De-Trendifying the Female Body
how beauty trends misalign our perceptions of actual beauty
Despair by Hans Egil Saele
The definition of a beautiful woman has been dumbed down to an “all the rage” ideal.
From the curves of Marilyn Monroe to the stick-figure skinny of Britney Spears to the exaggerated physique of a Kardashian, “beauty” has become an impossible-to-grasp reality, as slippery as a fish. It has become a trend.
There is this frenzy to keep up with the trend; to stretch ourselves into something we’re not. The volatile evolution of what makes a woman beautiful has elicited a culture of panic, of surgeries and filler and Botox, of rushing to get a Kylie Jenner butt implant because that’s what’s trending right now and that’s what’s going to make me beautiful and therefore valuable.
But beauty trends are the equivalent of slapping a band-aid on a bullet wound: a quick, superficial solution to a painful problem.
Women are out-of-touch with their bodies
No one prepared me for how college sports would change my body.
Female athletics are a rare realm of the universe where physical appearance is centered around performance, not aesthetic. While one narrative (sports) says eat carbs! lift heavy! the other narrative (society) says eat less! be tiny!. It’s literally like having an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. You can’t listen to both at the same time.
I assume that people know this, but oftentimes they don’t – eating disorders run rampant in female sports. Team nutritionists give regular locker room speeches about how salads are not sufficient for post-game meals. Weight rooms are filled with girls pretending to fail their sets so their trainers won’t make them go up in weight.
Why is this?
The paradox of being both a female and an athlete often results in a body-dysmorphia-like mentality, where the electrical wires connecting a woman’s mind to her body become fried.
A minor example of this is that I left high school as the tall, strong, athletic one in my friend group – and entered college as one of the shortest and skinniest girls on my team. I was performative in a world focused on aesthetics, and aesthetic in a world focused on performance.
It was jarring, to say the least.
Wait, am I tall or short? Skinny or strong? Do I have a “good” body? What constitutes a “good” body – performance or aesthetic?
For a while, I became really out-of-touch with my own body.
I think this is exactly what it feels like to be a woman: out-of-touch, out-of-tune, and dramatically unsynced with your own body. Our bodies so easily become separate from us. Other.
The connotations of this range from general self-consciousness to self-loathing to eating disorders to abortion. A wide spectrum of slow self-annihilation.
Because we are so out-of-touch with our own bodies, we turn to beauty trends to give us answers. A band-aid for a bullet wound.
But the reason we’re out-of-touch with our bodies goes even deeper.
Women are deconstructed into parts
There is a reason men “age like fine wine.”
First, it’s because they’re allowed to. They get older and hotter with salt-and-pepper beards and sportcoats and chiseled jawlines. But it’s not like women are drooling over them because of their abs.
What gives?
Women are far less concerned with physique and far more interested in what has he done with his life? what has he built for himself? what kind of man is he, really? (if you’ve ever wondered about the Pete Davidson effect – this is it).
When we perceive a man, we perceive him as a whole. His physical body, his intellect, his personality – it’s all tied into who he is as a person. So, while his body may be aging, he’s growing more independent, successful, and mature. Therefore, he's still attractive – perhaps even more so. It doesn’t matter that he’s got some wrinkles, because his body is healthily aligned with his being.
A man is a “gestalt” – an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of his parts.
A woman, however, is deconstructed into parts; the most important part, of course, being her body.
The kicker is that a woman’s body is only “valuable” for a little while. A short window of time when she radiates youth and glows with hormones. This is the mountaintop of her worth. Then, it’s all downhill from there. Trend over.
The wrinkles on a woman’s face are not endearing and mysterious like they are on a man. They are lazy, ill-fit, the closing chord of a once-beautiful song. She’s really let herself go, hasn’t she? At this point, she is politely applauded when she decides to “age gracefully” – a phrase that is always delivered with a bit of a flinch. Her Facebook feed is flooded with comments like “you’re so brave!” when she decides to forego Botox.
You're so brave?
Gun to my head.
A woman isn’t brave for getting older – she is simply existing. It is the natural order of things. Our perception of beauty has become so misaligned it’s almost worth a laugh.
Many women say this misalignment stems from a patriarchal society. This is true-ish. Men will forever look at us how a lion regales a hunk of raw, bloody meat – no matter what we’re wearing (it’s quite impressive, actually – the tunnel vision of it all). I think this narrative starts with men, but women continue the narrative.
How?
By buying into beauty trends.
De-trendifying our own bodies
If men objectify our bodies, then we trendify them.
We complain about how “society says I should get Botox” or “society says I should get a boob job.”
But we are society. We sustain these trends because we adhere to them. They give us value because we allow them to.
Women are perfectly capable of derailing the theory that Kylie Jenner butt implants will make us beautiful by simply not getting them.
It may sound trite, but the path to beauty is to stop searching for it in the eyes of others. Stop doing what everyone else is doing because you think it will give you worth (it won’t).
Beauty trends are quicksand. Real beauty is bedrock; not a matter of external, but internal, symmetry. Beauty is something balanced and centered, something soft and glowy, a deep-rooted peace and tranquility that radiates into the soul of someone else. It is incredibly hard to define, and the problem arises when we try to define it.
Think of the most beautiful woman you know.
I doubt you’re thinking about her boobs or butt. You’re probably thinking about her vibe, her energy, how she makes you feel when you’re around her, how she is healthily aligned with her being. She doesn’t try hard because she doesn’t have to. She is firm, grounded, strong. She is emotional, sensitive, compassionate. She is everything that makes a woman and more. She is not the sum of her parts. She is not a trend. She is a gestalt.
Thanks for reading The G Word.
If you liked this piece, then you might like my thoughts on loving versus being in love — or my thoughts on friction, disillusionment, and beauty.
Have a beautiful week,
G
this is such an amazing piece ❤️ thank you for sharing, I absolutely want to shift the way culture looks at women
Thank you for your article!
I used to have an eating disorder myself but, long story short, I found the weights room and that was that. Even though I am unable to train at present, my 13-year obsession with digits on scales, or not eating for days, or eating miniscule amount, etc. is long gone. It has been gone for nearly ten years and I do not think it will ever come back. I try to help others, when they ask for it, as much as I can.
I am not qualified to speak re professional sports and the etiquette there but I think there is a shift in recent years whereby more and more women are lifting weights and looking after their health, striving to be strong rather than 'skinny' (also not disregaing people who have naturally thinner bodies). By and large, most are still slaves to the trends, as you point out, whatever those trends may be at any particular moment.
Now, what I do not excuse is people's blind following of those trends. You have mentioned it yourself but just because a trend exists does not mean people ought to follow it. We all have heads on our shoulders and, if you are an adult especially, you should reason with yourself. I do not believe in wholly blaming the media for our broken way of looking at ourselves, our ageing, the way we look. I also do not believe in paying more for a Snickers bar so that the masses feel deterred from eating sugar, in a governmental attempt to reduce obesity.
There seems to be this prevailing idea that it is always someone else's fault rather than the individual. But the individual has a responsibility to look after themselves and make informed decisions about their way of life (and this goes way beyond food). If someone decides to inject Botox in their face, that is their prerogative. They can sit and defend themselves by saying that Kylie Jenner made them but Kylie Jenner has failed to make many others inject Botox in their faces.
P.S. The most unkind comments and / or looks I have ever gotten have always been from women...(rather than men). Also, most women magazines that tells us what to eat, when, how feature articles by other women and are edited by women. Women, collectively as a group, need to take responsibility about the way we behave towards one another (rather than blame it on the other, i.e. men).
Just my two cents but thank you for raising some valid points and providing a platform for discussion.