
Hair styling. Nail painting. Clothes and accessories shopping. Laser treatments. Balancing on heels. Cosmetic surgery. Shaving. Tanning. Dermal fillers. Walking up stairs in a long skirt without tripping. Dieting. Make-up application. Botox. Walking down stairs in a short skirt without flashing anyone. The list of things people do for beauty goes on and on.
In the book Perfect Me, Heather Widdows argues that both women and men worldwide are experiencing increasing societal pressure to do more than ever for the sake of exterior appearance. She notes that women are expected to do more, more costly, and more time-consuming beauty tasks than men. But she also points out that the problem does not end with inequality:
“The problems with the increasing demands of beauty are not just that they are demanded more of one gender than another but the nature of the demands.”
In other words, keeping the beauty standards of women the same while ramping up the beauty standards of men will not result in a better world. The beauty standards are already troublingly high, Widdows says. She calculates that if a person spends 20 minutes a day on beauty between the ages of 15 and 75, that adds up to almost a solid year of beauty-related tasks over a lifetime. Furthermore, she notes, studies have shown that the average woman in the U.S. and U.K. spends about double that daily amount of time.
And then there is the monetary cost of all this beautifying, as well as the opportunity cost of all the things people could spend their time and money on instead. So we’re all on an accelerating roller coaster, unable to jump off without real-world consequences, but also struggling to hang on.
In what ways do you bend over backwards for beauty? Is it worth the time, money, and opportunity cost?
I think there’s a deeper more psyhological reason for working at beauty. One says whatever we covet the most becomes our personal prison. And it not only applies to wanting to be beautiful. If beauty is so important to someone, they will never feel pretty enough. If one wants fame or fortune they will always feel poor and forgotten.
Maybe the author of the book you’re reviewing will discuss this. The trick is to recognize human tendencies and know there may be more out there than meets the eye
Good point…… The pursuit of perfection is bound to fail……..
Well said, Bob. I don’t have much else to add to that. I will say that while striving to be more beautiful or rich may have its rewards, too much emphasis on it tends to overshadow what’s more important in the heart to reach a specific goal. Lack of substance or simply coming off too vapid comes to mind.
Another good point…. It’s important to focus on things of substance….
First of all, massive golf clap for the accurate, appropriate, and savagely casual use of opportunity costs. I offer you one solitary tear of respect.
Second, I have an ongoing theory that womenās fashion was a cruel/bad joke created by men that women never figured out, but instead jumped right in and things have just gotten terribly out of hand ever since.
Thanks! Ha!! Very interesting theory … š
I am also reminded of an epiphanal conversation I had with a co worker at the book store. Two women had walked through the store dressed in a manner that looked equal parts painful, precarious, ruinously expensive, and ridiculous. I commented that I could never understand why women dress like that. I didnāt know anyone who found that attractive. She responded that my confusion was due the fact that I was too egotistical and ignorant about women to realize that āwomen donāt dress for men, they dress for other women.ā A satori slap from a master. Aināt been quite right in the head ever since.
!!