Date: 08-03-1998 :: Pg: 38 :: Col: c
The present obsession with the body beautiful is excessive. Women are vulnerable because they allow beauty to be entwined with their sense of personal worth. The two must be separated, says ANITA MANUEL.
THE feminine revolution took place long ago. Successful women are apparent in fields of art, science, commerce et al. Forts have been stormed, gates breached, unseen ceilings shattered. Everywhere women have proved that they can beat men at their own game. Yet there is one right that seems to have eluded us - the right not to be beautiful. Eating disorders are on the rise. Cosmetic surgery is increasingly popular. The corset is a hot selling fashion garment. Something is rotten it appears, not just in Denmark, but everywhere.
We have discovered the soft underbelly of the liberated women - her obsession with physical beauty. And who creates this image of beauty? Magazines that tom tom themselves as being produced for today's liberated woman are chockfull of advertisements and articles on how women can have their skin planed, face lifted, breasts enlarged, hips reduced, collagen sucked away, to achieve that perfect figure they have always wanted. From whence came this want? In the days of yore, different regions had different concepts of beauty. I remember my grandmother telling me that a woman in her days had to possess three attributes to be regarded a beauty - she should be plump, have long hair and large earlobes that reached to the shoulders. The last could be achieved by most women with a little perseverance and a little pain. One must after all be ready to suffer in order to achieve the great goal of being beautiful. Now that the world has become a single village thanks to the satellite and the computer, we have one universal image of female beauty. A slender, lithe 36-22-36.
Top heavy is allowed. But bottom heavy? God forbid! So what if nature created you that way. A little endurance, a little application is all that is needed. What precisely you have gained when you finally reduce your hips, is a question we prefer not to discuss. Every woman's face maybe different but her body must be identical! As the song says: ``I love you Barbie'', the perfect plastic woman.
An Irish friend visiting India commented that because the clothes in India do not reveal the shape of the woman, women just sit and gorge on food and let their physique deteriorate. Maybe their arm muscles are not firm, or their breasts sag or they have loose fat at the back. So what? In most cases it does not impair the women's efficiency or affect a loved one. Then why do we yearn to be beautiful? For Naomi Wolf in ``The Body Myth'', this yearning is fuelled by the wish to turn heads, to be approved and admired by total strangers. But the fact is that such approval is often secondary. There is a pleasure in shopping, buying and the final making over that is not dependant on anything outside it. It lends colour and pizzaz to otherwise humdrum jobs and humdrum lives. There is even a feeling of achievement comparable to the thrill when one sits back and looks at a sparkling room or a sizzling dish. Wolf talks about the money working women spend on looking good which could be better utilised. Maybe. But then there are lots of us who work only to afford the paraphernalia necessary to look good!
There is nothing de facto wrong with beauty pageants. Worse are the obscene song and dance sequences that Hindi movies are so fond of. According to them it is perfectly all right for the hero to force his attentions on the heroine. When she says ``No'', she is only being coy. There are tangible rewards in all these fields for the participating women in terms of prestige, fame and wealth. A lot of the money raised in beauty pageants are used for philanthrophic projects, or so I am told. But the very hoopla and mystique surrounding the models and actresses make them images which other women must emulate or aspire to. So does the end justify the means? And I am not even sure of the end. The image of the young sexy model and the scantily dressed gyrating actress has supplanted the happy housewife as the personification of a successful woman. Thus are women seduced into a constant battle with nature.
Today, women have the right to exercise or to wear lipstick but they should be wary of letting this actual freedom become a new kind of bondage. As far back as 1949, Simone De Beauvoir observed in ``The Second Sex'' that the modern woman's battle against the effects of age has replaced the older generation's fight against dirt. If women confined themselves to the home had lived their lives out in a futile and endless battle against dust and dirt, the modern women appears to be struggling against her own body. Women endeavour to preserve themselves as others preserve furniture or canned food. One becomes hostile to life itself: good meals spoil the figure, wine injures the complexion, smiling brings wrinkles, sun darkens the skin while maternity causes the breasts to sag. A successful gown makes her the personage of her dreams; but in a twice worn toilette, or in one that is a failure, she feels herself an outcast. Beauvoir, of course, had not seen the triumph of plastic surgery.
Wolf reiterates the same concern. Women's bodies are being turned into prisons that their homes no longer are. She states respondents of a questionnaire chose losing ten to fifteen pounds as their most desired goal. The cycle of gain and loss, with its train of torment and its risk of disease, has become a fixation of the woman's consciousness. It appears that women's bodies are not our own but society's and that thinness is not a private aesthetic but a social demand. Women's dieting has become a ``never-ending passion play'' given international coverage out of all proportion to the health risks associated with obesity, and using emotive language that does not figure even in discussions of alcohol or tobacco abuse. For her, it is a strategy chalked out by the opposite sex to prevent the liberated women from concentrating on matters of real concern.
Men constantly complain that airhostesses are no longer pretty; the airlines could advertise on how they provide motherly care; they are such dowds that men can gladly remain chaste etc. etc. I always ask why should they be beautiful and am yet to receive an answer. As long as she is courteous and efficient, what is the problem? Maybe they miss the aesthetic pleasure one gets by looking at a lovely object. But a woman is not an object or thing or curio d' art. She is a living, breathing human being. A beautiful or a well-dressed woman may be a pleasure to behold and I would be the first to agree. But from there to criticising someone for not being goodlooking is a gigantic and reprehensible step.
The cover of a light-hearted book on the differences between the two sexes shows a man and a woman looking into a mirror. The scrawny man looks and sees reflected in the mirror a well-built, impressive figure while the slender woman looks and beholds an obese hag! In fact a main topic of discussion among women is the latest diet they are on. Wherever I go, attractive, articulate women appear to be discussing one particular dietician and her wonderful diet that has enabled them to lose five kilograms, ten kg and so on. So what if they have to skip breakfast, eat lettuce and cucumbers while everybody else are feasting on appams and chicken curry. After all, one does not live to eat but eats to live.
In the olden days, the choicest portions went to the men while women had to make do with the left overs. Nowadays after winning the fight to be treated equally, women are still making do with little food, all in the name of dieting. Women are actually dying because they cannot bring themselves to retain food. They choose to starve. The other day I watched Ruby Bhatia doing a spoof on some music countdown. After a number by a radiant Kajol, Ruby says in artificially shocked tones, ``My god! Kajol has put on so much weight. The way these actresses let themselves go. If I were she, I would sack my dietician at once!''. All spoofs depend on a core of truth for their effectiveness. Centres that call themselves fitness centres have mushroomed all over the countryside. The name is a misnomer. Only extreme obesity affects health. You can have a rotund stomach and still be healthy. So what is the centre making the woman fit for? A cross country marathon? Everything in moderation may be beneficial but anything in excess is detrimental. And the present obsession with the body beautiful is excessive. Women are vulnerable because they allow beauty to be entwined with their sense of personal worth, their self esteem. The two must be separated. She must realise that she is a victim of a brainwashing carried out by billion dollar industries such as cosmetics, fitness, plastic surgery and pornography. In order to amass money, they overtly and covertly attack a woman's self image through the creation of an ideal which every woman can achieve if only she would do this or that. They thrive on woman's insecurities.
Does that mean men are exempt from this vanity? The regency fop was definitely a fashion pate with his wigs, powders, patches intricate cravats and tasseled hesians. In this century, we have Prufrock: ``Time to turn back and descend the stair/ With a bald spot in the middle of my hair - / [They will say: `How his hair is growing thin!']/ My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,/ My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin - /[They will say: `But how his arms and legs are thin!']/ Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?''. It only goes to show that too much emphasis on appearance is not going to leave him or her with the energy necessary to shake the universe. Nevertheless, by and large, men have been exempt from the desire to be slaves of fashion. Women still constitute the bulk of a cosmetic surgeons clients.
Reputable cosmetic surgeons try to make sure that the women coming to them for surgery are doing it for themselves and not to please somebody else. And are often truly assured that this is so. How can one begin to understand this hunger for the perfect body which makes women willing to spend money and risk pain, possible death. I recall a doctor telling me about a woman who came in for a breast uplift and died on the operating table. She had a weak heart, I believe. Death may be a rarity but there are other possible side effects. Infection, formation of scar tissue, destruction of the real tissue and muscles. Silicon implants may rupture, salt water implants deflate. Implants may even lead to cancer. Still we troop in like so many mindless robots. A woman must realise that her body is part of her identity, her individuality. Why should she remake it to look like somebody else's?
A footnote. I am just getting ready to go to the beauty parlor. Once there I will stoically undergo the torture of having my eyebrows threaded and legs waxed. Meanwhile I comfort myself with the thought that one day fashion will demand that men have smooth hairless skin. And then it will be their turn. Now that is my idea of equality!
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