Beauty and the Beast

Obsession with glamor prevents reflection on inner beauty

By Rachel L. Wagley

“It’s a lie,” my friend confided to my roommates and me while we studied in the dining hall. “No one cares about your personality if you can’t draw them in by your looks first.”

This conversational revelation is hardly revolutionary, and a historical glance backward at society’s abhorrence of female writers suggests that internal beauty has rarely triumphed over external attractiveness. A Veritas Forum event last month initiated a discussion on beauty and faith. While the hushed Emerson 105 offered standing room only, the real success of the event was in decontextualizing culture’s connotations of beauty. 

Lauren Winner, a thirty-something with hair askew and thick-framed glasses, laughed about how her mother used to stress the importance of beauty. “If a five year old came up to my mom and admitted that she felt ugly, my mom would have taken her out to the mall and bought her lipstick,” Winner joked to the audience. Wearing lipstick herself, Winner challenged the conception that physical beauty is a mere external-internal conflict. “True beauty,” Winner mused, “means making your actions beautiful”: taking the rote and transforming it into something admirable. She spoke about being an Orthodox Jew and her conversion to the Episcopal Church. She argued that the Old Testament conception of beauty is not simply obeying God’s commands but beautifying them beyond compliance. Through the beauty that initially results from a willful change of heart, God can reveal himself to his people. Rules become a manifestation of love and honor: ideals in an ideal-less world. 

As I pondered Winner’s explanation, I began to consider other conceptions of beauty. The topic of beauty inevitably shifts to the physical. Century after century, mankind tortures itself with romanticizing appearance. Beauty’s definition changes over time and is culturally specific. In all cases, we intentionally choose to tailor a definition so that some are idolized and some are scorned. 

Reshaping the Female Body: The Dilemma of Cosmetics Surgery, by K. Davis documents the prevalence of cosmetic surgery in the United States, comparing it alongside others in the beauty market, like the $20 billion cosmetics market and $33 billion diet industry. Chapter 1, the “Rise of the Cosmetics Industry,” concludes by questioning why “women are so dissatisfied with their appearance that they are prepared to undergo a dangerous operation to have it altered.” Cultural idolization of youth and the reliance on and marketing of make-up create an ideal woman: the one who vanishes behind a cloud of perfume and a mask of eyeshadow. 

Winner noted that society encourages women to workout at the gym to downsize while men are told to bulk up. Women coat their faces with make-up before they leave their rooms. Magazines and the media inundate the public with pictures of beautiful, airbrushed women whose images generate a 0-10 scale on which few can compete. Because of society’s idolization of youth, women are nixed after a certain age, and an old woman is rarely “cool” in the media. TV shows depict older women as asinine and catty, often sullying maternal characteristics. 

We could argue that society negatively impacts women’s self-worth by creating unattainable physical ideals, but I argue that the reason society creates these ideals is to express underlying doubts of self-worth. 

Many of us criticize our appearance to some degree or another, and dissatisfaction becomes so habitual that it is nearly impossible to look at a reflection and declare it perfect. But even more difficult to face is the knowledge that it isn’t your external beauty that repels others, but rather your personality, which is at some level a manifestation of your internal beauty. What is most disappointing is understanding that your failure is completely your own and not an unfortunate infliction of nature. 

Critiquing physical appearance pacifies us so we rehash something we have little control over instead of examining the soul. This allows us to believe that even if our bodies are imperfect, at least we are inherently good, each one of us is special, and each one of us will end up happy. Escaping from deep self-reflection that could diminish self-worth, we produce a societal definition of beauty that cannot be reached. In our search to attain external beauty, we are excused from developing internal beauty. 

I ask myself: Am I covering internal flaws with mascara? When I model for fashion shows, am I satisfying a need to display a sort of glamour? Maybe not, but it is emotionally fulfilling when I know I look good. And why should it be anymore fulfilling than something that is less self-oriented? When I enhance internal beauty, I enhance my relationship with the world; when I enhance external beauty, I enhance my relationship with myself. Obsession over appearance undermines the quest for true beauty. 

But bring me my twinkle pink lipstick: the first lipstick I have ever owned, bought mere weeks before my twentieth birthday. After all, I’m aging fast, and beauty is fleeting.