Margaret Mead Japan China Religie en seks Moral panics Seks en robots Seksuele ontwikkeling Seksualisering Leeftijdverschillen Geweld en misbruik Consent Sexting Prostitutie Pornografie"We’re more creative in our terms of derision than we are with terms of acclaim because as much power as beauty carries in this world, ugliness still carries more." Autumn WHITEFIELD-MADRANO - Face value - The hidden ways beauty shapes women’s lives, p.102
Autumn WHITEFIELD-MADRANOZe heeft allerlei methodisch strenge diepteinterviews gehouden die hier anoniem worden weergegeven. Daarnaast maakt ze gebruik van wat ze zo tegenkomt in gesprekken.
"I made a point of interviewing a number of women who were demographically unlike me—that is, not white, heterosexual, middle-class, able-bodied urbanites."(4)
[Goede benadering. ]
"Women, regardless of color, economic standing, and sexuality, face a matrix of choices, expectations, and stereotypes about personal presentation that revolve around the idea that women should try to be perfectly pretty at all times. That is the common thread I’ve explored here, and my hope is that this book will shed enough light on the conditions we share for each reader to see how it has played out in her or his own life."(4)
[Ze beschrijft haar ochtendroutine van opmaak. Zo'n routine hebben dus miljoenen vrouwen. Waarom doen ze dat? Om mooi en aantrekkelijk gevonden te worden, om zich op hun best te presenteren.]
"Beauty invites gaps in our thinking. There’s the gap between how people look and how we aspire to look, the gap between appearance standards for men and those for women, the gap between the words we use to describe ourselves and those we use to describe others. For decades, these inconsistencies have been acknowledged for their negative effect on our lives. We’re told that appearance is fraught, forever leaving women feeling like beasts in the face of idealized, retouched, impossibly perfect images—or that beauty rituals are a trap, distracting women from what really matters." [mijn nadruk] (7)
[Een belangrijke kloof noemt ze hier niet: die tussen of je dat zelf wilt of dat je dat doet omdat mannen dat van je verwachten.]
"But viewing women’s relationship with beauty primarily as something we must overcome is problematic, and any black-and-white interpretation of how aesthetics shapes us is bound to be one-dimensional. In truth, the gaps in our thinking about beauty host rich possibilities ... We need to move the conversation beyond overtweezed brows, wriggling into Spanx, and duck-face selfies to consider instead how looks shape our lives in unexpected, often positive ways."(;8)
[Erg naïef, vind ik. Het is nuanceren om het probleem te maskeren. Ja, het kan ook tot leuke dingen leiden — vrouwen met elkaar verbinden, en zo meer —, maar principieel is de ellende toch een stuk groter dan wat leuk is. Denk aan alle 'lookism' alleen al, denk aan heel de industrie eromheen. Toch noemt ze zichzelf een feministe. Ik heb de indruk dat we hier weer te maken krijgen met het idee van 'vrije keuze', met een moderne neoliberale vorm van feminisme. ]
"Plenty of women were fluent in describing how the beauty imperative had made them feel bad. I’d expected this, to a degree; my interest in the subject had partly stemmed from my own bouts of discontent with the mirror."(12)
"Many a woman who had suffered at the hands of the beauty imperative—refusing to leave the house without makeup, stifling sexual desire due to leg-hair stubble, quelling hunger with coffee as a weight-control measure—had worked her way to a place of peace. Indeed, “a place of peace” was the exact phrase used repeatedly by many women I talked with. But the more I listened, the more I’d hear glimmers of opposition to this neat story line. Even when women reported being in the midst of crisis, they had anecdotes about when beauty had made them feel good.(13)"
"Yet the beauty practices of countries with other economic systems show that beauty culture hardly forms a neat equation with capitalism as its sum. Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulić reported hearing from women all across the Eastern Bloc under the blanket of Communism, “Look at us—we don’t even look like women. . . . There is no fine underwear, no pantyhose, no nice lingerie. . . . What can one say except that it is humiliating?”"(15)
[En dit is ronduit oppervlakkig.]
"Dismantling the beauty standard with these direct critiques is necessary, but it is not enough. Going at it again and again with a head-on approach risks forming a groove that doesn’t allow for the richness of the ways women regard beauty in our everyday lives. It entrenches the idea that our relationship with beauty is something we must overcome. It allows us to talk of our experiences in terms of a therapeutic victory (“I didn’t like how I looked but now I do”), obscuring the more complex, often contradictory truths that lie underneath." [mijn nadruk] (18)
"Rigorous conversations about the ways beauty shapes us—conversations that I hope this book will trigger—can help us come to a more thorough understanding of what aspects of our relationship with our appearance we want to keep, and what we want to discard. It’s not like the goal is to get rid of beauty culture wholesale—after all, we humans have been trying to make ourselves look better for millennia. While aspects of beauty culture are undeniably problematic, particularly for women, the reason we’ve kept our pots of makeup around is that on some level, it serves us." [mijn nadruk] (20)
"A strictly subjective approach—eye of the beholder, whatever floats your boat, to each her own, and so on—can feel pat, even dismissive. The term beautiful woman may conjure a thousand different women, but who hasn’t been curious to know whether the average person would place her among those ranks?"(23)
"This matter-of-fact approach characterizes the work of psychologist Nancy Etcoff, who probably didn’t intend to drive legions of women to their tape measures and calculators with her work. Her 1999 book, Survival of the Prettiest, published eight years after The Beauty Myth, served as a response to Naomi Wolf’s claim that the beauty imperative was a social construct meant to curb women’s growing power in the world. Etcoff, an award-winning researcher and Harvard instructor, took a different tack, attempting to demonstrate that our conception of beauty is hardwired within us.(...) Etcoff takes pains to make clear, but we simply can’t help what our eye is drawn to." [mijn nadruk] (26)
[Etcoff zit in de hoek van evolutionaire psychologie.]
"The biological basis of beauty has, in the public mind, become fact. And why wouldn’t it? Unlike The Beauty Myth, there were ostensibly no political underpinnings to Survival of the Prettiest; this is science, people, entirely based on facts and figures, arrived at by people whose worldview is shaped around impartiality and objectivity. I mean, you can’t argue with the data, right?"(29)
[Dat is ook wel een heel erg simplistisch idee van wat wetenschap is. Is evolutionaire psychologie wel een wetenschap? Ze laat hierna zelf allerlei voorbeelden zien die die opvattingen tegenspreken. En waarom is wat daar geroepen wordt de standaard opvatting van het publiek geworden? ]
"Underneath many of these studies is a fact that’s problematic for all sciences: The majority of people who participate in studies about appearance preferences are undergraduate students at the universities hosting the research—students who are disproportionately educated and middle-class. It’s like studying a campus on Saturday night and determining that North America’s favorite recreational activity involves beer bongs."(34)
"When a large number of people rate beauty, the prevailing result is going to be what we as a culture have agreed is beautiful, not necessarily beauty as we experience it individually. At best it captures the average of beauty, not beauty itself." [mijn nadruk] (35)
[Het een is statistiek en het andere individuele ervaring en beleving. Dat klopt. Maar praten over 'beauty itself' is dan kritiekloos. Als het zo relatief is, hoe kunnen we daar dan over praten? ]
"If Mother Nature has been doling out beauty unequally, evolutionary psychologists believe there’s a pattern in the cards. As applied to beauty and attractiveness, the ev-psych theory goes something like this: In order to ensure that the human species stays strong, evolution has given us an innate preference for traits that indicate fertility and a strong likelihood of health and longevity. Those traits are the ones that have remained more or less steadily seen as appealing through time and across cultures—curvy hips on women, height in men, thick hair on everyone. The idea is that these attributes function as advertisements for reproductive fitness, and we can’t help but be attracted to them." [mijn nadruk] (38)
"We may take comfort in the findings of evolutionary psychology because they confirm what we already believe.
Plenty of feminists would argue that whatever comfort stems from evolutionary psychology is a masquerade for comfort with the status quo. Indeed, evolutionary psychology at its worst has put forth theories that, even generously interpreted, aren’t so friendly to the ladies—for example, the idea that rape is an unfortunate but natural behavior (man needs to spread his seed, after all). But even less loaded research, such as that surrounding beauty, is sometimes hardly satisfactory." [mijn nadruk] (39)
[Ze komt met terechte kritiek. Maar ik voel hem al komen: ze gaat dat relativeren. En ja hoor: ]
"Yet just as with politicians and televangelists, it’s the extremists among evolutionary psychologists who garner the most attention, while more moderate practitioners simply continue doing work that may lead to a synthesis of feminism, sociology, biological anthropology, and evolutionary psychology in understanding beauty.(...) In fact, there is a growing number of practitioners who are aiming to show that a scientific approach to questions surrounding gender—including attraction and appearance—needn’t be incompatible with feminism."(41-42)
[Het gaat er niet om of het incompatibel is met feminisme of niet. Het gaat er om of e.p. beweringen hoe dan ook wetenschappelijk zijn te onderzoeken.]
"But I will argue that studies that touch on the role of human agency within the confines of evolutionary biology may blaze a path toward potential compatibility between varying disciplines. The better our understanding of the complex matrix of attraction and beauty—incorporating biological drive, psychological incentives, cultural preferences, personal eccentricities and desires, popular imagery, and social and political mores—the better all of us will be able to critique, and eventually dismantle, the more troublesome parts of the beauty puzzle." [mijn nadruk] (47)
[Het duurt lang voordat ze helder wordt in wat ze wil zeggen over de rol van schoonheid en aantrekkelijkheid. Nu volgt een zijstraat naar slechte journalistiek. Vervolgens naar historische voorbeelden van onzinnige theorieën over uiterlijk in samenhang met karakter zoals de fysiognomie, naar eugenetica. ]
"The modern science of beauty parallels physiognomy, even if the disciplines purport to have different aims. And given that we overattribute certain characteristics to lovely appearances—including, as we have seen, physical health—it’s not out of the realm of possibility to think that the science of beauty as we know it today might eventually wind up being viewed as we now regard physiognomy."(53)
"But the base concern remains: Measuring human beings on things they can neither help nor change contains an element of appraisal, and in such a situation it’s near impossible to avoid introducing an assessment of human value. And once we introduce human value into the equation, isn’t the next natural question, How can we improve what we’ve already got?" [mijn nadruk] (57)
[Waarom zou dat nu net de waardering moeten zijn die mensen geven aan hun uiterlijk? Bovendien: Waarderingen zijn er altijd, niet alleen bij metingen, ook in interviews. ]
"This desire to quantify beauty—to pin it down, put a number on it, check a yes/no box—is, I suspect, what lies at the base of the wealth of beauty science, both on the researchers’ end and in the public eagerness for their findings. The wish to measure beauty is the logical follow-up to the wish to possess or embody it, and when treated cursorily, the sciences give us a veritable checklist against which we can measure our attractiveness. Once I know a defined standard exists, at some point I’m going to wonder how well I match it." [mijn nadruk] (59)
"Quantifying beauty erases opinion from the equation; it removes subjectivity from something that is inherently subjective." [mijn nadruk] (63)
[Schoonheid is dus puur subjectief? Dat lijkt me niet. Een heel onbevredigend hoofdstuk.]
[Waarom nu dit hoofdstuk? Dat woorden gevoelswaarden hebben waarmee we voorzichtig moeten zijn, is een open deur. ]
Taal speelt een grote rol in de beschrijving van uiterlijk, schoonheid en aantrekkelijkheid. Het woord 'cute' bijvoorbeeld wordt vaak gebruikt om iemand omlaag te halen.
"Each and every word we’ve ascribed to appearance—especially female appearance—carries weight and significance, and reflects our acute awareness of the effect beauty has on our social relationships, our self-image, and our place in the larger society. The careful yet intuitive calibration of beauty words that each of us tinkers with on an individual level is a result of a collective, ever-shifting mind-set about appearance. In looking at the language of beauty, we’re looking at a larger web of history." [mijn nadruk] (71)
Woorden als 'beautiful', 'pretty', 'gorgeous', 'attractive'.
"Used as a concrete noun as opposed to an abstract one, beauty applies to women only: She’s quite a beauty. (He certainly isn’t.(79)"
"Yet when uttered of men, handsome is unambiguously a compliment, as it implies a well-built sense of sturdiness that we’re more eager to assign to men."(84)
"We’re more creative in our terms of derision than we are with terms of acclaim because as much power as beauty carries in this world, ugliness still carries more. The sheer repellent force of ugliness means that we need more labels for it. And because women have more cultural permission to talk about the parts of their bodies that they don’t like compared with the parts they do, we’ve had to develop a broader vocabulary for our less-appealing features than we have for our assets." [mijn nadruk] (102)
"Our motivations for wearing cosmetics are as varied as the tools themselves.
In fact, looking at the individual differences in why women wear makeup is a handy portal to the larger question about why so many of us bother with the stuff. Research published in the Journal of Cosmetic Science had seventy women answer questions about their makeup usage and also had them complete psychometric tests—think clinical versions of the personality quizzes you might take online. They found two distinct groups of makeup wearers: one who wore makeup primarily to conceal flaws, and another who wore it as a way of revealing or enhancing themselves." [mijn nadruk] (120)
[En dat na haar eigen verhaal waarin ze duidelijk bezig is om indruk te maken op jongens. De motivatie is helemaal niet zo gevarieerd: je maakt je vooral op om aantrekkelijk gevonden te worden door anderen of — negatief geformuleerd — uit angst om niet aantrekkelijk gevonden te worden door anderen.]
"We wear makeup because it makes us look better. Yes, yes, “better” is subjective, and there are all sorts of arguments for a truly naked face being the most beautiful any of us can get—but, c’mon, don’t most of us look better, at least by the terms of conventional beauty, when our blemishes are concealed and our eyes more luminous? Research supports this: Women are consistently rated as more attractive by both sexes when wearing makeup, with eye makeup having the greatest impact." [mijn nadruk] (123)
[Ja, en wat zegt dat dan? Dat dat de cultuur is. Maar is dat ook goed, moeten we dat willen? Maar vrouwen zijn het gewend, veel vrouwen vinden het leuk, het kan een vorm van zelf-expressie zijn, vrouwen ontlenen er zelfvertrouwen aan, dus wat kun je dan aan bezwaren hebben? Dat is dus slechte argumentatie. Noem een paar leuke dingen van X en denk niet aan alle slechte dingen van X, et voilà, X is toch prima?]
"Study after study has shown that women report feeling more self-confident when wearing makeup."(126)
[Nogal objectief die zelfrapportages na jarenlange indoctrinatie door de 'beauty industry' en de media. Nee, dus.]
"By literally concealing our anxieties and fears, makeup can arm women with a sort of shield against the flurry of stresses any of us go through every day. Applying makeup becomes an act of self-care not only through its motions—the act of simply touching oneself has therapeutic benefits—but through its results. It’s a connection that hasn’t gone unnoticed by the beauty industry, which has successfully linked cosmetics with confidence and self-care through advertising"(127)
[Waarom zou je je angsten verbergen? Is het niet beter om de oorzaken ervan aan te pakken? Bovendien doet ze hier net alsof de industrie dat gedrag oppikte in plaats van het te maken.]
"The real-life benefits of this go beyond the conceptual: The makeup wearer isn’t just abstractly seen as being more attractive; she’s approached more frequently by men. If she’s a waitress, she may get more tips from her male customers than her barefaced counterpart. Even absent these tangible effects, a woman may actually be able to change how the people around her feel, simply by putting on a little makeup: People exposed to pictures of makeup-wearing women experienced a decrease in stress hormones and an uptick in hormones supporting the immune system, as compared with people shown photos of barefaced women.That’s also part of what makes makeup potentially problematic. If wearing makeup helps a woman seem more confident, more appealing, and more helpful to those around her, it frames the one-third of women who don’t wear it as noncompliant, unwilling to perform the most basic of acts that could boost herself and others."(128)
[O, dat laatste is het probleem. En niet dat vrouwen zich alleen maar goed en zelfverzekerd kunnen voelen met make-up op en dat dat maatschappelijk zo belangrijk gevonden wordt. En natuurlijk blijft het ook niet bij make-up.]
"As it happens, all of these more or less consistent makeup rules run parallel to universal facial traits that distinguish women’s faces from men’s, a quality known as sexual dimorphism. Women’s pupils are slightly larger than men’s, giving the impression of larger eyes; plus, since men tend to be taller than women, women’s eyes are closer to men’s field of vision, making them appear disproportionately large to men.(...) Not only do cosmetics tend to reinforce facial differences between the sexes; they also tend to mimic traits that signal women’s ability to reproduce. That vibrant complexion and unlined skin? Signs of youth (and what beauty product ever promises to make a woman over the age of twenty-one appear older?), which translate to signs of fertility."(134)
[En ja hoor, daar komen de evolutionaire argumenten weer. ]
"In other words, lipstick, eyeliner, and blush are just an externalized version of the fully opposable thumb that allowed our predecessors a firm grip on primitive tools. They’re a feature that allows the human species to grow. And to a degree, it works. While there’s no evidence that women who wear makeup are more fertile, a 2012 study showed that ovulating women wore more makeup than they did when they weren’t at their monthly peak of fertility. (And since men have been shown to be quicker to approach makeup-wearing women in social situations, those efforts aren’t in vain.)" [mijn nadruk] [mijn nadruk] (135)
[Moet je die argumentatie zien. Het is allemaal weer 'van nature' en slecht onderzoek. ]
"There’s an appeal to thinking that my paleo beauty ritual is as humanly necessary as eating, sleeping, and having sex. It enriches the ritualistic aspect of cosmetics. Not only are we partaking in a personal practice that centers us for what lies ahead in our day, but we’re participating in a collective custom that’s written into our genes, one that signals not just our womanness but our humanness. When seen as something that has helped the species flourish, makeup, so easily accused of being for the vain, can be considered a bona fide human development along the lines of agriculture or written language—call it the Mascara Age. [mijn nadruk] (136)"
"let’s look at another aspect of human behavior that we attribute to evolution: mating cost. Since it takes nine months for a woman to reproduce (as opposed to a man’s short-lived contribution to the matter), women’s mating cost is higher—which, according to some researchers, translates to women being choosier about whom they mate with. After all, if you’re going to spend nine months housing a baby in utero, wouldn’t you want that baby to have the strongest genes possible?"(137)
[Alle kritiek op de evolutionaire psychologie van voorheen is vergeten en ze haalt alles erbij wat haar goed uitkomt in de verdediging van dat vrouwen zich opmaken. Maar dan komt ze weer met:]
"Most evolutionary psychologists do concede that beauty is defined by social and cultural norms as well as our genes. But whenever evolution is credited for something that costs women, and not men, a good deal of money—a projected $265 billion spent on cosmetics, hair care, skin care, and perfume by 2017 globally—it requires critical scrutiny."(140)
"Makeup can help us organize our public selves, making it a part of what sociologists would call our social “performances.” But it’s not just a signal to others; it can be a signal of public life for the person wearing it as well.(...) Cosmetics, clothing, and hairstyle all aid us in approaching various social performances with earnest belief."(142-143)
"There’s an idea floating around out there—partly born from a one-dimensional interpretation of The Beauty Myth—that makeup universally signals a strain of low self-esteem particular to women.(...) There’s even an entire subgenre of women’s writing revolving around abstaining from makeup and other vanity practices, (...) The “barefaced and beautiful” attitude zooms in on the camouflaging aspect of makeup, ignoring other reasons women wear it. That’s not to say that insecurity isn’t a part of the makeup matrix. (...) But the number of makeup wearers I talked with who framed makeup foremost in terms of self-esteem? Zero."(152-153)
"Now, self-reporting isn’t necessarily a reliable gauge of motivations for wearing makeup. But for all the framing of cosmetics as a way of exploiting women’s low self-esteem, and for all the ways women frame their relationship with beauty as an ongoing arc of self-acceptance, not once did this reason stand alone or even loom largely when I listened to what women said about their approach to makeup." [mijn nadruk] (154)
[Maar ze zegt het zelf al: dat is dus niet betrouwbaar en zeker niet als de interviewster dat zelf al niet wil weten.]
"The newer line of thinking goes something like this: We’ve spent so long denigrating the feminine—you don’t throw like a girl, do you?—that for women to cast something particularly feminine like makeup in a negative light is equivalent to admitting that femininity is weak after all. Why not embrace makeup as a way of owning the feminine and the strong? Constructing cosmetics use as a form of self-articulation and even resistance might give us a broader perspective.
This mind-set has seeped out of the circles of academic postmodern feminist thought into popular culture." [mijn nadruk] (155)
"And as for that whole “women wear makeup because society pressures us” frame of mind? Few can deny the truth of its history."(156)
"The more established women’s equality becomes, the more the idea that makeup is something thrust on us by the looming patriarchy begins to seem outdated. Old-fashioned, second wave, stodgy. Boring.
Indeed, there are plenty of numbers to support the idea that the makeup situation isn’t quite so glum."(156)
[Het is wel erg optimistisch om te denken dat die gelijkheid er al is en dat de patriarchie geen rol meer speelt. Dan zit je waarschijnlijk zelf in een bevoorrechte positie of ben je wel erg goed in ontkenning van allerlei feiten. Hoeveel bedrijven / mannen eisen of verwachten 'make-up'? En zo verder.]
"According to research published in the International Journal of Cosmetic Science, women report feeling more self-confident and more sociable when wearing their usual makeup as opposed to none at all. Their body image is better when they’re wearing makeup, and as for hairstyling, women’s mood improves on nearly all measures after a visit to the hairdresser. And in a finding that might give makeup-championing feminists a moment of triumph, heavy makeup wearers have been found to be more pro-feminist in belief and attitude than women who wore less of it or none at all."(157)
[Dat is vast een heel betrouwbare bron. Is het een tijdschrift betaald door de cosmetische industrie? Is het kritisch?]
"... something holds me back from being a wholehearted makeup evangelist—even though I wear it nearly every day. I can’t help but question how “empowering” makeup can truly be when the vast majority of us use it fully within the boundaries that have been presented to us. It smacks of “choice feminism”: the idea that if a woman chooses an action, as opposed to being shunted into it by patriarchal standards, it becomes feminist or at least symbolic of the hard-won options American women now have." [mijn nadruk] (158)
[Precies dat. En wat is nu dan wel haar standpunt? ]
"Marry our love of individualism with the legitimate complaints raised by feminists about the immense pressure on women to look good—and how this pressure makes us susceptible to the lures of the beauty industry—and it’s not hard to see why we might denigrate any groupthink connected with makeup.
But here’s the thing: Individuality exists in tandem with conformity. No society can be formed without a degree of collectivity, and we express that collectivity via aesthetic norms."(160)
[En weg is ze weer. ]
"But the extraordinary focus on whether wearing makeup makes one a “bad feminist” makes it all the easier for contemporary feminism to be written off as trivial. Look at the term lipstick feminism, the idea that young feminists base their political identity on tools of feminine power such as lipstick . . . and then ask yourself how many women you know who define themselves as lipstick feminists. In my case, the answer is zero."(163)
[Het blijft opnieuw onduidelijk wat voor standpunt ze inneemt. Wat mij betreft is ze een 'lipstick feminist' en 'choise feminist', hoeveel woorden ze ook gebruikt om daar omheem te praten. ]
Dit gaat over het “men love beautiful women” idee.
"I’ve experienced the humiliation of watching a man I was on a date with stop talking midsentence to stare at a stunning leggy blonde walking through the room. I’ve seen male friends go gaga over a particularly pretty female friend of mine. And I’ve adjusted my behavior accordingly—taking special care with my makeup before dates, and then, when I’ve been in a relationship, making sure not to “let myself go.”"(174)
[Even afgezien van dat ze weer eens bevestigt hoe make-up dient om zich aan te passen aan wat mannen zogenaamd willen — zie het vorige hoofdstuk —: dat soort gedrag van mannen is zo ingebed in rollenpatronen en mannen die daar in meegaan. Het gaat vaak niet eens om schoonheid, maar om 'sexyness', iemand willen versieren, wolfgedrag. En waarom is het gek dat mannen of vrouwen lyrisch zijn over de mooie exemplaren van de soort? Het hangt er maar van af wat ze daar aan verbinden.]
"I saw enough evidence of both of these lines of thought to know that chances were some men prized conventional beauty above other qualities, others had more unique ideas about beauty, and still others might not particularly care what a woman looked like as long as he felt attracted to her. Maybe some really didn’t care at all.(175)"
"But what these two competing schools of thought on beauty and attraction did was create not a spectrum but two parallel tales. One was that beauty was in the eye of the beholder, and that I could safely assume that if someone was drawn to me, he found me attractive as is. The other was that conventional beauty was the surest route toward landing a quality partner, and that the best way to maximize my chances of finding a match was to maximize my beauty."(176)
[Ze komt de hele tijd met haar persoonlijke ervaringen. Dat helpt helemaal niks. Het gooit ook weer dingen door elkaar zoals schoonheid en aantrekkelijkheid.]
"As much as we as a society have pushed the idea that physical appeal is the key to attracting romantic attention, particularly for women, we intuitively challenge that assumption all the time simply by being attracted to whomever we’re attracted to."(178)
"If barroom wisdom is to be believed, the best thing a woman can do to snag a date is be irresistibly good-looking—and the best thing a man can do is have a fat wallet. And sure enough, the leading study on the matter, which surveyed more than ten thousand people around the globe, upholds the beauty-and-money maxim." [mijn nadruk] (180)
[Nou, dat zal dan een geweldig onderzoek zijn. O, laat me raden: iets uit de hoek van de evolutionaire psychologie.]
"That is, our evolutionary drive pushes a man to seek out the most attractive partner to bear his children while leading women to find the man with the greatest resources to provide for those children.
Let’s leave aside concerns about the validity of this theory for the moment. For whatever the science behind the “men want beauty, women want money” line of thinking might reveal, we certainly act as though it’s true."(180)
[En daar is ie dan weer. En waarom zou je de geldigheid even laten zitten? Ook al doen we alsof die theorie waar is, dat maakt hem nog niet waar.]
"There’s a problem with believing that men pursue relationships with beauty foremost in mind. It’s not true. That study of more than ten thousand people? It asked men and women about their preferences in dating, not their experiences. In fact, most empirical data on “what men want” is actually data on what men think they want."(182)
[Klopt en dat geldt heel vaak voor onderzoeken waarbij mensen zelf moeten zeggen wat ze vinden of willen. Wat hierna volgt is een open deur. Als je iemand nog niet kent ga je vooral op uiterlijk af, als je iemand beter leert kennen wordt diens persoonlijkheid belangrijker en relativeer je uiterlijke kenmerken. Bij de een valt dat uiterlijk dan tegen en bij de ander valt dat dan mee, als het ware. De waarde die je hecht aan iemands uiterlijk is dus nogal betrekkelijk en tijdgebonden. Waar, maar wat heb ik een hekel aan haar eigen verhalen. ]
"The sensation of someone becoming more attractive over time is hardly a quirk unique to me—at least half the people I interviewed about this said they’d had some sort of similar experience. It’s so common that it has a name of its own: positive illusions. The general idea behind positive illusions is that our minds will fool themselves into thinking things are better than they actually are, or that we’re more exceptional than we really are, so that we can go about our day-to-day business with a sense of optimism."(191)
"As if positive illusions weren’t enough, people in love also exaggerate the appeal of their beloved with a bit of mental chicanery known as the derogation effect. With the derogation effect, people in relationships tend to see other people as less attractive than single folks do."(192)
"“I really think women can look at your shoes and lose interest,” says Nicole Kristal, coauthor of The Bisexual’s Guide to the Universe and founder of the #StillBisexual campaign. “I’m serious! I remember reading about a study that said there are really only a handful of reasons a guy wouldn’t go on a second date with a woman, but there are hundreds of reasons why a woman wouldn’t go on a second date with a guy. That pickiness applies to women dating women too, so that factors into my appearance—I don’t want the way I look to be one of the reasons a woman wouldn’t want to go out with me.”"(199)
"Beauty’s artifice is too complex to be written off as an exercise in inauthenticity. Still, the fact remains that when you put on cream to smooth your skin, foundation to even its tone, blush to enliven your complexion, and eyeliner to make those proverbial windows to the soul look more engaged, you’re presenting an enhanced version of yourself. Which, in a certain light—specifically, the light of love, in which we hope to be embraced unconditionally for nothing other than being ourselves—can be construed as a manipulated version of yourself." [mijn nadruk] (217)
[Weer eens een hoop tegenstrijdigheden hier. Waar het om gaat: je doet jezelf mooier voor dan je bent, je wilt met je uiterlijk een bepaalde indruk maken op anderen, je kunt dus door de mand vallen.]
"We presume female beauty fascinates men. The quieter truth is that it fascinates other women too. (...) and where there’s fascination, more often than not, there’s something resembling affection. What’s more, as we’ll see, that affection is often a sign of recognition: of other women, and of ourselves."(231)
"It’s easy to assume that the poison-apple scenario of competition is the foremost lens through which women see their friendships in regard to appearance. In truth, though, not one single woman I talked with said that competition was the first thing that came to mind when asked to think of how beauty affected her relationship with other women." [mijn nadruk] (232)
[Deze auteur is wel erg kritiekloos in haar beoordeling van wat vrouwen in haar interviews zeggen. Zou ze al ooit van sociale wenselijkheid gehoord hebben? Vraagt ze kritisch door? ]
"Self-esteem, not evolutionary tactics, may well be the driving factor behind competition—hardly news to the women I interviewed. “Most of the time I feel pretty, so I don’t feel bad about what other people have,” says Gina.
This matter-of-fact assessment speaks to a recurrent theme I heard over and over when talking to women about their friendships: No, really, I don’t compete. And in fact there’s an underlying thread of noncompetition among women, even in studies that supposedly demonstrate the opposite." [mijn nadruk] (235)
"Even if we might see particularly beautiful women as competition, we don’t see women on the whole as competition."(237)
[Zucht. Deze vrouw snapt het blijkbaar niet. Je gaat niet dagelijks om met 'vrouwen in het algemeen', nietwaar? Dat is puur een abstractie. Je gaat concreet om met individuele vrouwen. De auteur toont op geen enkele manier aan dat die competitie er niet is. Ze is vooringenomen. En haar interviews moeten die vooringenomenheid bevestigen. En het voortdurend ventileren van haar eigen ervaringen helpt helemaal niets.]
"“I still make the mistake sometimes of assuming that beautiful women get things because of their beauty, not because of who they are or what they can do,” says Ashley."(240)
[Nou, ik denk dat dat in de praktijk ook heel vaak zo is. ]
"Think of the clichés about inner beauty you’ve heard or read throughout your life. How often are reminders of inner beauty’s merits meant as a healing balm for not feeling so great about the way you look?"(241)
[Dat klopt denk ik wel.]
"ou may have noticed something in reading the friendship anecdotes throughout this chapter: Many of them relate tales of girlhood, not womanhood. A variation of “When I was younger, but not anymore” was the most common response to inquiries into the nastier side of beauty—competition, jealousy, exclusion, and the like. Such behavior is called mean-girl stuff for a reason. Just as many of us indulge in some catty behavior as tweens and teens, most of us grow out of it, usually as young adults."(271)
"Yet maturity and its lack thereof aren’t usually accounted for in the glut of studies about women, beauty, and competition. Solid as the research I’ve cited in this chapter may be, we’re still seeing a participant pool of mostly college students. So when it comes to examining women’s triangulated relationship with appearance and friendship, these studies reflect not a sample of the general adult female population but the attitudes of educated women ages eighteen to twenty-three who are taking their first tentative steps into the waters of adulthood. Were these studies conducted at the average workplace or, say, senior centers, the results might well be different." [mijn nadruk] (272)
[Dat is dan gewoon slecht onderzoek, dat beperkte conclusies generaliseert.]
[In dit hoofdstuk wordt alle kanten uitgekletst. Haar boodschap is voortdurend: het valt allemaal wel mee, er zijn heel veel nuances, vrouwen zijn best aardig voor elkaar, ze gaan goed om met hun eigen uiterlijk en met het uiterlijk van anderen, en zo voort en zo meer. ]
"I still understood that the media was harmful to women—I’d learned this in my women’s studies and communication theory classes, and plenty of discussions with friends had confirmed it—but I thought I’d stumbled into a personal wormhole that allowed me not to be deeply affected by idealized images."(287)
"You’ll hardly be shocked to learn that there’s plenty of evidence suggesting that idealized images of women—specifically, conventionally attractive, slender women—can be harmful to the actual women who view them. That knowledge doesn’t make the facts themselves any less shocking, though. Here’s just a sampling..."(293)
"So the media hurts women (and helps them), particularly weight-conscious women (except sometimes), and may (or may not) play a key role in increased body dissatisfaction (or satisfaction), body depreciation (or appreciation), and eating disorders (perhaps). What gives?"(298)
[En ze heeft weer eens laten zien dat het allemaal wel mee valt door allerlei onderzoeken tegenover elkaar te zetten zonder een grondige methodische beoordeling van die onderzoeken en de aannemelijkheid van de resulaten ervan.]
"When Jean Kilbourne released her first documentary, Killing Us Softly, in 1979, it was the only recognized effort linking mass-media images of women to the desire to be thin. That one documentary mushroomed into three additional Killing Us Softly films, securing Kilbourne a place in the pantheon of feminists who have changed the way our culture views women. She continues to be one of the most popular campus speakers in the nation (indeed, she’s spoken at half of all American universities), and she’s served as an adviser to two US surgeons general.
Kilbourne’s work was at the forefront of media literacy education surrounding body image. The idea is straightforward: Educate women about the ways idealized imagery may psychologically harm them, and women will be better fortified against absorbing that harm. Kilbourne was specifically targeting high school and college students, but the success of her work expanded the scope of her ideas. Today, in addition to dozens, perhaps hundreds, of university courses on media literacy and body image, there are organizations and branches of larger women’s organizations devoted to giving women critical skills for deconstructing media images." [mijn nadruk] (311)
"Multiple studies have shown that there’s little to no connection between knowing an image is unrealistic and feeling more satisfied with one’s own appearance after evaluating it."(315)
"Women who believe the media is harmful will behave as though the media is harmful in order to stay consistent with their beliefs. Absent this belief, they might not organically feel any different after viewing idealized images. But once you’re steeped in messages about how damaging those images are, you just might believe you should feel differently."(317)
[Psychologie van de kouwe grond. Dit zou nu eens goed geanalyseerd moeten worden. Maar nee.]
"Digital photography and social media have combined to give us the illusion that we have control over our image. And to a point, we do. But when I think back to his profile picture—and to my own selfies, which reveal not so much how I actually look but how I want to be seen—I realize that they’re less about asserting control and more about fleshing out the ever-increasing self-consciousness that social media allows."(333)
"In fact, the debate over whether social media is a blessing or a curse mirrors the debate over whether self-enhancement is something we should revel in or shun. Positivists on each side promise a fuller, more alluring life; naysayers warn of narcissism and manipulation. In each case, there’s merit in both positions. And in each case, the phenomenon in question is a stand-in for something else."(334)
[Uiteraard neemt ze geen standpunt in. ]
"Considering the ways that imagery is reputed to shape our definition of conventional beauty, it seems a beauty revolution could be at hand. And in some ways, it is."(336)
"The technologies that allow, say, a fat or disabled woman to showcase herself as a beauty are the same technologies that allow corporations with enormous resources—and individuals who support the status quo—to reinforce their place in the attention hierarchy. And by “individuals who support the status quo” I don’t just mean people in places of power; I mean anyone who has used a retouching tool to make her own photograph look more conventionally attractive, myself included." [mijn nadruk] (338)
[Nu is iedereen mooi? Is doen alsof je mooi bent hetzelfde als mooi zijn? Nee natuurlijk.]
"Social media has the potential to turn online self-presentation into a never-ending project, much in the same way girls and women have turned their own bodies into what historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg calls “the body project”—a chronic endeavor of improving or maintaining one’s physical form."(341)
"Add cleavage and teased hair to a woman of a certain age, and instead of a spinster she’s now a cougar. For better or worse, a mother can simultaneously appear to fill the whore role if she plays up the MILF factor; same with the virgin, should she start dressing suggestively. It makes sense that many women might use this flexibility online as well, making it natural to promote a panoply of various selves online."(342)
[Maar waarom zou je dat allemaal doen, dat is nog steeds de vraag, nietwaar? ]
"Acknowledging the natural fluidity of our identity—which social media can help us do—may be a move toward keeping one’s self-esteem intact."(343)
[En daar hebben we hem weer. Eerst: het is vervreemdend. Daarna: maar het valt allemaal wel mee, het kan zelfs positief uitpakken.]
"My instincts make me lean toward the selfie-as-narcissism side of the argument, but right as the chatter around selfies reached critical mass, I came across the online photo album of a friend who had been recently diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma."(348)
[En opnieuw: je kunt selfies ook niet-narcistisch / nuttig gebruiken. Echt waar? Dat had ik zelf nooit kunnen verzinnen.]
"the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty (...) Notably, the ad featured more than the standard token brown-skinned model—women who appeared to be African American, Latina, and Southeast Asian stood alongside white-skinned women. But the most striking thing about the ads was this: The women weren’t thin. Neither were they particularly heavy. It was more that they looked . . . well, like me, and maybe like you, or like any of the “real women” you know with muscular legs, padded bellies, the occasional tattoo, or pockets of wobbly flesh tucked around the spots on women’s bodies notoriously labeled “problem areas.” And for a change, these bodies weren’t on display as befores in ads for weight-loss products. In fact, these women weren’t presented as needing fixing of any sort. They looked attractive, healthy, and vibrant. They looked proud.
It’s about time, I thought. Finally, women who resembled the lovely ladies I saw around me every day were being presented as beautiful in their own right. It addressed the grumblings I’d had about unrealistic beauty standards and negative body image and women as projects for upkeep or construction—all my good feminist quibblings with how women’s bodies were represented in media."(381)
"It’s no surprise that women might be more eager to highlight their self-doubt than their self-satisfaction. In 2012, the British newspaper Daily Mail published a piece by writer Samantha Brick with the headline “ ‘There Are Downsides to Looking This Pretty’: Why Women Hate Me for Being Beautiful.” The piece, accompanied by various photos of Brick, detailed the ways her looks had brought her vitriol from women around her, from neighbors ignoring her friendly hellos to female bosses telling her to stop dressing provocatively, though Brick was dressed similarly to other women in the office. “And most poignantly of all,” she wrote, “not one girlfriend has ever asked me to be her bridesmaid.”"(386)
"the response was remarkable, not so much for its volume but for its content. Brick was called “deluded,” “deeply paranoid,” “awful,” “completely batshit,” “stunningly annoying,” and—surprise!—a “bitch.” What’s more, readers were quick to set the writer straight, letting her know she was “forgettable” or even “ugly” in appearance. Yes, the piece smacked of arrogance; yes, the Daily Mail likely ran it knowing exactly what would happen; yes, Brick’s confrontational tone made one wonder whether it was her beauty or her smugness that had earned her the cold shoulder she was bemoaning. But the level of vitriol directed at Brick was so outstanding that it was clear the response was about far more than a single 1,400-word essay. Here was a woman who’d dared to publicly say that she was beautiful—without qualifying it with a catalog of her physical flaws, without any sort of “ugly duckling” backstory, without apology—and she was practically being flogged for it." [mijn nadruk] (387)
"Self-deprecation turns into a form of power—the power to provoke a compliment. It’s a power I’ve deployed myself, and it would be easier for me to believe I didn’t know my own motivations in doing so if I didn’t have proof, time and time again, of its efficacy."(402)
[In die lijn het gezeur over 'innerlijke schoonheid' als een troostverhaal dat helemaal niet werkt natuurlijk.]
"I don’t mean to be entirely cynical about the beauty industry’s embrace of criticisms directed toward it. After all, these companies are just doing what companies do: trying to sell goods to as many people as possible." [mijn nadruk] (414)
[Nee, stel je voor...]
"Beauty matters. Indeed, throughout this book, I have laid out some of the ways beauty matters to all of us. But I find myself wanting to conclude it with a different assertion—that it needn’t matter. I mean that in the expected feminist ways, to a degree—that we shouldn’t use beauty as a stand-in for personal worth, that we shouldn’t judge others by it. Yes, of course, all that. But what I mean more specifically is that I would like to see us no longer treat beauty as a goal—including the goal of having convinced ourselves that we’re awash with it, or that we’ve reached the end of our own therapeutic beauty narrative."(425)
[En voor de rest weer eindeloos vaag geklets. Conclusies? Waar dan?]