On Pretty.

Women and beauty: norms unchanged for millenia.

First, pretty is not beauty. Pretty is beauty's more available distant cousin, who lives in a different part of the country and is for sale at the mall. Pretty is not a virtue like beauty is a virtue; pretty is formulaic, and it means having certain qualities. Pretty is an objective qualifying term much like being a certain height means one is tall or having certain SAT scores means one is smart. But because pretty is not only possible, not only suggested, and is so widely available, on racks, at makeup counters, at gyms, it is one's duty to achieve. One who makes no attempts toward "pretty" operates in a unidentifiable realm existing between genders, outside cultural expectations and norms. And if you are not beautiful, you must attempt to be pretty, not so much because our culture values aesthetics in any way, but more so that our culture demands signals and signs that render things easily classifiable. And because our culture decided very long ago that woman's greatest virtue is the way she appears physically, it venerates those who achieve success in this set of standards, and casts off those who do not. In this set of norms, a woman who learns, often very early in life, when she is still forming perceptions of herself and the world, herself in the world, that she is physically appealing learns that she is not or does not have to be intelligent. Conversely, a woman who learns that she is not pretty knows she must find other ways to make up for this ultimately debilitating shortcoming.

We consider ourselves an evolved, sophisticated society, but the way in which we view women is so archaic and limiting that only forty years ago was any large-scale movement formed to question the set of standards under which women are judged and valued. In 2008, it seems we've regressed as a society. (And this is not an overly pessimistic view-- I hesitate to go too far into the facts of oppressive gender roles for fear of being labeled a "feminist," the most fearsome of all classifications, perhaps on par with "terrorist" when it comes to clearing a room or getting a date.)

The fact remains, at its most basic level, that women are not free, and that men are not free either, because humans that are born female continue to exist in an oppressive and limiting realm which valorizes a single quality above all else, a quality which itself has incredibly narrow standards. This is to say that women must be physically appealing to be valued in our society, and this undoubtedly includes those rare and yet such familiar characteristics ingrained into all of our minds, such as thin frame and fair complexion, coupled with a demure, submissive manner.

When the world operates in this way, venerating "pretty" over "non-pretty" in its limited margin of acceptance, women are unable to live truly full lives, or lives which do not revolve solely around this pursuit. Thus, they are robbed of the experience of being fully human. Meanwhile, men also lose, as they learn to exist in the orbit of this realm, learning to limit their own experience of other, female individuals, based on a very elementary view of physical beauty.

This oppressive notion of the "conventional" view of beauty is more nefarious than has been widely discussed or attacked, and more harmful than can be determined by quantitative surveys or tests, yet threatens the wellbeing of millions of people living all over the world. It is perhaps best described as an epidemic or an outbreak, and is undoubtedly most evident in the heart of the human female, who, unless she is one of eight or so women in the world who fit these ideal standards (and perhaps even if she is), she is made to feel unfit for and unwanted by the world in which she exists.