Can We Ever Do It For Ourselves?

This song, TLC's "Unpretty," was released in 1999 and became the band's second single to hit #1 on the Billboard charts in the United States. According to the Wikipedia article on the song (I know--not necessarily the most reliable source, but the only one), it originated from a poem written about "a woman's struggle with her self-image" (Wiki). Both the poem and the song also address the comparisons that women make "between themselves and the sometimes unrealistic concepts of beauty, as it is commonly portrayed in the media" (Wiki). We see one young girl contemplating getting breast implants because her boyfriend likes the look of a large-chested woman and another girl attempting bulimia because all the images she finds in magazines are of skinny women. However, both of these women find their inner strength and decide that no one should have the power to make them feel so "damn unpretty." Their body is theirs alone, and shouldn't be controlled by the wants and pressures of others.

As we read in this section, it's not necessarily that simply to decide to stay true to your natural body. First of all, putting on makeup or using cellulite creams changes the way that we think about a "natural" body." Secondly, women are facing lots of pressure to age "gracefully"--and that doesn't mean naturally. Thirdly, what if it were possible that having cosmetic surgery was completely about the person going under the knife, and not simply about outside pressure? 

The first two of these questions have been widely discussed in our readings, documentaries, and class discussions, but this third question seems to linger. As we saw in Youth Knows No Pain, even when women (Sherry) put up a front that their surgeries or enhancements are done for themselves and themselves only, we find it hard to believe. As Shawn Levy said in the article "A Little Too Ready For Her Close Up?," "[the] era of 'I look great because I did this to myself' has passed" (Holson). Casting directors are looking for natural (but also perfect) bodies--and senses of self too: Carrie Audino, casting director of Mad Men, said that "I do think there are times when you sit in a casting session and listen to what someone things is beautiful or handsome, and there is this very skewed outlook based on their own insecurities. Because they have issues, they have an issue with someone else" (Holson). Macy Halford recognizes that some physical qualities can be see as "psychologically and physically damaging traits" (Halford). So we are now expected to either have work done that is perfect, unnoticeable, and seamless or be completely happy with the way we look. Period. The other side of either option clearly reflects poorly on the individual, and those around him or her (read: her) feel uneasy about it as well.

Is there really anything wrong with a woman getting her "nose done" if it will honestly, truly make her feel better about herself? While I was sitting at Peet's Coffee the other morning, I heard a girl on the phone with her mother talking about how she was going to the doctor because she had a sinus infection. And believe me, she was one of those "I don't care if you can hear me or if I'm about four decibels too loud for your pre-caffeine ears, I'm on the phone" types. Except the moment that she mentioned her nose job, her voice fell hushed. She stammered over the words "nose job," stuttering to correct herself, saying "got my nose fixed," and finally landing on the words "had that surgery done to correct that thing." She became so overcome with embarrassment that she left. The girl who had just been screaming about the copious amount of snot coming out of her face left because she said nose job.

This girl, along with many others, understood that there is still a stigma surrounding cosmetic surgery. People feel "unpretty" and they want to fix it. I think the real issue isn't that people are getting botox or nose jobs or breast implants, but rather that most of them aren't doing it because it will genuinely make them feel better. We live in a world where media is both the cause and the effect of the way we feel and the way we act. Without television and magazines, we might not know that our eyelids were differently shaped than Reese Witherspoon's or that our noses were bigger than Julia Stiles'. We wouldn't feel so close to celebrities that we found ourselves on par with them, and therefore comparing ourselves and feeling that we could “come closer to becoming a celebrity by having ourselves surgically altered" (Blum 154). Botox and nose jobs and breast implants are ways of getting closer to a "perfect" image of a celebrity, a person outside of oneself, instead of the "perfect" image of one's own body.

 

Is it possible to step outside of influences that exist outside of ourselves? Can we separate them from our own thoughts, or has the media's idea of perfect (whether that be altered or unaltered) become too intertwined? Even if we could untangle these ideas, would that make surgery okay? These are all questions that cannot be answered, because we are so far into this image-based society that we cannot pull ourselves out.