Musings on beauty standards across the genders

 
This piece is a little disjointed, and doesn't really make a strong point, but here's a little bit of feminist rambling that's been in my head recently.A huge part of gender inequality is when there is an expectation of one gender that there isn't of another. For example, in this country there is much more social pressure on women to be physically beautiful in order to be valuable than there is on men, and the standards a woman must meet in order to be considered beautiful are much stricter than any set for men. This inequality troubles me, but I think I'm even more bothered by wondering whether or not I perpetuate it.

Though it's by no means a firm rule, to a large extent I buy into the purported female beauty standard. Thought not sexually drawn to women myself, I tend to most enjoy looking at those women who conform to it, and I certainly strive to cultivate it in myself. But in the men I'm attracted to, there is way, way less of a pattern. I may be able to say I tend to find women most beautiful when they're sleekly-built and delicate-featured, but even if I described what I might think of as my male beauty ideal-- strong-built, traditionally masculine, features on the broader and squarer side --that has hardly defined what men I ended up feeling attracted to. Hell, I can name features I actively don't like that I have not minded and not seen as a detraction in the slightest on certain men.

It bugs me that in feeling this way I might be holding women to a higher, more difficult standard than men. Sure, part of it may be that I like a dichotomy. I like women one way and I like men another; I tend to not, for example, like excessively delicate features on men whereas I might fine the same pretty on a woman. I guess when you like a dichotomy you can't expect that the same standards could apply to both. But it bothers me that some of those things that I like in women require a lot more work of than the things I like in men. Body hair removal, for example. I despise body hair on myself. But on men, well, even if I don't specifically like it, I guess it doesn't really bother me. On the other hand, even if we say I like thin women and muscular men, and that still usually involves extra effort and work put in to their appearence since they probably don't look that way naturally. In that sense the standard and expectation is the same. But a man who is a little bit chunky gets a lot less criticism for it than a woman who might be the same amount chunky. Again I, and the rest of society, tend to make the man's beauty a nice bonus to gettting the Attractiveness status while the women's beauty is a requirement for it.

I remember back during the height of The Sopranos' popularity that James Gandalfini, the actor who played the boss main character Tony Soprano, became an extremely mainstream sex symbol. I was quite shocked. Can you possibly imagine this happening with a middle-aged, overweight, not-conventionally-attractive woman? Not in a million years. The handful of female sex symbols who've held that status into their forties and beyond were the ones that kept their figures and didn't look their age. Of course, nobody said James Gandalfini was beautiful. They just thought he was sexy because of his attitude, his bearing, any number of intangible things that women latched onto. Because in our society, it's a hell of a lot easier for men to be unbeautiful and still attain that status than it is when you're a woman.

Sometimes I think that if I were a straight man I'd be an awful one. Assuming in that case I'd be attracted to the same sort of things I find beautiful in myself, my notions of feminine beauty would be pretty unfairly demanding. I wouldn't be able to keep a girlfriend because I'd probably make her feel awful about herself. "Sure, honey, of course you could stand to lose a few pounds. Wait, where you going?" "Hmm, been a couple days since you shaved, huh? Hey, come back!" It's not quite so bad if I'm just applying exacting criticism to myself, but I think I'd be disgusted with myself if I insisted on it from anyone else. Especially since I don't have nearly as exacting standards for attractiveness in men. Yeah, he might have this feature I'm not objectively into, or something that's obviously less than my ideal notion of attractiveness, but it doesn't really affect the fact that I am attracted to him anyway. With women, though, I'm much more likely to fixate on little imperfections.

I remember having a conversation with morethings5* (one of my best feminism-talking buddies) once about how critical we could be about the appearances of people of our own gender, noticing all kinds of little flaws that could compromise an assessment of that person as "beautiful," and wondering if that tendency would remain constant if we were attracted to that gender. But he thought that if we switched genders, our critical targets would switch too; if I were a man, my harsher standard of beauty would apply to men, and I wouldn't need perfection to be attracted to a woman, while he would be the same with the opposite. His point being, I think, that attraction may be influenced by a lot of things, but we tend to be drawn to the whole rather than the sum of the parts.

I hope Jonathan is right. I hope that this doesn't mean I've actually really internalized that men are just fine as they are, but women need to conform to an extremely narrow beauty standard that they must go to great lengths to alter themselves to fit. I hope it's that when attractiveness is a personally relevant question on the table, you tend to answer yes or no, but when that's not an issue on the table you focus more on the parts because the whole has less impact on you.

I was out a little while ago with Steph and Chris Knight, and when the subject of male and female expectations of beauty came up in passing, Chris said something that I thought was a profoundly insightful way to conceptualize it. Basically, he said from his perspective men care about the broad strokes of a woman's appearence, and don't really pay attention to, or worry about, the details. They might want to see a woman with a particular nice shape, but they don't notice the small imperfect lumps and bumps. Or they might prefer a woman with shaved legs, but they don't notice a little stubble or a few missed hairs. The details aren't important, just the general effect.

I actually like thinking of it that way. I mean, you can make all the jokes you want bitching about how we pretty ourselves up for men in countless little ways and then they don't even have the presence of mind to notice it. But I like the notion that while there is a desire for us to be attractive, being just "attractive" is absolutely good enough, and we don't have to worry about being perfect. Because in the real world, perfect isn't a necessary component to being attractive. It makes the expectations less oppressive, because it eases the sense of demand laid on us. Pretty or attractive is attainable. Perfection is not, and in that paradigm the burden of the unattainable is not placed on us.

In case this doesn't go without saying, I don't feel like enjoying, or desiring, pretty is a bad thing. It shouldn't be the ONLY thing we enjoy or desire, but I think it's normal and acceptable thing to like. The problem comes in, in my opinion, when the value placed on pretty supercedes the value of other things that are more important, or becomes the sole indicator of value. And it's particularly troublesome to me when that not only happens but is applied to one gender but not the other. Hell, I am bothered especially by the notion that a Valuable Man must be smart, strong, brave, and good, while a Valuable Woman must be smart, strong, brave, good, and BEAUTIFUL.

See the relationship between Jaime and Brienne in A Song of Ice and Fire for a fantastically observantly-written example of this phenomenon in our culture. Brienne is AWED by Jaime, even though at first she thinks he's a monster, because he's an extremely beautiful man. Since our sensibilities state that men are not required to be beautiful in order to be Valuable, Jaime's beauty makes him seem ABOVE AND BEYOND even simple Valuable status; to her, he's almost superhuman. She regarded Renly, also a remarkably beautiful man, the same way. And Jaime, in turn, is fascinated by the extremity of Brienne's ugliness, because sensibilities dictate that for a woman to be Valuable she MUST be beautiful. To not only be not beautiful but to be downright UGLY makes her almost subhuman.

One thing I know makes me feel better is when the standards are the same regardless of gender, even if though standards might in themselves be high. I was messing around on the Internet looking idly for pictures of Chris Evans (shut up) and one thing struck me. Well, two things, the first of which being I am significantly less attracted to him when he's not Captain America. The second thing, though, was that in various pictures of him, it became clear that he normally has a fair bit of body hair. But for his role as Cap, they waxed his chest. I am a little bit embarrassed to confess that this possibility did not even occur it me, though it totally should have. *eye roll* But I found that to be an interesting moment of equalization for me. I am a lot less bothered by the idea that PEOPLE are considered prettier when they don't have body hair than when it's an expectation that is only applied to women. Again, it's fine to enjoy looking at pretty things, but what's good for the goose should be good for the gander. It's really not fair to say that women are only attractive one way while men can be attractive lots of different ways.

I would like my sensibilities to fall somewhere in the middle. That yeah, maybe we all do look better if we go to some lengths such as shaving or something like that, but even when we don't that doesn't mean we aren't still attractive, aren't still desirable-- both women and men. And maybe throw in there that if men can be desirable even if they're not pretty, then we need to expand that so that society starts to internalize that women can be too.