“Look Ma, I’m a Swan!”

We had an interesting discussion today in one of my sociology classes today about beauty. We were talking about how beauty, rather than being universal, has sort of turned into a ’social construction.’ The idea of what beauty is differs among cultures, changes over time, and most importantly, beauty perpetuates social inequatilty. For example, at a certain point in history, being as pale as possible was the highest standard of beauty. If you were pale, it showed that you didn’t have to work hard outside all day, that you had a leisurely lifestyle where you could just sit home, sipping iced tea and painting your nails all day. Nowadays people get tan to show that they have the time and the $$ to go on vacation. In the past, the waist lines of the aristocracy represented how much access they had to luxury foods. It’s all so arbitrary.

If you think about it, the so called “beautiful” people all look… the same. The same hair, the same nose, the same lips, body, etc. Like on the tv show The Swan, all these girls go in looking like themselves and through a magical process of cutting, stuffing, lipo-ing, and bleaching, they come out polished and manufactured as ’swans.’ People chase this non-existent ideal standard of beauty and they’re never satisfied. Asian women are getting surgery on their eyelids to make their eyes look bigger (or more Caucasian some argue). Women are getting their toes surgically removed so they can wear fashionable, pointy high heels…

Nice heels. . . . or my little toe? . . . . h e e l s . . . . or t o e?

Hmmm… tough choice, isn’t it? (Sarcasm).

Anyway, the whole discussion just really re-emphasized the importance of hijaab for me. If done properly, it wipes out all competition between women trying to be the most beautiful, it makes u focus on other things that are way more important than chasing some arbitrary ideal of beauty. That’s not to say I don’t have a ways to go still. It’s a constant work in progress.

Countdown til my husband comes home: 7 more lonely days to go.

~ by musingsofamuslimah on February 22, 2006.