On physical beauty.
I had a discussion today with a coworker who made an offhand derogatory remark. We were at lunch, and a lady walked by wearing a really neat gauze skirt. My coworker piped up with "UGH!" and hastily whispered, "She didn't shave her legs!" The first question out of my mouth was, "So?" My coworker responded, "Well, don't you think that's gross?" No. Why would I care what a person I don't know chooses to do with their body? My coworker defended, "She should shave her legs if she's going to wear a skirt, or shorts. Other people have to look at that, and it's gross." HAVE to look at it? Someone is forcing your eyelids open and turning your head in the direction of something you don't want to look at? Strangely, I don't seem to have that problem, not having any interest in looking at her legs and hadn't even noticed until the coworker pointed it out. I queried why my coworker was checking out the lady's legs. Her response was to repeat, "Because it's gross!"
According to whom? Last time I checked, there wasn't a national standard for beauty and the way an individual chooses to look was still only a matter of personal preference. My coworker made a comment about looking "socially acceptable."
Really, let's talk about that for a moment.
* In the 10th century, the Chinese Empire was a force to be reckoned with, a major trading power. Their socially acceptable basis of beauty was the bound foot. Female children's feet were broken and bound to stunt them and force them into an unnatural growth, obtaining an adult length of - at the most - 3". The bound feet would frequently become infected as the skin rotted, putrified, and sloughed off. This standard of beauty lasted until 1911, when it was outlawed because the rest of the world considered the custom barbaric. While it was outlawed, it was still practiced up until just before WWI, by mothers who had bound feet and couldn't bear to have their daughters have "common" feet - even though they knew the binding meant a lifetime of pain.
* Padaung tribal women in Myanmar have bronze rings places around their neck every two years until they are married, stretching the neck sometimes as much as 25cms, deforming the vertebrae and causing atrophy of the neck muscles until the support of the head is reliant upon the rings - removal of the rings leads to a permanently incapacitated woman, or kills her by smothering her to death. Yet, in that society, a woman's social standing is reliant on how long her neck is and how many rings she wears.
* In 1612, an Italian researcher reported on the Japanese Ainu women's custom of tattooing their faces, lips, cheeks, forehead and eyebrows. The amount of skin covered and the intracacy of the tattoos is considered their standard of social beauty to this day.
* In the 17th through 19th centuries, no respectable woman would have been seen outdoors without a corset. Young girls were fitted for corsets around age 7, wearing them daily to form their bodies into a pleasing shape and give them a "modest" waist of 18" - "small enough that a man can fit his hands around it." The small, wasp waists were considered the mod of beauty for over 200 years. This same mod contributed to the physical problems arising from long-term corseting: liver and kidney displacement, respiratory distress, uterine prolapse, digestive problems, muscle and spine deformation, and pressure on pelvic veins causing swelling of the extremities.
* For thousands of years, spanning many countries and religions, the practice of female circumcision, commonly called female genital mutilation, has been practiced because it is a socially accepted practice and women who are left "uncut" are considered unclean, unmarriageable, and shunned or worse.
* In the 20th century, the shaving of women's body hair, most noticably leg and armpit, has become popular, for reasons that are purely aesthetic.
Ah, but there's the rub - aesthetic for /who/? The person to whom the legs belong? Obviously, that person didn't mind the look, or she would have shaved - the look is aesthetically ok with her. For the people who might see her legs? Why on earth should she be accountable for providing pleasing public aesthetics? For the last 1900 recorded years, neither men nor women have paid the slightest attention to hair on the body. It was the hair on the head that mattered. Only in the last 60 or so years has the removal of body hair and the lack of body hair become something to be contemplated at all as a source of aesthetics - and who is it that is determining whether or not shaved legs are more attractive than legs that aren't shaved? Men's legs aren't judged on attractiveness based on how much or how little hair they have, and in fact the opposite is true - a man with shaved legs will often get strange looks for doing something considered so atypical for his gender.
I'm a history geek. I could ramble off all sorts of strange and unique things people have done through the ages in the name of beauty, up to and including having surgeons slice bits off of them or rearrange the bits they have to achieve a certain look. It disappoints me to be around people who have such a need to conform to a "socially acceptable standard of beauty" that really shouldn't be a standard that matters at all. In the end, how a person looks should be left up to them. If you don't like it, don't look at it. Nobody has the right to be derisive because others don't choose to suita standard of aesthetics they don't hold to.
Enough for now. More on this vein (vain - ha) later.
-Peregrine
According to whom? Last time I checked, there wasn't a national standard for beauty and the way an individual chooses to look was still only a matter of personal preference. My coworker made a comment about looking "socially acceptable."
Really, let's talk about that for a moment.
* In the 10th century, the Chinese Empire was a force to be reckoned with, a major trading power. Their socially acceptable basis of beauty was the bound foot. Female children's feet were broken and bound to stunt them and force them into an unnatural growth, obtaining an adult length of - at the most - 3". The bound feet would frequently become infected as the skin rotted, putrified, and sloughed off. This standard of beauty lasted until 1911, when it was outlawed because the rest of the world considered the custom barbaric. While it was outlawed, it was still practiced up until just before WWI, by mothers who had bound feet and couldn't bear to have their daughters have "common" feet - even though they knew the binding meant a lifetime of pain.
* Padaung tribal women in Myanmar have bronze rings places around their neck every two years until they are married, stretching the neck sometimes as much as 25cms, deforming the vertebrae and causing atrophy of the neck muscles until the support of the head is reliant upon the rings - removal of the rings leads to a permanently incapacitated woman, or kills her by smothering her to death. Yet, in that society, a woman's social standing is reliant on how long her neck is and how many rings she wears.
* In 1612, an Italian researcher reported on the Japanese Ainu women's custom of tattooing their faces, lips, cheeks, forehead and eyebrows. The amount of skin covered and the intracacy of the tattoos is considered their standard of social beauty to this day.
* In the 17th through 19th centuries, no respectable woman would have been seen outdoors without a corset. Young girls were fitted for corsets around age 7, wearing them daily to form their bodies into a pleasing shape and give them a "modest" waist of 18" - "small enough that a man can fit his hands around it." The small, wasp waists were considered the mod of beauty for over 200 years. This same mod contributed to the physical problems arising from long-term corseting: liver and kidney displacement, respiratory distress, uterine prolapse, digestive problems, muscle and spine deformation, and pressure on pelvic veins causing swelling of the extremities.
* For thousands of years, spanning many countries and religions, the practice of female circumcision, commonly called female genital mutilation, has been practiced because it is a socially accepted practice and women who are left "uncut" are considered unclean, unmarriageable, and shunned or worse.
* In the 20th century, the shaving of women's body hair, most noticably leg and armpit, has become popular, for reasons that are purely aesthetic.
Ah, but there's the rub - aesthetic for /who/? The person to whom the legs belong? Obviously, that person didn't mind the look, or she would have shaved - the look is aesthetically ok with her. For the people who might see her legs? Why on earth should she be accountable for providing pleasing public aesthetics? For the last 1900 recorded years, neither men nor women have paid the slightest attention to hair on the body. It was the hair on the head that mattered. Only in the last 60 or so years has the removal of body hair and the lack of body hair become something to be contemplated at all as a source of aesthetics - and who is it that is determining whether or not shaved legs are more attractive than legs that aren't shaved? Men's legs aren't judged on attractiveness based on how much or how little hair they have, and in fact the opposite is true - a man with shaved legs will often get strange looks for doing something considered so atypical for his gender.
I'm a history geek. I could ramble off all sorts of strange and unique things people have done through the ages in the name of beauty, up to and including having surgeons slice bits off of them or rearrange the bits they have to achieve a certain look. It disappoints me to be around people who have such a need to conform to a "socially acceptable standard of beauty" that really shouldn't be a standard that matters at all. In the end, how a person looks should be left up to them. If you don't like it, don't look at it. Nobody has the right to be derisive because others don't choose to suita standard of aesthetics they don't hold to.
Enough for now. More on this vein (vain - ha) later.
-Peregrine
posted by Peregrine at 6:35 PM
0 They Have Spoken:
Post a Comment
<< Home