GUEST COLUMN: Beyond Appearance - Women Who Are Truly Beautiful
When a woman, and especially a feminist, enters a conversation on appearance, the expectation is that she will point to stick-thin fashion models and painted-on "natural looking" make-up. In fact, I could point to volumes of literature, from Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth to Judith Rodin's academic work on body image, which detail the damage done to women in this society by those who would have them believe that the presentation of a socially acceptable appearance is the primary purpose of their existence. It is impossible to understate the damage that is done to young girls, who are bombarded with media and popular images of disproportionately shaped women (like Barbie) with pert little noses and collagen-injected lips, blue eyes, and blonde hair. When girls are taught to hate their bodies, they grow up with more than a crisis of confidence. When normal, healthy, natural, beautiful bodies are reviled as ugly because not enough effort has been put into them, the minds of women are discounted, their lives devalued. Anorexia and bulimia are killing people, especially women. This is not because women are somehow inferior to men. Quite the reverse, I suppose it's a credit to women that a multi-billion industry had to be created to take their energies away from actually thinking and focus them on starvation-dieting and face painting. I don't want to take away from the seriousness of the health issues surrounding eating disorders -- about the destructive nature of the "beauty myth" -- but, in a way, I want to look beyond this for a moment. I could write about all of these issues at great length, about all the damage done by the "beauty" industry. I could point to all the offensive things that are said and written about women and their physical appearances. But, now, instead of looking at the way women are objectified every day, I chose to point, with pride, to the women who overcome that objectification every day. These are the role model who offer hope to those who are still trapped by the "beauty myth." I choose to take this opportunity to celebrate those everyday role models who manage to get their daily business done, sometimes (heaven forbid!), while wearing jeans, sweatshirts, and (gasp!) no make-up. My initial temptation, in writing this, was to point to all of the women I know on this campus who, like me, are leaders of organizations and who, not exactly like me, are exemplary scholars. I wanted to spotlight them as examples as women "above" superficiality. Sitting down to think about this, though, I realized that to focus on a few extraordinary women, like reading history in terms of only a few great men, misses the reality of day-to-day life, the totality of experience. It is true that an accent on women's physical appearance insults the extraordinary women who devote themselves to improving the lives of others. But, perhaps even more so, it insults every woman who gets up in the morning, walks to class, and spends time in her own education. I don't make choices about my appearance based upon how men will receive them -- I wish I didn't have to tell people that. And, I would hope that I had already sufficiently demonstrated that it is my brain, and not an ovum, which governs my behavior. But, I am frequently reminded that these concepts are still alien to a few of my fellow students. Perhaps I'm over-sensitive. Perhaps it shouldn't offend me to be reminded that if I want to catch a man (and why else would I be here?), I had better get up early, style my hair, and paint my face. Perhaps it shouldn't offend me that a man thinks I might desire him simply because of my overwhelming need to procreate and not to waste any of my precious "eggs." Historically, all kinds of efforts have been made to keep women from thinking about matters of substance. In the bad old days, it was believed that a woman using her brain too much would cause her uterus to shrivel up. From corsets which broke ribs and caused respiratory disorders to high-maintenance beehive hairdos, the beauty industry has damaged women's health, mental and physical, along with absorbing their money and time. I am proud of the women I have come to know here at Penn because they chose to focus on academics, on community service, on social action, on culture -- on any number of things. They are brilliant, creative, diverse women. And make no mistake, they are beautiful women. Their beauty lies in the work they do, in the meaning they have given their lives, in what they do for themselves and for one another. And so, when even one man decides that the purpose of women here is something other than to get an education, he fails to grasp the meaning behind these women's lives. He fails to understand the significance of the intellectual and cultural contributions that have been made by women. When even one man believes that he is entitled to demand that women at Penn meet his criteria for physical attractiveness, he denies the reality of an institution that has thrived in its years of "coeducation." He insults every woman who decides for herself what she will wear and how she will look. He insults every woman at Penn who works, studies, and lives her own life. Debra Pickett is a senior English major from Franklin Township, New Jersey and a member of the leadership team of the Penn Women's Alliance.