A Young White Male Addresses Sexism, Feminism, and the Modern Conception of Beauty

“The men do it first, then she herself makes her ugly” -David Foster Wallace

So I was in a fiction writing class the other day (ENG 266 taught by Claire Watkins) and we were discussing a story one of the girls in one my class wrote that was called, “The Year of Margaret.” The story is basically about a 37 year old woman who is lonely, has two cats, was divorced, a little chubby, and is scared that she’s going to die alone with no husband and no family, etc… etc… the stereo-typical fears of an aging woman that is played out in constant sitcoms and comedy routines alike. So in the story, this character named Margaret decides that she must make a change about herself so she can live a happy and fulfilled life. She starts working out, she goes to Weight Watchers meetings, she controls what she eats, and slowly the pounds start rolling off of her. As this is happening she begins to be more self-confident. Eventually she reaches a point where she feels good enough about herself (because she looks much better) and she has the confidence to ask out the head of the Weight Watchers program who is this hunk named Dan. She does it and he says yes. The story ends one year later on her birthday. She is eating a cake, watching TV, doing the same things she did on her birthday the year before her change except now she feels monumentally better and she is doing it with a boyfriend. So the story ends with a happy ending. Now when I read it, one of the first things that came up in my mind is, why does the woman have to make an externally positive change (i.e. lose weight) in order to feel an internally positive change (i.e. gain confidence and self-respect)? If I was to write out my views on this or related subjects I would say that they are the following:

1. Beauty, specifically a woman’s beauty, has become a sort of commodity or product. I refer to this as beauty becoming a sort of cheap, purchasable, $5.95 type of thing. It only makes sense that this is so since beauty ( you can read this as sexiness if you choose to- correction- you should read this as sexiness) is something that sells.
2. The construction and conception of this beauty is done through repetitive, homogenous images that all show the same or similar images (on either TV, magazine ads, the internet, really anywhere an image can be crafted and displayed). [1] What this, the repetitive image does, is that it pounds this cheap, purchasable type of beauty into our heads. As if this, this image that is shown is what beauty is and what all girls should strive for when trying to make themselves beautiful. In all honesty it makes a mockery of the whole idea of beauty and it really is rather arrogant if you ask me (as if we have finally figured out beauty). Furthermore, I think it is actually almost a sort of anti-beauty. It teaches girls to limit themselves and to shape themselves into this one image or images like it (like a puzzle fitting into place) and that buying the make-up, or clothes, or diet pill will help the girl in becoming like this and hence, “beautiful”. It is anti-beauty because I have always thought that beauty was something rare and out of the ordinary. The type of beauty that is promoted is anything but that. It is anything but rare. It has actually become normalized, it has become something that can be attained (i.e. purchased) by the “average” woman, because, quite frankly, if you are going to sell something you want to sell it to the largest amount of people as possible. In selling the “image of beauty” to girls it only makes sense to sell an image that can:
   • a.) be purchased (is there any doubt that the most prevalent image of a woman via media is one with substantial make-up, revealing clothes, and one that is thin?)
   • And b.) All of these things can easily be purchased and the “average” woman can buy the products to look like the image. So it is through marketing that we have (in all honesty probably by accident) transformed beauty into something not rare, but rather, something common.
3. In a pleasure-society such as ours, there is always an object that is desired (for pleasure) and a subject that tries to obtain the object (and get pleasure). It is of my opinion that this has become the overwhelming state of male-female relations, with the women becoming the objects of a man’s desire. [2]

So anyways, I have held these three views for sometime now, really, almost as long as I’ve been thinking about the whole thing. I thought that I was crazy to have the thought that I did about the story and Margaret in it. I should have been happy for her. However, we were in class, and I was doing my best to keep my opinion to myself, to not raise my hand and look like an idiot when I saw a girl’s hand shoot up. She said something (well, she really almost screamed it) to the effect of, “Why does she have to have a man in the end to be happy, huh? Do you know what that is? Well I’m a feminist and in feminist theory that’s called the Disney Effect because in every Disney movie the woman has to end up with a man in order to be happy! And why does she have to look good too?!”