I found this image on the web. It really summed up a disease.
(although I doubt that's what was meant by it).
This is a link to a blog with an interesting article, Pandora's Box, about "pretty." Pretty is a small box. Skinny is a small box. The post, Pandora's Box, asks a lot of questions about knowing yourself outside of what society pressures you to do and BE. If the Maybelline man made a little box for you to struggle for perfect skin and hips in, then who are you to escape that box?
And if you do get out, what do you feel? Do you feel Power or do you feel Fear? Do you feel critical eyes and judgment from both men and women? (It hurts the most when women criticize you for rattling the bars of your cage, I think) Do you feel Lost? What do you strive for day to day if not to be "pretty." What would you worry about if not the size of your thighs? Where would you direct your energy? The answer to that is huge and scary and liberating.
I would say that the women I know, self included, are at times personally bound by these ideas of beauty and conformity. I would say that our lives, however, are not completely dictated by this industry of female oppression and idea of unachievable mangled beauty ideals. BUT, our lives are our own ONLY because we make a conscious effort for the Patriarchal Beauty machine NOT to control our being. It's like wearing a tinfoil hat to keep out the bad waves - slivers of hips in destroyed jeans, collarbones all shined up. We acknowledge the fact that these images are the ones HONORED in our consumer society, but we know we should be looking for the dirty hands that serve food in soup kitchens or the chalk dust settled on a school teachers skin. These are the images we as individuals try to honor, as we ignore the breast implants and unnatural bleachy-while smiles shoved n our faces with the message " you are not quite good enough" securely attached.
I found that Pandora's Box article, and I will share it with my friends, because I went looking for it. What worries me is the younger girls who are becoming indoctrinated earlier and earlier in the misogynist's cult of beauty/body control. Like the insidious tentacles referred to in the Pandora post, the seed of desire to be one of "those images" can become secretly embedded so early that a girls sense of self grows malformed around it. She won't go poking around on feminist blogs, she won't raise the lid of her box and peer out. The younger girls, who aren't aware of Mr. Media and his ritual rape of the female image, are the ones we have to work for. Maybe seeds of hope, strength, female body acceptance and equality can be planted, also. The world could be a better place if the time and energy that went into tummy tucks, botox and diet pills could be spent on something more beneficial to society, such as the promotion of tolerance and peace and education. And think what could happen if this started early on in life so that it would never seem like a radical idea.
I have mentioned the idea of "pretty" before to men and it is sometimes hard to make them understand how much much more it is than just a word. Most women know what I mean when I say it with emphasis. This idea of prettiness needs to be explored in our personal lives, as pointed out in the Pandora post, and then filtered out into society from within us. There is too much to do in this world, in our short lives, to stay curled up in the beauty box. I say Raise the lid.
