Beukey on Beauty

When I first saw a trailer for Norbit, I knew we were in for a slew of articles that dealt with all the negative stereotypes that were jammed into the trailer. The trailer featured stereotypes of black women, fat women, and they probably threw in Murphy's portrayal of a Chinese man, although I don't specifically remember it. Not that these stereotypes stopped anyone from seeing the movie. The trailer made the movie look terrible, but it still brought in $30+ million in its first week in theaters.

And today I came across the article that I knew was coming: the article that would touch upon the idea of "beauty", and how pop culture is/isn't accepting of all types of "beauty". You can click the link to read the article.

The debates about "beauty" go back to ancient times. I am not going to try to define what beauty is or should be. But what bothers me about these types of articles is how they want to have things both ways. The overall tone of the article is that beauty should not determined by society. Then the article goes on to make definitive statements about what is and what isn't beautiful, and that the reader should just accept these as fact.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is a cliche, but in my opinion, it is true. There is really no test you can create to determine what is or what isn't beautiful. You may be able to get an idea of what a majority of a culture thinks is beautiful at a given time, but that doesn't "make" something beautiful, it's just an opinion that a group of people share. And the standards of beauty change over time and place, which is even more proof that beauty can't be objectively defined.

But for the sake of arguement (and articles like the one in the link), let's examine a position that I don't believe. That position would be that beauty can be defined, that it does have a certain set of criteria, and the criteria have to be met for something to be defined as "beautiful". If you believe this, then it also follows that certain things are beautiful, and others are not. It then becomes very easy to point at things as being "beautiful" or "not beautiful".

Whenever this article uses a phrase like "the 5-foot-10 blond, blue-eyed standard of beauty" or "real beauty in black women whose features are not pointed", the article takes the position that beauty has definitive standards, and to be beautiful something must fall within the standards. The reader is being told to accept that 5 foot-10 blondes with blue eyes or black women without pointed features are beautiful.

(A quick aside: What copy editor approved the original article? "Blond" applies to a man. When referring to a woman, the word is spelled "Blonde". Is this a mistake, or just another example of how poorly thought out this article is?)

But why should the reader be forced to accept this author's standards of beauty? Isn't the purpose of the article to rally against standard definitions of beauty? The author doesn't (and can't) offer any reasons as to why these types of women should unquestioningly be described as beautiful. You are just supposed to accept it, because you can't be trusted to make the distinction yourself. You are supposed to accept that the author of the article knows more than you do about beauty.

If you believe beauty is in the eye of the beholder, you don't have to be told who or what is beautiful. You make those judgments yourself, and accept that they are only your opinion. Yet we live in a time when people are constantly asserting, and looking for outside sources to confirm, that they are beautiful. Tyra Banks is now so offended that some people no longer consider her beautiful that she's telling people to kiss her fat ass. Someone is supposed to kiss her ass because he or she doesn't agree with Tyra's unobjective view of herself? Fuck you, you self-absorbed bitch. Don't tell people how to think, you're not that smart.

And what is so important about being beautiful anyway? There are a lot more important things in life than how you look. You should be getting over that type of issue in your early 20's (i. e., when you grow up). If people believe they are beautiful, that's fine. I'm not going to tell them that they aren't. But if these people expect others to share that opinion, and are put out when they don't, that's where I draw the line. If you can make up your mind about what is beautiful, then I can certainly make up mine.