Friday, January 15, 2010

Lipstick is not Empowerment

Today in the morning I was flipping through the pages of a supplement to a leading newspaper when I found a full page advertisement for a beauty and fitness clinic. Nothing out of the ordinary about that! Salons, slimming centres, gyms and skin clinics are making roaring business with us gorging on growth hormone injected-pesticide sprayed-calorie loaded delectables and then huffing and puffing on treadmills like a wolf that already ate two piglets. But what caught my attention was that the ad screamed in bold letters, 'Make a resolution to live powerfully, this New Year' next to a picture of a sylph like woman with a measuring tape wrapped as tight as a boa constrictor around her waist, and a lady with flawless skin staring smugly at a not so flawless me. Apparently blasting at body hair with lasers is empowering. I personally would feel a lot more empowered if somebody gave me a laser gun to defend myself just in case Mars attacks!! And oh!! there was a 'special offer on botox'. Just the thing that we women need, painful shots of neurotoxins. Ahh... ladies...feel the poison coursing through you, don’t you feel like you could conquer the world armed with your mask like frozen visage? My intention is not to judge cosmetic surgery. I suppose it may be a personal choice. But it is my problem, and it is everybody’s problem, when cosmetic surgery and other beauty treatments are projected as empowering. If anything they are setback to centuries of progress made by women.

But notice the theme of empowerment that run through almost every advertisement for beauty products. Apply a skin lightening cream like Fair and Lovely for eg. and land yourself a job, make your parents proud and also marry a rich, handsome guy. Light skin = empowerment. Slather yourself with anti ageing cream ala Ponds age miracle and get your insensitive husband to finally pay you some attention and regain control in your marriage. No wrinkles = empowerment, Botox = Empowerment, Implants = Empowerment, Laser Eye Surgery for cosmetic reasons = Empowerment!!! We all have insecurities, a fear of old age and death in varying amounts and manufacturers and marketing professionals would naturally prey on these. But disguising products that hold us captive to our fears as empowering is the last straw. Attention to physical ideals of beauty is as old as history. From Cleopatra’s lead based eye shadows, the Indus Valley beads to the elaborate wigs of various periods - make up and articles of adornment endure as symbols of the ideals of perfection and beauty of an era. But where do we draw the line between adornment and obsession? Many women go through their lifetime feeling inadequate and unhappy about their selves. A gnawing fear of losing one’s job, promotion, and partner if signs of age are not warded off like a plague eats into the collective psyche of all women. Many women can no longer be shackled by illiteracy, disenfranchisement or denial of equality in the workplace. But they are prisoners of their own bodies.

Naomi Wolf in her book ‘The Beauty Myth’ analyses this phenomenon. She argues that notions of beauty keep women under control by the weight of their own insecurities. Women expend considerable time and resources and subject themselves to insanely expensive, risky and complicated procedures in a never ending pursuit of beauty. Of course it makes evolutionary sense to maintain a degree of physical attractiveness, but the present trend of treating cosmetic surgery like just another pedicure is disturbing. Many women brush away these questions with the retort that they want to look good for themselves! Fair enough, nothing wrong about that. But beauty in itself has become a social construct. This construct needs to be demolished. In a society where people are stigmatized because of their skin colour, body shape and other aspects of physical appearance it is easy to be misled into construing a release from these so called defects as freedom and empowering. But in subscribing to these notions we are only falling deeper and deeper into a pit of self loathing. What a superficial society have we become! Freedom and empowerment would come when we break the chains of the norms of beauty and success that we are continuously brain washed into internalizing and believing by the messages that the society reinforces by behaviour and the media reiterates by images.

I agree that historically women considered beautiful have gained power and influence. But that is no reason to perceiving beauty as an essential attribute for power and success. This idea is only a cultural backlash against feminism. Lipstick feminism does not deserve to even have the glorious F word – feminism attached to it. In the guise of empowerment lipstick feminism urges women to use their sexuality and physicality to find their place in a man’s world. But why must we do it? Women do not lack in brain power or other abilities any more than men do. Why must we use ‘allure’ to obtain something that is rightfully ours? This backlash against the progress made by women by imprisoning them between narrow walls of accepted ideals of beauty adversely affects both men and women. Men are chained to ideals of masculinity as much as women are to constructs of feminity. I actually do not know how to react to the recent spate of advertisements for cosmetics targeting men. Men and women are becoming more equal – but equally confined. It is a disturbing trend with no easy solutions. The solution calls for a collective and individual introspection and a radical change in attitudes in order to foster a more healthy society in which individuality can flourish and men and women can work together in building a future free of prejudices, an equal future.

Till then, advertisers please remember – a cleft lip correction surgery might be empowerment  – but a face lift or a boob job is not – it may be a personal choice and nobody is judging – but just don’t call it ‘empowerment’.

1 comment:

pulakesi said...

nice, always good to finally hear a woman say it. one's internal cultivated attitude's ( getting a job is abt, well having brains not skin tone, unless one is indicating casting couch slur on the company) judged by superfluous external characteristics not only indicates the shallowness of the argument but in a sense a subtle way of indicating the fact that objectification is still there( A successful woman cannot be fat or sloppy in appearance ). More recently there has been a case of overcompensation, after making the world believe that being reed thin and doing crazy things for it is good, fashion says 'curves are back'. It is tragic that women still follow these trends.