Article Sporking: Truth About Beauty!

[logansrogue]

Welcome to a Feminist Sporking! Today we're sporking:

"The Truth About Beauty" by Amy Alkon, of Psychology Today.

Introduction to the Sporkers:

- Me. Napalm Nacey.
- Xena, Warrior Princess.
- Hermione Granger.


"The Truth About Beauty" by Amy Alkon.

There are certain practical realities of existence that most of us accept. If you want to catch a bear, you don't load the trap with a copy of Catch-22—not unless you rub it with a considerable quantity of raw hamburger.

Xena:  Ah, but would the bear be crazy if he went for the copy of Catch-22, or would he be sane if he didn't?

 If you want to snag a fish, you can't just slap the water with your hand and yell, "Jump on my hook, already!"

Nancy:  Why not? Ernie did it.

Yet, if you're a woman who wants to land a man, there's this notion that you should be able to go around looking like Ernest Borgnine: If you're "beautiful on the inside," that's all that should count.

Nancy: Oh, she did NOT just diss ol' Ernest!
Hermione:  Well, no, it's all right if you're a *man* and look like Ernest Borgnine.  That's the way the kyriarchy works!
Xena:  HAIL RAGNAR'S BEER!

 Right. And I should have a flying car and a mansion in Bel Air with servants and a moat.

Nacey:  Right now, I'm thrilled that you don't.  It's bad enough you're getting paid to write this drivel. 

Welcome to Uglytopia—the world reimagined as a place where it's the content of a woman's character, not her pushup bra, that puts her on the cover of Maxim.

Nacey:  Uglytopia sounds *great*!  I'm not seeing the downside of Uglytopia.
Xena:  Yeah, this isn't sounding as scary or sad as she's thinking it does.

It just doesn't seem fair to us that some people come into life with certain advantages—whether it's a movie star chin or a multimillion-dollar shipbuilding inheritance. Maybe we need affirmative action for ugly people; make George Clooney rotate in some homely women between all his gorgeous girlfriends. While we wish things were different, we'd best accept the ugly reality: No man will turn his head to ogle a woman because she looks like the type to buy a turkey sandwich for a homeless man or read to the blind.

Nacey:  YEAH, cause women should TOTALLY do that stuff to pull a sexual partner.  I mean, isn't THAT the reason why we do good deeds?  To impress people?
Xena:  Never mind the fact that she's absolutely wrong.  Philanthropy is very attractive.

There is a vast body of evidence indicating that men and women are biologically and psychologically different, and that what heterosexual men and women want in partners directly corresponds to these differences.

Hermione:  A vast body of evidence that gets nary a mention in this entire article.
Nacey:  Oh YOU and your need for *facts*!

The features men evolved to go for in women—youth, clear skin, a symmetrical face and body, feminine facial features, an hourglass figure—are those indicating that a woman would be a healthy, fertile candidate to pass on a man's genes.

Nacey:  God, that would make sense if all you ever read was past issues of Psychology Today.  Anyone that has walked within sniffing distance of a book by Darwin would laugh in her face.
Hermione:  Or they should, but they don't.
Xena:  I love how she totally fails to mention GLBTI people.  They're just non-existant.

These preferences span borders, cultures, and generations, meaning yes, there really are universal standards of beauty. And while Western women do struggle to be slim, the truth is, women in all cultures eat (or don't) to appeal to "the male gaze." The body size that's idealized in a particular culture appears to correspond to the availability of food. In cultures like ours, where you can't go five miles without passing a 7-Eleven and food is sold by the pallet-load at warehouse grocery stores, thin women are in. In cultures where food is scarce (like in Sahara-adjacent hoods), blubber is beautiful, and women appeal to men by stuffing themselves until they're slim like Jabba the Hut.

Hermione:  Wait - what?  You - you can't-
Nacey:  She did.
Hermione:  You can't say that there are really universal standards of beauty and that beauty is different in different countries.  That's now how universal things WORK.
Xena: ... Woah.  Back up the pony.  Did she just call the countries and territories of those that live around the Sahara basin "HOODS"?
Nacey:  A beacon of sensitivity and modernity, this one!

Men's looks matter to heterosexual women only somewhat.

Nacey:  Yeah, sure they do.  Excuse me...
Xena:  What are you doing?
Nacey:  Proving a point...







 Most women prefer men who are taller than they are, with symmetrical features (a sign that a potential partner is healthy and parasite-free). But, women across cultures are intent on finding male partners with high status, power, and access to resources—which means a really short guy can add maybe a foot to his height with a private jet.

Nacey:  GOOD NEWS, Danny Devito!

And, just like women who aren't very attractive, men who make very little money or are chronically out of work tend to have a really hard time finding partners.

Nacey:  That's why poor people never make babies.  Oh wait...

There is some male grumbling about this. Yet, while feminist journalists deforest North America publishing articles urging women to bow out of the beauty arms race and "Learn to love that woman in the mirror!", nobody gets into the ridiculous position of advising men to "Learn to love that unemployed guy sprawled on the couch!"

Hermione:  What pish-posh.  Most feminist journalists write on blogs.  No paper is destroyed at all for that.
Nacey:  And people get into that ridiculous position all the time.  It's called Dudebro Cinema.

Now, before you brand me a traitor to my gender,

Xena:  No, I'd brand you as someone that has no understanding of human psychology in any meaningful way.

let me say that I'm all for women having the vote,

Hermione:  Well, thank goodness for *that*!

and I think a woman with a mustache should make the same money as a man with a mustache. But you don't help that woman by advising her, "No need to wax that lip fringe or work off that beer belly!" (Because the road to female empowerment is...looking just like a hairy old man?)

Nacey:  Lady, I would be stunned, absolutely STUNNED, if you actually knew anything about the road to women's empowerment.
Xena:  If she's got a problem with body hair, she can take it up with me.
Hermione:  Now now, let's not get violent.

But take The Beauty Myth author Naomi Wolf: She contends that standards of beauty are a plot to keep women politically, economically, and sexually subjugated to men—

Nacey:  HAH!  What a RIDICULOUS CONCEPT that is!!
Hermione:  Men, subjugating women?!  NEVER!

apparently by keeping them too busy curling their eyelashes to have time for political action and too weak from dieting to stand up for what they want in bed. Wolf and her feminist sob sisters bleat about the horror of women being pushed to conform to "Western standards of beauty"—as if eyebrow plucking and getting highlights are the real hardships compared to the walk in the park of footbinding and clitoridectomy.

Nacey:  Cause it doesn't cross this woman's mind that maybe, just maybe, they're phenomena on a big long gradient of FUCKSHIT.  Two sides of the same "SCREW WOMEN" coin.  That we shouldn't have to do ANY of those things.  It's not like we are bound to please men.  We *can* just tell the maintainers of the kyriarchy to go blow themselves.  Unbelievable concept, I know.

Most insultingly, Wolf paints women who look after their looks as the dim, passive dupes of Madison Ave nue and magazine editors. Apparently, women need only open a page of Vogue and they're under its spell—they sleepwalk to Sephora to load up on anti-wrinkle potions, then go on harsh diets, eating only carrots fertilized with butterfly poo.

Xena:  Oh, lady, I think the problem is worse than that.  I think it's filled with people like you full of all these lovely reasons why we should give a crap what anyone thinks of our beauty regimes.  Guilted and pressured into beauty because they *just don't count* as human beings unless they do.  You're a tool of the oppression, assface.
 
It turns out that the real beauty myth is the damaging one Wolf and other feminists are perpetuating—the absurd notion that it serves women to thumb their noses at standards of beauty.

Hermione:  Heaven forbid!
Nacey:  Women aren't shaving!  THE WOMEN!  WHAT ABOUT THE WOMEN?!

Of course, looks aren't all that matter (as I'm lectured by female readers of my newspaper column when I point out that male lust seems to have a weight limit).

Nacey:  Uhm, Miss Alkon, do you ever refer to people as actual people?  Cause I'm pretty sure you're only really supposed to refer to people as "male" and "female" in a clinical sense, and this article is *far* from clinical.

But looks matter a great deal.

Hermione:  She's doing it *again*!
Nacey:  Doing what?
Hermione:  Contradicting herself!
Nacey:  She's done it so many times I've kind of stopped noticing...

The more attractive the woman is, the wider her pool of romantic partners and range of opportunities in her work and day-to-day life. We all know this, and numerous studies confirm it—it's just heresy to say so.

Nacey:  Wait, did she just use the word "heresy" with a straight face?

We consider it admirable when people strive to better themselves intellectually; we don't say, "Hey, you weren't born a genius, so why ever bother reading a book?" Why should we treat physical appearance any differently?

Xena:  Gee, dunno, maybe because our looks are something we have absolutely no control over, and it's rude to give a person a hard time over them?

For example, research shows that men prefer women with full lips, smaller chins, and large eyes—indicators of higher levels of estrogen.

Nacey:  Men are attracted to Janis from The Muppet Show?

Some lucky women have big eyes; others just seem to, thanks to the clever application of eyeshadow. As the classic commercial says, "Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline." (If it increases her options, who cares which it is?)

Xena:  Well if looks matter as much as you say they do, the guy after his girlfriend washes her makeup off.

Unfortunately, because Americans are so conflicted and dishonest about the power of beauty, we approach it like novices. At one end of the spectrum are the "Love me as I am!" types, like the woman who asked me why she was having such a terrible time meeting men...while dressed in a way that advertised not "I want a boyfriend" but "I'm just the girl to clean out your sewer line!"

Xena:  Yeah, how dare the bitch have self confidence and agency.

At the other extreme are women who go around resembling porn-ready painted dolls.

Nacey: ... WHAT?!
Hermione:  See?  You can never bloody win.

Note to the menopausal painted doll: Troweled on makeup doesn't make you look younger; it makes you look like an aging drag queen.

Nacey:  Oh, some transphobia and homophobia with my misogyny!

Likewise, being 50 and trying to look 25 through plastic surgery usually succeeds in making a woman look 45 and fembot-scary—an object of pity instead of an object of desire.

Hermione:  Is she trying to encourage women to enhance their looks or put them off for life?
Xena:  I don't know but I'm getting really close to punching something.

Plastic surgery you can easily spot is usually a sign—either of really bad work or of somebody who's gone way over the top with it, probably because she's trying to fill some void in her life with silicone, Juvederm, and implanted butt cutlets.

Nacey:  This article is totally incoherent.  The only ongoing thread in this is, "Let's see how judgemental I can be of women, and how hard I can wag my finger at them for not listening to the arbitrary rules of the Kyriarchy!"

There are women who just want to fix that one nagging imperfection. For others, plastic surgery is like potato chips, as in, "Betcha can't eat just one."

Nacey:  I wish this article was your one nagging imperfection.

A woman comes in for a lunchtime lip job—an injection of Restylane or another plumping filler—and ends up getting both sets of lips done. Yes, I'm talking about labioplasty. (Are your vagina lips pouty?)

Xena:  HAH!
Nacey:  Proof this woman has never had work done down there.  If she had, she'd know that hacking off your generous labia is what's in right now, not making them bigger.  Remember what you were saying about a clitoridectomy?  Not so quaint and foreign as you think, lady.

Once women start seeing wrinkles and crow's feet, the desperation to look like they were born yesterday often makes them act like it, too.

Hermione:  Make them act like what?  Act desperate?  Your sentence makes NO SENSE.
Nacey:  Gee, that desperation mightn't have anything to do with a social system that devalues a woman's worth as soon as she's "passed her use-by" might it?  No?  Maybe?

Women want to believe there's such a thing as "hope in a jar"—and there is: hope from the CEO selling the jars that you and millions of others will buy him a new yacht and a chateau in the south of France.

Nacey:  Aaaaaand you're helping it with stupid articles like this?
Hermione:  Has this woman *ever* learnt about how to structure a proper article, or was she taught to write as many insulting, inflammatory and misandrist talking points in a row in the faint hope that she somehow gets some sort of readership?

There actually is hope to be found in a plastic bottle

Xena:  Yeah, a bottle of water to pour all over your laptop in the hope that we take any more steaming piles of shit like this article with it.

—of sunblock, the kind that protects against both UVA and UVB rays (the skin-aging ones). But the Beauty Brains, a group of blogging cosmetic scientists, write, "The sad truth is that creams that claim to be anti-aging are not much more effective than standard moisturizing lotions."

Nacey: ... Duh.  Science!  It Works!
Hermione:  Only when it helps her make a useless point.

French women, too, buy into the idea that there's some fountain of youth at the Clarins counter. But, perhaps because feminism never seeped into mainstream culture in France like it did here, they generally have a healthier and more realistic relationship with beauty, accepting it as the conduit to love, sex, relationships, and increased opportunities.

Nacey:  Oh, pfft!  Yeah!  Let's make sweeping generalisations about French women!

They take pleasure in cultivating their appearance, and in accentuating their physical differences from men. They don't give up on looking after their looks as they age, nor do they tart themselves up like sexy schoolgirls at 50. They simply take pride in their appearance and try to look like sensual, older women.

Hermione:  This is a world without Feminism.  Try it, won't you?

To understand what it takes to be beautiful,

Xena:  You need to swallow every piece of bullshit this woman feeds you.

we need to be very clear about what being beautiful means—being sexually appealing to men.

Xena: Hah.  Yeah, right.
Hermione:  Here I was thinking it was feeling good about yourself and the person you are.  Silly me!

And then, instead of snarling that male sexuality is evil, we need to accept that it's just different—far more visually-driven than female sexuality.

Nacey:  Wait, time for more visual aids.  Here we go - Figure 2.  Women aren't as visually driven than men:


This show has a large following of women fans...


As does the show starring this man...


The movie series with this young man, who has a lot of teen fans...


The TV series with this young man (who spent an entire two scenes in nothing but a bath towel)...


Oh, ANOTHER TV show with a lead with legions of women fans, who are very descriptive of his visual appearance...


Oh, look.  It's only a man that's made his entire fucking career on the fact that women find him attractive, and will pay good money to drool over him.  Fancy that!

To focus our efforts,

Hermione:  Hah!  I'd honestly like to see you try to do such a thing!

we can turn to an increasing number of studies by evolutionary psychologists

Nacey:  What any real scientists call "Raging Buttstains on the Toilet Rag of Actual Evolutionary Study"....

 on what most men seem to want.

Xena:  Cause you can totally pin that down.  Really.
Nacey:  Wait, are those goalposts wandering around a football pitch, I see?

 For example, the University of Texas' Devendra Singh discovered that men, across cultures, are drawn to a woman with an hourglass figure.

Hermione:  Except for the ones adjacent to the Sahara.  Apparently.

Men like to see a woman's waist—even on the larger ladies—so burn those muumuus, which only reveal your girlish figure in a Category 5 hurricane, and if you don't have much of a waist, do your best to give yourself one with the cut of your clothes or a belt.

Nacey:  Get that waist!  GET IT!  ANY WAY YOU CAN!  YOU DON'T NEED RIBS, RIBS ARE FOR LOSERS!
Hermione:  It was my impression that, those that are attracted to women, like to see all parts of a woman's body.
Xena:  You and your *logic*.

Too many women try to get away with a bait-and-switch approach to appearance upkeep.

Hermione:  You really, REALLY can't fucking win.
Nacey:  Hermione, you swore!
Hermione:  This terrible article has driven me to it!
Xena:  It's okay, kid. Let your inner Amazon out.

 If you spend three hours a day in the gym while you're dating a guy, don't think that you can walk down the aisle and say "I do...and, guess what...now I don't anymore!"

Xena:  He, however, can get as fat as he likes.  Especially if he's rich!

A woman needs to come up with a workable routine for maintaining her looks throughout her lifetime and avoid rationalizing slacking off— while she's seeking a man and after she has one.

Nacey:  You can never rest, ladies.  YOU CAN NEVER REST.  THE KYRIARCHY IS ALWAYS WATCHING!

Yeah, you might have to put five or ten extra minutes into prettying up just to hang around the house.

Nacey:  OH FUCK OFF.
Hermione:  I'm sorry, did we accidentally stumble into that satirical article that was meant to be from the 50s about being a good housewife?!
Xena:  Any man that expects me to spend ten minutes to pretty myself up on *his* account better like the sensation of my boot in his ass.

And, sure, you might be more "comfortable" in big sloppy sweats, but how "comfortable" will you be if he leaves you for a woman who cares enough to look hot for him?

Nacey:  I'll be comfortable knowing I dodged a fucking bullet, that's what!

Like French women,

Hermione:  Have you even MET a French woman, let alone met and spoken to enough of them to know what they ALL think?

 we, too, need to understand that a healthy approach to beauty is neither pretending it's unnecessary or unimportant nor making it important beyond all else.

Xena:  Walk the tightrope, bitches, it's what your overlords want.

By being honest about it,

Nacey:  Yeah, I'd say this article is the LEAST honest thing I've read all day.  And I'm including quotes from politicians in this.

we help women make informed decisions about how much effort to put into their appearance—or accept the opportunity costs of going ungroomed.

Hermione:  It never occurs to her that, perhaps, there shouldn't be costs for not grooming certain parts of our bodies?  Certain parts than men get a free pass on?
Nacey:  There you go again with the logic, Hermione.

The truth is, like knowledge, beauty is power.

Nacey:  In the current institutionalised system, yes.  TEAR DOWN THE WALL!

So, ladies, read lots of books, develop your mind and your character, exercise the rights the heroes of the women's movement fought for us to have, and strive to become somebody who makes a difference in the world.

Xena:  Just don't dare think that it matters a fuck, cause even if you do all this, if you're ugly, you don't exist.

And, pssst...while you're doing all of that, don't forget to wear lipgloss.

Nacey: ... Geez, Xena, are you psychic?
Xena:  No, I've just been around a very long time.

 

Comments

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

YOU SEE? And the worst thing? My bro-in-law looks like Gaius, and they WON'T DO A PARODY VIDEO. :( :( :(

[simply-shipping.livejournal.com]

Now that's just mean of them. :(

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

The one I want to do, it would be so cool. Cause my nephew can play guitar a bit, but my brother can play guitar like a fucking legend, so we could do a trick shot. Merlin could be trying to play the guitar, and failing, so in his frustration, he uses gold-eyes magic on his hands, and in an instant he's shredding like a crazy mofo, yeah?

And then Gaius walks in, puts his hand on the neck of the guitar, shakes his head and says, "Merlin! You are not meant to use your powers to *rock*!"

... Yeah it's pretty stupid, but the thought makes me laugh. :-P

[simply-shipping.livejournal.com]

It makes me laugh too, so at least you're not alone. :P

[mysanal.livejournal.com]

LMAO!