My Thursday column is up at Healthy is the New Skinny this morning. Let’s Talk to Girls about Beauty, Too was written as a response to this generally excellent Lisa Bloom essay at the Huffington Post. An excerpt from my piece today:
…we also need to remember that fashion isn’t the enemy. Cruel and narrow standards and impossible ideals are. Ignoring subjects like clothes and hair does nothing to equip our daughters and little sisters (and, let’s face it, ourselves) to deal with the pressure to look good. All it does is leave many girls feeling shallow for still caring about beauty.
It’s not evidence of superficiality to take an interest in clothes or shoes or make-up. Girls can care about fashion while also caring about books, about sports, about nature, about making a difference in the world. We need to get past the myth that an interest in beauty makes you vain and frivolous. Girls need to be reassured that it’s okay to care about clothes and hair, but they also need reminders that they are valued for so much more than their looks. Let’s lose the false choice that says we either validate little girls for their brains or for their beauty. We need to be fearless about praising both.
This is personal to me. I’m not just a college professor and a writer. I’m also a father to a little girl. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t tell her how beautiful she is. But I also praise her for the other things she does, and as she grows more vocal, I engage her in conversation in a host of other topics. I read to my daughter every night – and I help her pick out her outfit for the following day. My little girl loves clothes as well as books. And I want to encourage her in both passions.
What’s the difference between spending hours on one’s looks and spending hours on, say, Call of Duty (which you regularly bash people for enjoying)? This is an honest question.
Of course. An unhealthy relationship with any kind of media is always a problem. I don’t have a problem with Call of Duty – — I have a problem with the amount of time that young men tend to spend playing it.
Hugo,
You didn’t answer the question.
This was brought up in the reprint column that you posted just a day ago.
The study you cited (along with most similar studies) rely on self-reports of young women and men as to how much free time they have, and how they spend it. On many such studies (the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey, to name a prominent one) activities associated with beauty are NOT counted as either free-time or leisure activities. So a young woman who spends 2 hours a week perusing boutiques to keep up with the latest fashion trends can self report having 2 hours less “free” or “leisure” time per week because time spent shopping does not count in those categories.
Indeed, the study referenced in the aforementioned post specifically cited findings that when surveyed, fathers often mark time spent with children as “leisure” but mothers tend to mark time spent with children as “caring for a household member” (block quote from Renk et al. 2003).
This suggests that there is a serious disconnect between what is and is not leisure and free time, and how it is perceived by men and women.
According to the American Time Use Survey, 20-24 year old women spend an additional 2 hours and 20 minutes a week on “personal care activities” and an additional hour and 10 minutes a week “shopping for goods and services” when compared to men in the same age group (an additional 3 1/2 hours between the two activities combined). Can truly none of this be counted as “leisure”?
Mike, when you consider the social pressures on women to pursue beauty, it’s difficult to classify all of this behavior as leisure. Girls grow up in a culture that pushes beauty and fashion relentlessly — and makes it clear that success is in no small way linked to those pursuits. Boys don’t grow up being told “Get good at video games, and you can write your own ticket.” So in a very real sense, video games are a leisure activity in a way that shopping and personal care aren’t.
All right, Hugo, that’s fair enough.
Is this the same study that treats all “work-related activities” as “work”, so that if I go to a cocktail party with colleagues at a professional convention in Las Vegas, that counts as “work”?
@Mythago– if that’s the case, then the time women spend beautifying themselves should also be considered “work”, since so much of us have careers facing the general public, and there’s a definite beauty standard there.
“…we also need to remember that fashion isn’t the enemy. Cruel and narrow standards and impossible ideals are.”
I would agree with the “cruel and narrow standards” sentiment, however I cannot fully agree with your assessment of fashion not being the enemy. I tend to look at the fashion industry as being very culpable in their ugly influence concerning unhealthy standards. In fact, I tend to view that in the same light as I would a drug pusher.
Why is there fashion anyway and what motivates and compels people to be so focused on fashion as a way of devaluing others or ridiculing them because they don’t wear labeled clothing, etc.?
Truthfully, I’ve always found a focus away from the petty dictates of fashion, beauty and looks to be quite LIBERATING. Then again, I found/find the whole idea around beauty rather burdensome anyway and maybe that’s just me.
In some of your earlier articles you address women who state that they prefer the company of men to women. I was trying to find a link to it, but can’t seem to find it. Well I was one of those women. I always felt freer to be myself—at least around some of the men that I knew, (certainly not all) who seemed more willing to accept me and to encourage me in the pursuit of other activities that made me happy, rather than the shallow, looks-focused narrow world of the females that I encountered. The men tended to provide me with a message that I was valued for who and what I was, rather than how I dressed or the labels that I wore. I felt comfortable knowing that I wouldn’t be derided for wearing a t-shirt and jeans rather than on the receiving end of vicious, stupefying nitpicking gone mad females that I seemed to encounter (the fashion followers).
I do know the point that you are attempting to make though.
Agree with Karen about the industry and its vampiric ways. They are just out to separate people from their money, which is why they keep coming up with new stuff that you have to replace your current stuff with. As for men vs. women…keep looking, you will find some better women to hang out with.
For some reason, this post makes me think of an unwritten classic – *Quinn Morgendorffer’s Guide to Fashion, Life and How to Turn the Myth of Male Weakness into Reality and Exploit It and Stuff*.
I quite agree that disbanding the Fashion Club isn’t The Answer. For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of the like, as Miss Brodie would say.
@Lucy
Getting made-up should be considered work as your in the public eye. Completely agree. Even though you may not be on company time when it’s done, just try turning up without it and seeing the head turns and the disapproving tut tuts from all.