Thinky thoughts on the nature of beauty and the problem with comparisons
I'm going to attempt to be entirely candid in this post. In my doing so, please don't assume my tone or feelings to be indicative of anger or passive aggression. If I took significant offense to any one comment, which I don't remember doing, I would have addressed it directly to the commenter. This is more a statement of my general feelings on the issue.
I get a fair amount of comments on this journal that say something to the effect of: "You're prettier than X Celebrity," "You're as pretty as X Celebrity," "You're almost as pretty as X Celebrity," etc.
It makes me uncomfortable, and it took me a while to be able to put my finger on why. By virtue of being a young woman who a) knows all her best angles (Tyra would be so proud!) and b) is often photographed in and out of social situations, I get a decent amount of comments on my appearance. While I used to be someone who craved validation on my appearance, because, let's face it, I was a fairly acne-pocked, untouchable teenager, and hearing GOOD things about my appearance was novel and mildly addicting, I've since grown out of that to a large extent. I've gone from faux-confidence and posturing to actual confidence, and I'm enjoying that growth. That said, like any other human on the planet, I have my good self-esteem days and my bad ones where I'm convinced I look like Quasimodo. Natch. So, getting lots of positive feedback isn't a bad thing necessarily, but if I'm having a low self-esteem day, I'll feel guilty about it. But that's neither here nor there and my own personal issue to deal with. Bottom line is that if you're being decently respectful and not slimily objectifying, I don't mind comments like "you look really pretty in those pictures." Nine times out of ten, it's a self-esteem boost, and taken as intended. I give such compliments, myself.
And I get that those celebrity comparison comments are also intended to be flattering. So why do I feel so uncomfortable about them?
I think a lot of my discomfort comes from the fact that I think it's unfair to be compared, even flatteringly, to someone who spends the bulk of her life being made up, nipped, tucked, implanted, slimmed down, airbrushed, packaged, and marketed as "pefection." Women, through advertising, are told that celebrities and models are the height of beauty from the time we have our first Barbies put in our hands. I'm not gonna lie and say that I've never had a body image crisis after flipping through a Cosmopolitan. It's happened. So I take steps to avoid that and get comfy with who I am-- I wear clothes that are flattering to my shape even if they're not trendy, I dance, I read girl mags that are more embracing of other body types-- those types of things. But there's always going to be the media-projected celebrity image and the sense of "this is what beauty is," even if said beauty is only an illusion created by tons of makeup and photoshop. I know for a fact that if I walked into top Hollywood talent agencies at 5'5" and 130 lbs, I'd be handed an application to become a secretary if I was lucky. I simply do not fit the mold of the starlet, however pretty in the face I may or may not be. That isn't to say that I'm not attractive. It is, however to say that the standards of appearance it takes to be a celebrity today are completely unrealistic.
Aside from the discomfort of being compared to such an image, part of me wonders why we have to compare womens' looks at all. Don't get me wrong, I'm guilty of it too from time to time-- I've played a couple of rounds of WWYD (which, granted, has its basis in more than just looks, but looks are a big part of it), and in my last post, I said that Claire Danes didn't fit my idea of Yvaine because she didn't have the type of beauty I envisioned Yvaine to have. We're all a bit hypocritical sometimes, and the best we can do is minimize it, I suppose. But the idealist part of me goes, "why can't we appreciate each woman for her own type of beauty without comparing her to anyone else's?" In my mind, the only thing that comes of such comparisons is insecurity or false pride, so I don't see anything useful coming of them, even with the best of intentions. I don't want to feel a sense of competition with other women when it comes to looks (which fade and change), nor would I want any other woman to feel a sense of competition with me on such a flimsy basis. There are so many types of beauty that I don't see much point in comparing them, in any case. Apples to oranges and whatnot.
So, to sum up-- "you are pretty" = okay. "You are prettier than/ almost as pretty as" = uncomfortable-making.
Thoughts?
I get a fair amount of comments on this journal that say something to the effect of: "You're prettier than X Celebrity," "You're as pretty as X Celebrity," "You're almost as pretty as X Celebrity," etc.
It makes me uncomfortable, and it took me a while to be able to put my finger on why. By virtue of being a young woman who a) knows all her best angles (Tyra would be so proud!) and b) is often photographed in and out of social situations, I get a decent amount of comments on my appearance. While I used to be someone who craved validation on my appearance, because, let's face it, I was a fairly acne-pocked, untouchable teenager, and hearing GOOD things about my appearance was novel and mildly addicting, I've since grown out of that to a large extent. I've gone from faux-confidence and posturing to actual confidence, and I'm enjoying that growth. That said, like any other human on the planet, I have my good self-esteem days and my bad ones where I'm convinced I look like Quasimodo. Natch. So, getting lots of positive feedback isn't a bad thing necessarily, but if I'm having a low self-esteem day, I'll feel guilty about it. But that's neither here nor there and my own personal issue to deal with. Bottom line is that if you're being decently respectful and not slimily objectifying, I don't mind comments like "you look really pretty in those pictures." Nine times out of ten, it's a self-esteem boost, and taken as intended. I give such compliments, myself.
And I get that those celebrity comparison comments are also intended to be flattering. So why do I feel so uncomfortable about them?
I think a lot of my discomfort comes from the fact that I think it's unfair to be compared, even flatteringly, to someone who spends the bulk of her life being made up, nipped, tucked, implanted, slimmed down, airbrushed, packaged, and marketed as "pefection." Women, through advertising, are told that celebrities and models are the height of beauty from the time we have our first Barbies put in our hands. I'm not gonna lie and say that I've never had a body image crisis after flipping through a Cosmopolitan. It's happened. So I take steps to avoid that and get comfy with who I am-- I wear clothes that are flattering to my shape even if they're not trendy, I dance, I read girl mags that are more embracing of other body types-- those types of things. But there's always going to be the media-projected celebrity image and the sense of "this is what beauty is," even if said beauty is only an illusion created by tons of makeup and photoshop. I know for a fact that if I walked into top Hollywood talent agencies at 5'5" and 130 lbs, I'd be handed an application to become a secretary if I was lucky. I simply do not fit the mold of the starlet, however pretty in the face I may or may not be. That isn't to say that I'm not attractive. It is, however to say that the standards of appearance it takes to be a celebrity today are completely unrealistic.
Aside from the discomfort of being compared to such an image, part of me wonders why we have to compare womens' looks at all. Don't get me wrong, I'm guilty of it too from time to time-- I've played a couple of rounds of WWYD (which, granted, has its basis in more than just looks, but looks are a big part of it), and in my last post, I said that Claire Danes didn't fit my idea of Yvaine because she didn't have the type of beauty I envisioned Yvaine to have. We're all a bit hypocritical sometimes, and the best we can do is minimize it, I suppose. But the idealist part of me goes, "why can't we appreciate each woman for her own type of beauty without comparing her to anyone else's?" In my mind, the only thing that comes of such comparisons is insecurity or false pride, so I don't see anything useful coming of them, even with the best of intentions. I don't want to feel a sense of competition with other women when it comes to looks (which fade and change), nor would I want any other woman to feel a sense of competition with me on such a flimsy basis. There are so many types of beauty that I don't see much point in comparing them, in any case. Apples to oranges and whatnot.
So, to sum up-- "you are pretty" = okay. "You are prettier than/ almost as pretty as" = uncomfortable-making.
Thoughts?