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The ugly truth about beauty |
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Written by Carol McGraw
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Monday, 12 March 2007 |
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Is plain and chunky the new beautiful?
The signs seem promising:
• ABC's "Ugly Betty" has become one of this season's most popular TV shows, and its star, America Ferrera, won a Golden Globe without looking drop-dead beautiful — at least not by today's standards. Redefining beauty "is in the cultural zeitgeist," Michael Benson, ABC Entertainment marketing executive, told USA Today.
• The fashion industry has been taking aim at models who are too thin, going so far as to banish some from the runway.
• The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty has made a splash with ads featuring gray-haired women, women with curves, women with plain faces, women who are bigger than a size 10 — basically, the faces and bodies of the majority of American women.
• Jennifer Hudson, the voluptuous star of "Dreamgirls" and winner of this year's best supporting actress Oscar, is the cover girl for the March issue of Vogue magazine. She's one of the few full-size women to make the cover; reportedly, even Oprah Winfrey was told to lose 20 pounds before she could be a Vogue cover girl.
Promising? Not so fast. Amid these small signs that our perceptions of beauty may be changing are reminders that looks still play a role in how people respond to one another. Consider this story: A sorority at DePauw University in Indiana recently booted 23 members — including every woman who was overweight, as well as the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The members who weren't kicked out, according to a report in the New York Times, "were slender and popular with fraternity men — conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits."
Or how about the attention that model/talk show host Tyra Banks received for hitting 160 pounds? "America's top waddle," she recounted to her audience in a tearful, angry rant as she repeated some of the mean comments made about her.
Here's the ugly truth: In spite of all the positive talk that beauty is only skin deep, that skinny is too skinny, that the breasts you were born with are just fine, evolutionary studies may say otherwise.
Many scientific studies have concluded that beauty is an essential part of human nature, and in the Darwinian struggle for survival, we naturally choose beauty over "Ugly Betty."
Even 3-month-old babies who have not been bombarded with societal expectations gaze longer at attractive faces than unattractive ones, studies have found — an indication that beauty is not learned.
"From an evolutionary perspective there are standards of beauty that don't change," says R. Elisabeth Cromwell, an evolutionary and developmental psychology professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.
The genes that code the brain to find certain attributes attractive are passed from one generation to another. We have evolved to look for youth and fecundity when seeking mates, she says. In other words, people are programmed to make babies.
For example, both men and women look for mates who have symmetrical faces (although they are probably not aware of it). If both sides of the face are symmetrical, it may subconsciously indicate a better chance for survival.
"It signals that if you have lived to fight off parasites, disease, famine and still had the energy to grow a symmetrical look, then you have the genetic makeup to propagate the species," says Cromwell.
Similarly, women are attracted to men with square jaws because the bone growth signals that the guy has lots of testosterone. Women also are inclined to select tall men, because height, like beauty, indicates health and genetic strength.
Men are attracted to younger women for the same reasons. When a woman gets older, she loses facial elasticity, which signals a loss of hormones and onset of menopause. Basically, biology rules.
"If all men over time were attracted only to 80-year-old women, the species wouldn't have gotten very far," Cromwell notes.
Ironically, men are not programmed to go for the superskinny look. The fat of curvaceous buttocks, thighs and breasts come from estrogen, which is necessary for successful reproduction.
"The Marilyn Monroe figure, not the ultrathin model, is more attractive to men," Cromwell says. "Men don't like emaciated women because that can signal that they do not ovulate."
So why do so many people idealize the woman who resembles a stick figure? Hollywood, the modeling industry, the media and the "you can't be too rich or too thin" mind-set all come into play, experts say.
Over time, thin and beautiful has become associated with rich and famous; we're constantly bombarded with images of beautiful people, Cromwell says, and thus we become convinced it's the norm. Men have become less satisfied with a partner who is "average" because of this warped sense of what average is.
It's a hard image to change, regardless of "Ugly Betty" and the fight against anorexia.
"They are making a big deal in New York fashion about changing, but they are not changing — maybe in 200 years, but not in my lifetime," says Donna Baldwin, president of Donna Baldwin Talent Agency in Denver, who has been in the fashion industry for 25 years. "That's because, honestly, everyone wants to think they will look like the girl in the ads. Just because 'Ugly Betty' is popular on TV doesn't mean it will sell Lancome. They want a beautiful face."
Same goes for modeling, she says. Designers still want tall and slender "because small-sized samples look 10 times better on the runway," Baldwin says. "Curvy models are not easy to fit. Size zeros mirror how clothing looks on a hanger, where everything looks good."
For all our evolutionary predispositions and ingrained perceptions, there are still glimmers of hope for those of us who weren't born with the perfect nose, the perfect lips, the perfect cheekbones, the perfect body. The Dove ad campaign, "Ugly Betty" and Jennifer Hudson's meteoric rise to stardom are combining to raise awareness that, well, we can't all be perfect.
Jessica Donaldson Cremer, a UCCS senior, is thrilled with what she hopes will be a continuing new spin on beauty.
"You grow up seeing skinny on TV, in magazines, in movies. Nose jobs, breast implants, tummy tucks — you get the idea that this is what you are supposed to look like."
But as she watched one of her best friends nearly die from an eating disorder, it changed her own attitude.
"It's OK to eat a healthy 600-calorie meal. I'm 5'2" and weighed 116; now I'm 127 and I'm proud of it."
Abby Bishop, a UCCS senior, also sees positive changes in the attitudes of her peers.
"We are starting to see that the pressure to conform to a body size is wrong," she says.
She loves the message of the "Ugly Betty" show.
"She is a normal size trying to fit into the glamorous fashion world and feels out of place. But she has so much else going for her than a size zero. I think women in real life have felt out of place that way for a long time and tried to fit in."
Such thinking heartens Rhonda Williams, a UCCS professor of counseling and human services who heads a local Smart-Girl program, which aims to boost the self-esteem of middle school girls.
"I love the fact that there is a hopeful trend to be more realistic," says Williams. "It's good to see the girls come around to an understanding that they don't have to buy that message, that it is OK to be who they were born to be, that they don't have to meet someone else's beauty standards."
Nancy Etcoff, a Harvard Medical School professor and author of "Survival of the Prettiest," doubts that mankind will ever stop worshipping beauty and youth. She notes in her book that "we want to see youthful beauty and we want to see it ornamented and adorned to the hilt."
"But we can also educate ourselves to see beauty in forms that do not automatically push the ancient gene-replicator button," she writes. | Only registered users can write comments.
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