One standard to rule them all

Thinking about beauty standards will always get the mind a-churning. In my earlier post on the subject, Kyria pointed out that men have a wealth standard that they both trade on and are oppressed by like women have a beauty standard. There's a lot of truth to that, but there was a missing piece that I kept mulling over and over in my mind but couldn't quite articulate to myself. Then I read this article in Alternet about a new history of beauty treatments. The article brought up two things that kicked my thinking into gear--Thorstein Veblen's theories of conspicious consumption and the constant changing of the beauty standard.

We always like to talk about The Beauty Standard as if it is one thing that is simple to pinpoint and articulate. Certainly anti-feminist evolutionary "psychologists" love the idea of a constant beauty standard, because it makes it easier for them to argue that their aesthetic and sexual preferences are a hardwired part of men's genetics and not worth examining for political and social reasons that might make them uncomfortable. But Veblen's theory that women function in our society as a way for a man to display his wealth is a useful one, and one that is supported by ever-changing beauty standards that tend to reflect social priorities as much as they do in any ingrained male idea of what Female should look like.

I think that Veblen's theory about conspicious consumption was good, but in relation to men and women, it didn't go far enough. Women display themselves to assert more than their men's wealth--they display themselves to assert all sorts of traits that their men and their culture at large takes pride in.

Different subcultures in America have different beauty standards. Kyria's comment really jogged my brain on this--the first thing I thought was that I know a number of women who are stunningly beautiful but they couldn't trade in their looks for a man with wealth if they wanted to because they don't subscribe to the grooming practices that are favored in your average gold-digger. (And god knows I know this standard all too well, having worked at banks in very wealthy neighborhoods.) The gold-digger standard is probably closest to the one that makes us flinch when watching "Extreme Makeover"--bleached hair, plastic surgery, breast implants, tan, lots of make-up and expensive jewelry.

In my little subculture of America, women adhere to a different beauty standard, but it's still a standard. Women either aspire to the natural look or play with these ideas of beauty, exaggerating them for dramatic effect. It's generally accepted as rejection of the "standard" of beauty, but there are standards in this subculture, too. All the various hairstyles I've gone through might serve as an example.

I've dyed my hair bright red, messed with colors like purple and pink, went for years with a severe bob of red hair with a streak of blonde in it, dyed my hair white-blonde and got it cut is a sloppy short cut, and then let it grow out in its natural color. Now I have my homegrown color and it's really long. Whatever I did with my hair, I never tried to do something artificial that I tried to pass off as natural. That is for women who try to use artifice for nature; I was more interested in drawing attention to my dramatic hair or just letting it be if I felt lazy. At all times I was fitting into my subculture's standard, which is that deception is unattractive. (Dyeing your hair funny colors is being dramatic, but isn't deceptive. No one thinks your hair naturally grows that way.)

This is the standard across the board. No push-up bras, heavy make-up, or dressing up allowed. (Unless of course you go overboard to mock it.) In one sense, it's freeing. But you also hear people laugh at women on the outside who do resort to artifice, pointing out that they can't pull off looking good without help. In that sense, it's a trap, because women are still judged by their looks and they don't even get to use outside help to get a leg up.

And while women I know don't trade on their looks for plain money, there is still a lot of trading on looks for social status. Men who have achieved some amount of fame as musicians in my social circles tend to have the girls who adhere to our subculture's beauty standard closely. There are things to trade in other than just money.

It occured to me that just as you could in the past, you can tell more about a man's station in life by the woman he has on his arm than by the way he himself dresses. Typical middle-aged man in okay shape by himself doesn't catch attention; slap a tan, plastic blonde on his arm and you know that he has money. Take average looking somewhat hip guy in his early 20's, late 30's who doesn't catch attention; slap a woman on his arm that has groovy clothes and hair and a curvy but thin figure and people will guess he's a musician. So on and so forth.

It troubles me. I don't dress or look the way I do to make my boyfriend look one way or another, and I don't think he would even notice if I did. I just want to look cool for my own sake. But you can't change the way people react to these things.