There are a lot of common sayings that society accepts and uses, which don't make sense, even to the people using them, until you think about them deeply.
For years, I knew exactly when to evoke the saying, "You can't have your cake and eat it too." Seemed obvious. Whenever someone had a fork in the road, a decision that had to be made, a conflict that would only be resolved through choice, I would say, "You can't have your cake and eat it too."
Then, one day, someone screwed up the saying, or, said it differently, and suddenly the clutch engaged, and the saying took on an entirely different meaning. The person said, "You can't eat your cake and have it too."
"Aha!" I thought. "That makes so much more sense!"
A similar example might be when people say, "I could care less," meaning, of course, "(I care so little that) I could NOT care less," which is what they SHOULD say.
Well, another one of those sayings, that I didn't seem to struggle with so much, but, a lot of the world apparently does, is:
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
Beauty is, or at least should be, the visual equivalent of smell or taste. Unique to the individual.
Having grown up in the midwest of the United States, autumn was a season that I always looked forward to.
Falling leaves meant fires. It meant moist grass that is lush and gives off a scent when freshly mowed. Hot drinks are served, like hot chocolate with marshmallows, or large vats of apple juice with quills of cinnamon steeping in them as they sit on a low boil, filling the house with fragrance. All of these scents implied beauty to me.
On the other hand, there is an effect that happens, when someone has too much of something in their lives, and they get sick from it. That the same odor that enchanted me might repulse other people.
That smoky smell that makes me nostalgic for the seasons might make an Australian have flashbacks of a near-fatal bushfire. It's unique to each person.
For example, while very small children, my younger brother and I once went to my diabetic grandmother's house, which we enjoyed because she always had sugary sweets around the house, just in case her blood sugar might drop, she told us. So, while there were tons of options around (boiled candies, peppermints, lozenges, jelly beans, butterscotches, etc.) there were certain things that she kept precisely for us grandkids so that she could keep the rest of her assortment intact.
One day, my grandmother gave us a bag of Circus Peanuts to share between the two of us.
If you've ever seen that episode of Family Guy, where Peter, Chris, Brian and Stewie all barf all over the place, that was my brother and me, once we left her house. That was a little over 40 years ago, and I still can't stand the site of the things. Just posting the picture above gave me an acrid, caustic, burning sensation in the back of my throat.
Over the years, I've learned people have this same experience with fish or tequila, both of which I quite like, but I digress.
The point is, there shouldn't be a single 'look' that is universally accepted as being 'beauty.'
Beauty doesn't have a color. It doesn't have a dress size. It doesn't have an age range. It doesn't have a specific hairstyle or texture.
It is literally 'in the eye of the beholder.' It doesn't happen ON the person being observed. It happens in the eye of the person observing.
If you've ever found yourself asking the question "What does he see in her?" you've experienced this, but, perhaps dismissed it as lunacy or low self-esteem on the part of that person. If you've ever heard someone say, "She could do so much better!" there is a good chance that the person saying that was suffering from this same misunderstanding.
I was watching this home renovation show. I won't say which one. I was looking at the woman on the show, and, having a daughter who is in her teens, but, not yet experimenting with makeup, I've become familiar with some of the common..... 'beauty techniques'......that are commonly employed today. When I looked at this particular woman, I thought:
"Those are not your nails. Those are not your eyelashes. Your hair is not that color. Your skin is not that color. Your teeth have more luminescence than almost any light bulb I've ever bought, such that they are literally blue; and, you know what? There are literally MILLIONS of young women who look just like you."
It's gotten to the point where a lot of women seem afraid to be themselves, to the point that the 'in look' has become almost a token, like what you used to have to buy at a mall arcade to play a video game, and there is a certain type of man who falls for this. In my life's experience, that man is insecure, shallow and jealous. The look of the woman symbolizes something on his behalf to other men. It has nothing to do with her. She's a prop, like Melania. (Sorry, Melania. Love you, girl.)
This is not to say that there is no place for cosmetic products or devices. It is to say that, when those things become an arsenal designed to conceal who you truly are, and what you truly look like, it takes on a dimension that more resembles deception, concealment, or subterfuge than enhancement or beauty.
It's to the point where it seems like many young women are afraid to NOT look like that. Purged of quirks or almost any character at all. It's not an attempt to stand out. It's more like an attempt to stand in, to be less noticeable, rather than more.
The look? It's something like this:
It's not that any of these women are unattractive. The question is:
Are these women related? Are they all the same woman? Are they four different women? Is this all the 'beauty' has come to mean?
Imagine the psychology of a woman whose decisions about what man to date or marry BEGINS with conforming to this obvious standard.
- Once she has 'ticked all of the boxes' what is she, in turn, negotiating for herself? What's she on the hunt for? Now that 'admission' has been paid, what's this really about?
- Is she negotiating for herself at all or just that desperate to be liked? Is it strictly money?
- Does she care that the person he sees is nothing like who she really is?
- Does she expect marriage to survive the slow gradual, almost reverse-strip-tease she has in store for him once it's too late for him to back out, setting up a relationship based on guilt and obligation?
To their credit, global fashion designers seem more ready than wider society to find beauty in all the corners of the earth. While fashion is meant to show off the clothes and not necessarily the woman, there is a wide segment of society, if not the majority of it, that equates the ability to be paid to be looked at for hours, or repeatedly, as confirmation of beauty, and global fashion designers, to their credit, spread that love around.
I just wonder why it takes the rest of society so long to catch up.
Be the best version of yourselves, young ladies, not just a somewhat-decent copy of someone else.
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STOPI often ponder these same questions myself, but that has come with age. As a teenager I was still trying to figure out how I was supposed to fit in and how to conform. It's a confusing time of life. It's something I've discussed with my own teenage daughters and thankfully they are more enlightened than I was at the same age, so this attempting to look like someone you're not confuses them a bit.
Dude. Reverse strip tease.
Nailed it.
You know those really tacky, soft core people and picture mags (do they still have those?)
I'd like to see teenage girls peruse the Home-girls section, where proud husbands send in sometimes quite unglamorous 'glamour' shots of their wives.
(Obviously with permission)
They should know that not only do women come in all sorts of configurations; but that there are men who adore them.
Might repair some of the damage done by Cosmo.
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