blue eyes with visible contact lenses, her blonde hair bleached the color of straw, her endowed breasts perched on top of an extremely slender body all made Barbie look almost human. Yet to my ten-year-old, her appearance left no mark on the landscape, her face just another face in the crowd.

Later I asked my twelve-year-old what he thought about Jessica's appearance. "She looked strange," Sam replied. "How so?" I asked. "Her face wasn't right." We discussed this for a bit and came to the agreement that her eyes in particular kind of freaked us both out. Now I admit, growing up Hispanic in a white neighborhood, I truly envied my blue-eyed, blonde-haired cousins and, yes, I was tempted to try colored contacts when they first arrived. Truth be told, it was more likely my adverse reaction to contact lenses in general than any deeply-held feminist beliefs that kept my brown eyes brown. What saddens me is how little has changed in the last twenty years. It seems that even with all the positive female role models a young woman can choose from, the strong pull to be blonde and blue-eyed remains. I suppose part of it is the fascination with trying something new, becoming a different and maybe slightly better version of yourself. All pontifications aside, what will it take for us to be satisfied with ourselves? Can such a world even exist? After all, it is that human drive within us all that has allowed us to touch the moon, to unravel the mysteries of our bodies, to question. If there is a line to cross, we have surely crossed it, for striving towards perfection has erased our blemishes, turning our very selves into one acceptable model.

So, to the Jessicas out there, I say you are who you are: one sperm, one egg, one you. If that isn't cool, I don't know what is. Enough said, my roots are showing.  

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Beauty as beast


 

"Whatever is in any way beautiful hath its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it. So it is none the worse nor the better for being praised."

—Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 121-180 A.D.

What but the hope of praise could cause a person to submit herself to the latest cosmetic procedure, the eyelash transplant?  Yes, you read correctly, for about $3,000 per eyelid, you too can have hair removed from the back of your head and sewn onto your eyelids. Originally designed to allow burn or cancer victims to recover their lost lashes, eyelash transplantation has now entered the elective surgery market.  Today Show correspondent Janice Lieberman reports that there has been a 300% increase in its use for cosmetic purposes this year alone. Due to the origins of the hair, transplanted eyelashes require regular trimming and perhaps a bit of dye, as they and you age. In the spirit of beauty, pain is just part of the game.              

In her book, Beauty Junkies: Inside Our $15 Billion Obsession with Cosmetic Surgery, Alex Kuczynski outlines America's worship of the mirror. From women traveling to third-world countries for vacation surgeries to the reality of heavy, sagging skin from massive weight loss, Kuczynski emphasizes what has become a common theme: nothing is free. In a chapter entitled, "What Is Beautiful?" we learn that there could be a mathematical formula for beauty. In an interview with Dr. Stephen J. Marquardt, Kuczynski questions Dr. Marquardt's idea that beauty can be captured in a computer program. Beauty in the form of mathematical proportions loses its mystery of "you know it when you see it" to become a quantifiable commodity. The allure of equal beauty for all, those with enough cash that is, has women and increasing numbers of men, racing to the cosmetic surgeons. In our information age, there is no shortage of knowledge on the topic; type cosmetic surgery and books into a search engine and voila, the titles fill the screen.  From the nitty-gritty how-to books, to the more academically inclined Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery, beauty is big business.

If Antonius is to be believed, beauty is, in and of itself, beautiful, regardless of the consideration of others. In reality, beginning in childhood with the queen's magic mirror zeroing in on Snow White, the ruthlessness of beauty as competitor is revealed. 

To be human is to want to belong.  The praise that Antonius spoke of pulls us into its orbit, and as we fill the space, it becomes crowded, bodies bumping into each other. From the desire of praise, competition is born. 

So are we surprised that strident on the front page of Sunday's New York Times, is the headline "For Girls, It's Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too"?  The bottom line for girls, and increasingly boys, is that good is never enough. The young women chronicled here engage in what has become the typical upper-middle-class college path. Days filled with Advanced Placement courses, extracurriculars and, in some cases, jobs, yet one young woman worries that her resume will be overlooked due to her lack of athletic ability. A father comparing his less structured childhood faults himself, 2006 America, and the Northeast for the incessant activities.  An outgrowth of the competitive nature of America, laying blame is much less frightening than jumping ship.  S.A.T. prep courses, community service, athletics, employment, each a necessary building block in the pursuit of success; dare you take a chance that one less will still get you your heart's desire?

Competition by its very nature, is honed towards survival.  Love it, hate it, none of us are immune to its charms. Women seeking beauty in surgery and girls on the verge of womanhood learning it is not enough to be smart—you have to be "hot" as well.  The prizes are significant, an income large enough to give your children as good as you got, satisfying work, partnership with someone you desire. Remember that old cliché, "beauty is as beauty does?" Meant to comfort, it fools no one. Beauty does quite well, thank you very much. It continues, alive and well, one eyelash at a time.       

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Sontag’s last stand


If you haven't already done so, get your hands on a copy of Susan Sontag's At the Same Time. To read this book — the collection of nonfiction pieces Sontag was working on at the end of her life — is to realize what a bold mind and voice we have lost. But this collection, though less groundbreaking than its predecessors — Against Interpretation, Illness As Metaphor, On Photography, also reassures us that Sontag’s writing, her wit, grace, and resolve, will continue to influence serious readers, curious minds, and the politically concerned for generations to come. Each essay published in its unedited form, these pieces, right down to the collection’s structure, were shaped by Sontag’s hands alone.

Its unsentimental foreword penned by Sontag’s son David Rieff, At the Same Time illuminates the late writer’s many passions: literature, translation, beauty and aesthetics, politics, free speech, and, of course, photography. Featuring forewords Sontag wrote for translated works like Leonid Tsypkin’s Summer in Baden-Baden and Anna Banti’s Artemisia, the collection’s first third gives us an intimate portrait of Sontag the reader. Written in a way that reads like curling up with a glass of wine and talking to a good friend, the forewords all but ensure that we readers will becomes fans of the authors Sontag celebrates.

With its focus on September 11, the second third of the collection initially feels pedestrian. But read alongside Sontag’s reflections on September 11, 2002, and Abu Ghraib, these essays reveal the power of candor when it was eschewed, courage when it was confused with consent. Considering how quickly Sontag said what few other Americans dared to mutter, they remind us how Sontag has changed our understandings of this post-9/11 world.

It seems fitting that the collection’s back cover includes a picture of a note that says, “Do something. Do something. Do something," for the collection’s concluding pages relay this urgency through Sontag's final public speeches. Illuminating the ethical importance of translating foreign works, of writing and truth telling, of resistance, they are a lasting reminder of the inseparability of politics and literature, one that confirms Sontag’s belief that “in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.”

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