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20 March 2006
The Beautiful People – Time For A Reality Check
by Katherine Burnett-Watson
As I sit here, devouring the best part of a carton of M&M’s and Hershey Bars bought to raise funds for my son’s playgroup; I lament the fact that I do not have a perfect body. After two babies (and too much chocolate) I am softer around the middle than I used to be, my butt is bigger and my hips are wider. I can’t wear tummy revealing tops because of stretch marks (not that 30 year old women should be prancing around in low riders and crop tees anyway, IMO) and in general I feel a little bit “meh” about the whole body situation.
I know that if I cut out the chocolate and went running a couple of times a week, I could drop three pounds easily. A bit more effort in the diet department and I could drop another three. I would be thinner, my jeans would fit better, and my tees wouldn’t pouch out so much in the front where my belly protrudes. But, really, why bother? I don’t mean that I wouldn’t like to be fitter, or have my clothes fit better, but even if I did lose the weight, there’s always someone who’s skinnier, or fitter, or better looking. I don’t say this in a “Poor me!” defeatist kind of way, it’s just a fact. And the images of beauty we are faced with every day are getting harder and harder to live up to.
In the 1940s, sex siren pin-up girls had real women’s bodies. They had real thighs and tummies, and although they were often trussed up in bizarre “foundation garments”, you could see they were fleshy, sexy, real women. Betty Grable, the most famous pin up girl of World War II, had cellulite! She had fleshy rolls, a wide, flat butt and cellulite, but she was gorgeous!
In fact, right up until the end of the 80s, when we experienced the “silicone explosion”, we mostly had beautiful - but real - women, to admire and emulate.
Today, beautiful women as portrayed in the media are mostly teeny tiny waifs, barely out of their teens, with not an ounce of fat on them. If I had the chance, I would grab Hillary Duff by her bony little shoulders and force feed her a Big Mac, but I’d probably break her in half in the process. And, Nicole Richie, the amazing shrinking woman, just makes me sad. It’s bad enough that this girl has lost a scary amount of weight in an incredibly short time; but the minute she got down to under 90 pounds, the lucrative advertising offers came rolling in. I find it sadly ironic that the Jimmy Choo handbags Nicole promotes would be too heavy for her to carry if they actually contained anything.
And if the skinny phenomenon were not enough, there’s another, more insidious aspect of media representation of beauty that we as regular women just can’t compete with. Airbrushing. In any glossy mag you’ll find beautiful women who’ve spent hours in the make-up chair, getting their face and hair done, being dressed in gorgeous, expensive clothes and lit by lights with enough wattage to power a city block. But even this isn’t enough. Before these photographs can be published, they have to be retouched. And the scary thing is, if a photo has been well airbrushed, you won’t even know. You’ll be looking at Beyonce thinking; how can a woman with a curvy figure like that have no cellulite? And the answer of course is; she does, but you’ll never see it in the photos.
If you want to see some amazing photo retouching, visit www.glennferon.com and check out his portfolio. It’s astonishing to see that even the most beautiful of women, including Halle Berry, Vivica A. Fox and Alicia Keys, are still retouched for publication.
But we can’t airbrush away that pot belly, those saggy upper arms or the cellulite from our thighs in real life, so if we really want that body perfection, we have to opt for something more drastic – going under the knife.
Interestingly, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons has just released details regarding surgical procedures performed last year. How many? An astounding 10.2 million. That’s one procedure for every 30 Americans. And that doesn’t count non-invasive surgical procedures like botox and chemical facial peels. What were the top five surgical procedures? Liposuction, nose reshaping, breast enlargement, eyelid surgery and tummy tucks. Looking at the touched up images on Glenn Feron’s website and in glossy magazines it’s not hard to understand why.
At age 18 I swore I would never get cosmetic plastic surgery. When I made this statement I was wearing contact lenses to correct my short-sightedness and had undergone extensive dental work as a teenager to correct horrendously crooked teeth, but never mind the irony there. But now, two babies later, and a bit softer and saggier, I can see the attraction. I know that no matter how many stomach crunches I do, or how many Pilates classes I take, I’ll never lose the stretch marks, and gravity is not going to suddenly reverse and put my breasts perkily back up to where they first started.
So whenever I get tired of seeing Jessica Alba’s perfect butt staring at me from the glossy pages of a magazine, and start to lament the softness of my own butt in comparison, I make a trip to the store and look for the cheapest and nastiest gossip rag I can find. I especially love the ones with headlines like “Stars Without Makeup!” and “Celebrity Cellulite”. How delightful it is to see Cameron Diaz with bad skin, Pamela Anderson looking a little worse for wear, and Kate Moss with dimply thighs. Don’t think I’m a bad person for wanting to see pictures of beautiful people looking less than lovely, I’m just happy to see that no matter how much money, personal trainers or dietician/chefs you have, and no matter how genetically gifted you are in the gorgeous department, even the most beautiful people are just as real, and flawed, as I am. Except for Jessica Alba. Bitch!
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