Being Beautiful -- A Woman's Curse?

Amber Heard, Considered by "Science" to be Most Beautiful 

She Walks in Beauty

By Lord Byron (George Gordon)

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o’er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express,

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

I, for one, cannot begin to fathom the pressure on women to be beautiful. Since beauty is the most gratifying quality of feature for women, they constantly seek its ever-changing, ethereal attainment. The chase is monumental. It undoubtedly engages the entire sex. As a man, I am unable to say "I understand," yet I observe with great empathy. 

Consider the fine line between “fake” and “natural” beauty women face in their quest for desirability. If a woman is trying too hard to be beautiful, she's considered “fake.” If she's not trying at all, she's thought to be “lazy.” And, If she's trying but she doesn't “look” as if she's trying, she's achieved the apparent goal of feminine existence: the ability to trick people into thinking she didn't “try” to be beautiful, but just woke up that way.

Add to the confusion sexual attraction. Men declare they prefer ''the natural look'' on women. But, a new study from internet dating website Zoosk, analyzed 1200 women’s profiles on Zoosk, and the results were damning: women wearing make-up in their profile pictures attract three times as many hits as those who don’t. Once again, men proved to be clueless in matters pertaining to attractive females.

It should not be surprising that physical attractiveness is of overwhelming importance to women. Their concern with appearance is not just an aberration of culture. Every period of history has had its own standards of what is and is not a beautiful woman, and every contemporary society has its own distinctive concept of the ideal physical attributes.

Does beauty matter, or should women simply accept what the good Lord has given them and go about their lives? Without a doubt, the “bias for beauty” operates in almost all social situations – studies show people react more favorably to physically attractive people. Consider that research supports the following:

* Attractive children are more popular, both with classmates and teachers.

* Attractive applicants have a better chance of getting jobs, and of receiving higher salaries.

* In court, attractive people are found guilty less often. When found guilty, they receive less severe sentences.

But, getting preferential treatment like receiving a job based on looks can be problematic. After landing a position, one woman said, "Soon I realized I was just seen as the token “pretty girl”. I was hired to be eye candy for potential male clients. They treated me like a bimbo. When it was time to close a deal I had made, my manager would do it and take my commission, saying I wasn’t experienced enough to do it.”

Another reality emerges – when a woman is considered truly beautiful, she faces a female bias based on jealousy and stereotyping. When she is beautiful, other women despise her. She likely hears something like this: “What does it matter if I hurt her feelings. She has her looks and that’s more than I have. Life has already played favorites …” The criticism is like being born rich. People don’t believe that a beautiful woman feels the same pain as one less attractive. It’s a bias that people can’t shake.

One woman described her dilemma …

“Men were more loyal friends, but my boyfriends would always say: 'That’s because they want to get laid.' So I’d think: 'Women dump on me. Men just want to have sex with me. Who am I?' My closest friend was a gay man, he wasn’t jealous and he didn’t want to get laid. That might have been my only pure friendship.”

How long does it take someone to judge beauty? Quite a bit of research has tried to determine how many seconds it takes before a person forms a judgment of someone they meet. Their brains calculate your value in terms of age, social standing and how approachable you are within thirty seconds or less. Princeton psychologists Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov say first impressions are formed in less than a tenth of a second.

And other studies confirm that people pay attention to other people whom they believe are more attractive. People identify the personality traits of people who are physically attractive more accurately than others during short encounters.

“When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'”

Excerpt from “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” John Keats

And, don't forget the inevitable forces of nature. Even if a woman is flawless, she faces this relentless thing called “aging.” She has the ideal … only “for now.” As she faces old age, she may remain nice looking with her wrinkles and falling features, but she no longer will remain one of the outstandingly beautiful ones.

The Choose Beautiful campaign (2015) surveyed 6,400 women ages 18 to 64 from five cities around the world (San Francisco, Shanghai, Delhi, London, and São Paolo) on how they feel about beauty.

While 80 percent of the women surveyed said that all women have something beautiful about them, a whopping 96 percent said they wouldn’t use the word “beautiful” to describe themselves. Not only that, 78 percent of women said they don’t feel completely confident in their own beauty.

More interesting data from the survey: 32 percent of women say their biggest beauty pressure is the one they put on themselves, and seven out of 10 women agree that beauty is more than physical appearance.

Only 88 percent of U.S. women say they believe that every woman has something about her that is beautiful, compared to 94 percent of women in India and 91 percent of women in Brazil.

Were the women in the survey just being modest or being brutally honest? My thesis deals with the unbearable pressures a woman endures in her quest for beauty. I can imagine women being much too hard on themselves in the process of securing any semblance of the present standards of beauty. There’s a huge difference between accepting something and believing something.

I do know one thing. For a woman to be obsessed over her beauty to the detriment of all other areas of her life is self-defeating vanity. It serves to destroy her spirit of attractive femininity. Why would any woman do that? I fear the answer is clear – it is everywhere. Culture and media do succeed at deciding what ought to be visually desirable, regardless of a woman's own intuitive draw or what she really wants or finds attractive. This has become a part of the Barbie Doll fairy tale successfully sold to women in nearly every aspect of 21^st century society.

As Judy Scheel Ph.D., L.C.S.W., CEDS reports …

“Consider a recent cover of Sports Illustrated, the annual swimsuit edition … well, minus the swimsuits. It was never really about swimsuits anyhow, so maybe removing most of the suit is more honest. The models Chrissy Teigen, Lily Aldridge, and Nina Agdal have or appear to have HOT bodies. The likelihood that their bodies have been Photoshopped to smooth out skin irregularities like cellulite, fat deposits, or sagging skin is great.

“And, all of them have their backs arched slightly so that the skin around the buttocks is pulled to reduce the appearance of imperfections. Oh yeah, this edition of Sports Illustrated also commemorated the 50th anniversary of Barbie—a perfectly sculpted, though disproportionate, desired body type.”

(Judy Scheel. “Culture Dictates the Standard of Beauty.”

Psychology Today. April 24, 2014.)