We have come a long way as a specie but the most sellable product is still the feminine look.
What are looks to a woman? It is how her religion is judged. It is how her beauty is rated. It is how her morality is measured. It is how her opportunities are metered. It is how her achievements are gauged. Perhaps it’s because, even though some societies have removed the rules imposed on women, they have not changed the reward system. Society rewards men for what they achieve and rewards women for how they look. Many times the things women admire are bestowed using looks as criteria. A woman can be anything she wants to be—but she should be beautiful, and that definition of beauty can be punishing and un-elastic. We are not so much products of our decisions as we are of societal expectations—not what society says its expectations are, but what they are in reality. Sure we can choose to be different, but we can’t go too far without feeling like outcasts or psychopaths.
There’s has always been a battle over women’s bodies—whether it’s about how it should look, how much should be seen or covered or who should be the judge. The attention paid to a woman’s body reflects its power. And it is indeed powerful. In many places now, things have changed. But that does not mean things are better. In the past, society had a written code women must live by; now women make it themselves. Whether the rules are external or internal, a woman’s body still has guidelines to live by. Women broke society’s hold—and re-imposed it on themselves as they now go to extreme length to get and keep the acceptable feminine look. This is not freedom; it is throwing away your slave master—and taking his place.
Many people found time, in the very serious allegations made against Senator Natasha Akpoti, to rhapsodize about her beauty. I guess, for many, that was their main motivation for entering the fight. Once a woman meets society’s standards of beauty, society feels responsible to protect its prized object—as long as she survives those trying to pluck her plumage. But to ask any woman to keep her plumage forever is impossible, and they really try—which is why those in the beauty business will always have a job. I suppose the demand arose because men now have to share power; and once power is shared, responsibility is also shared.
The problem with chasing an unrealistic body shape is that you will never arrive. There are social theories that point toward the fact that pointing women to an impossible ideal is a conscious political action. Socializing women to be invested in achieving an unrealistically slender and highly groomed appearance diverts energies and resources away from other (political and social) activities and keep their ingenuity off that space. In addition, these theories highlight how the objectification of women—particularly through media images—leads women to internalize the need to self-monitor their bodies, in effect becoming their own body police, counting calories, layering on make-up and offering themselves to the surgeon’s knife. Another theory by Bourdieu says the acceleration of highly visual culture, facilitated by digital technologies in recent years, has exacerbated the extent to which appearance is a central source of capital worldwide. Body capital sees a beautiful body as wealth or a source of wealth thus justifying any investment that goes into attaining the perfect look.
Beauty is indeed beautiful. There are few humans who have not been enlivened by looking at beautiful woman, but this social good should never become a life’s mission. The society has to cut women lose from the tyranny of our punishing beauty expectations. You cannot judge a forty year old by the same skin glow standard of that an 18 year old radiates, and to convince the forty year old women they are free, we have to continue the worship of her beauty through her changing seasons, there she will feel no loss and try to move heaven and earth to keep a glow that time has robbed her off. And women have to rebel, not just against societal expectations but from their need to continue self-administering those rules when the society grudgingly take them off.
Samson Abanni is a Medical Doctor and Member of the Board of Editors of Pacesetter Frontier Magazine.