Over six years ago, I wrote a post for my old blog called Beauty Inflation. I’ve re-published it here.
Basically, I compare evolving beauty standards with economic inflation, and sound incredibly patronising and dumb in the process. (It was tough not to shame-edit this one before I re-published it, trust me.) I’ll try not to labour my ‘raised beauty standards as economic inflation allegory’ any more than I already have (my understanding of economics was - and still is - quite laughable), but I do have more to say about beauty culture.
Although I do not state it explicitly, I think it comes across in my old blog post that I was annoyed about expectations of beauty. I still am annoyed. In fact, I’ll come right out and say it:
I’m downright peeved.
To continue the money analogy for a second, there is a basic standard of living we’d all like: we want enough money to afford food and shelter and live comfortably. Likewise, we all want enough beauty to stop people staring at us on the street, to ensure we’re not actively repelling other people. We wash our hair, we make sure we don’t smell, we wash our face. So pervasive are these expectations of basic beauty that we usually just call it ‘hygiene’.
Next, there are the other things we want to buy, the luxuries, the things we take active joy in: the concert, the big TV, dinner at a nice restaurant. Likewise, there are extra things we hope to gain from cultivating our beauty: admiration, envy, love, attention, attraction, self-esteem, self-expression, etc.
Basically, there is a difference between beautifying practices that we do because we want to feel normal, and the ones we do because we want to feel beautiful. I am okay having showers and washing my hair in order to fit in, and I’m okay with occasionally getting dressed up for fun. However, my problem is when things start to creep from the latter category into the first. In other words, when putting on make-up moves from ‘fun thing you do for myself’ to ‘thing you do so people don’t comment on how tired you look’ - that’s when I have a problem.
There is a John Green video in which he talks about liking make-up, and he says he now understands what women mean when they say they don’t wear it for men. It’s a good video, and I like that he is seeing women as people outside of the male gaze, but I could never fully relate to it. For him, make-up is only ever a fun, Category 2 activity. He never felt that subtle social pressure, the internalised obligation that women often feel.
Thankfully, I resisted cultural pressure to wear make-up from an early age, so I now feel very minimal obligation to wear it. (Granted, I’ve never had bad acne, so maybe this is my privilege speaking.)
However, I do feel pressure to do other ‘beautifying’ things, things that I was shamed for at a young enough age that they bruised me deep down in my tender, self-esteem parts. The main one is hair removal. I have naturally thick, dark, fast-growing hair, so this cultural idea that women’s bodies should be mostly hairless has always been a source of frustration for me. I have found a “solution,” of sorts, in laser hair removal, but it’s quite expensive, and when you add up all the appointments, quite time-consuming. That’s why I put “solution” in quotation marks. The true solution would be to allow myself to have body hair.
Of course, I could have body hair! There is no law stopping me from being hirsute. However, social norms are so powerful that the idea of letting it all grow out short-circuits my brain. HAIR ON LEG IN PUBLIC: ERROR. DOES NOT COMPUTE.
But the standard is different for everyone. One of my friends got laser hair removal on her arms, and it set off an alarm in my brain. NO NO NO, the siren wailed. THIS CANNOT BE THE NEW NORMAL. NO NO NO. I REFUSE TO BECOME SELF-CONSCIOUS OF MY ARM HAIR. NO.
Then again, maybe I’m being a hypocrite. After all, I’m as complicit in beauty inflation as anyone else. By getting laser hair removal, I am perpetuating the idea that women should be hairless all the time.
Oops.
Looking back over my old blog post six years later, I realise that my analogy is far too simplistic - as all analogies tend to be. After all, there’s only one way to buy a movie ticket (money), but there are many ways to get admiration or self-esteem. It’s perhaps one of the deepest-entrenched bits of brainwashing the beauty industry has done, to convince us that beauty is the best (or only) way to get these things.
We’re all a little bit complicit in beauty inflation, in the end. How can we not be? We’re pawns in a larger game, and I no longer judge people for falling prey to it.
As for myself, I’m going to keep doing the laser hair removal, but mark my words:
I ain’t shaving my fuckin’ arms.