Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Hometown Cinderella and the Beauty Myth

October 15th 2008 is Love Your Body Day:
Do you love what you see when you look in the mirror?

Hollywood and the fashion, cosmetics and diet industries work hard to make each of us believe that our bodies are unacceptable and need constant improvement. Print ads and television commercials reduce us to body parts — lips, legs, breasts — airbrushed and touched up to meet impossible standards. TV shows tell women and teenage girls that cosmetic surgery is good for self-esteem. Is it any wonder that 80% of U.S. women are dissatisfied with their appearance?

Women and girls spend billions of dollars every year on cosmetics, fashion, magazines and diet aids. These industries can't use negative images to sell their products without our assistance.

Together, we can fight back.
It may help us "fight back" if we remember that
'Beauty' is not universal or changeless, though the West pretends that all ideals of female beauty stem from one Platonic Ideal Woman [...]. Nor is "beauty" a function of evolution: Its ideals change at a pace far more rapid than that of the evolution of species. (Wolf 12)
Susan Scott, having written a novel about "Barbara Villiers Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine, Duchess of Cleveland (1641-1709), and the most famous/infamous mistress of English King Charles II" observed that
As delighted as Barbara would be today to see her story in so many bookstores, I’m sure she would be horrified by her cropped, faceless portrait on the cover. I’ve mentioned here before that while my publisher wanted to use a real portrait of her, they felt that her much-vaunted beauty wouldn’t hold much appeal to modern readers. Tastes change. What was hot in 1660 ain’t necessarily so now, and today Barbara’s much-praised “languid eyes” look more drugged than seductive.
The beauty of Agnès Sorel, mistress of King Charles VII of France, may also go unrecognised by a modern viewer. Jean Fouquet is thought to have used her as the model for the painting of the Madonna and Child I've included here.

Given the force of the current ideals of beauty, modern women considered lacking in beauty may not stop to consider, or may not even know, that they might have been considered beautiful in other cultures/other historical periods. In addition, as Naomi Wolf has observed, it is difficult for a woman to reject negative judgements about her beauty
because "beauty" lives so deep in the psyche, where sexuality mingles with self-esteem, and since it has been usefully defined as something that is continually bestowed from the outside and can always be taken away, to tell a woman she is ugly can make her feel ugly, act ugly, and, as far as her experience is concerned, be ugly, in the place where feeling beautiful keeps her whole. (36)
In Victoria Pade's Hometown Cinderella the heroine had last met the hero when she was, in his words, "Sixteen years old and as ugly as a mud fence" (29) and "He'd figured that it served her right, that it was a warning of what was below the surface - foul on the outside, foul on the inside. It had seemed fitting" (26-27). Now that Eden is neither sixteen nor ugly, he wonders "if she also wasn't the rude, mouthy, insulting, aggravating nightmare she'd been before either" (29). In this novel, Eden's ugliness made her, as Wolf would put it, "act ugly," and her external, physical transformation and her internal, emotional transformation seem to have gone hand-in-hand. Now that there is "no reason she would be called names or taunted or teased or tormented [...] she didn't have to go into any situation armed for those kinds of battles" (14).

The romance genre has a mixed history with regards to how it depicts female beauty. Sometimes, as Wolf says, it forms part of a tradition of
Women's writing [...which] turns the [beauty] myth on its head. Female culture's greatest writers share the search for radiance, a beauty that has meaning. The battle between the over-valued beauty and the undervalued, unglamorous but animated heroine forms the spine of the women's novel. It extends from Jane Eyre to today's paperback romances, in which the gorgeous nasty rival has a mane of curls and a prodigious cleavage, but the heroine only her spirited eyes. (60)
I'd like to take a look at examples of romance novels which explicitly counter the beauty myth but I thought I'd leave them until next week because today I'm going to examine a couple of novels which embrace the beauty myth. The myth "tells a story: The quality called "beauty" objectively and universally exists. Women must want to embody it and men must want to possess women who embody it" (Wolf 12).

At times the genre can be harsh in its portrayal of women who do not conform to beauty ideals. Barbara Cartland's novels, as far as I can tell, generally feature hyper-slender young beauties as heroines. Her The Unknown Heart is slightly different. Close to the beginning of the novel there is a hyperbolic description of an obese body which depicts it as monstrous and grotesque to the point where it seems to me to be more a manifestation of the terror and fear that some people have of fat, than a realistic description. It may be interesting to note at this point that one of the symptoms of anorexia is that "there is a distortion in how the individual perceives their shape and size, with an excessive investment of their self-esteem in this, and an intense fear of being 'fat'." The heroine's mother exclaims
'Look at yourself! Take a good look!' Mrs. Clay said cruelly. 'And then find me the man who would marry you for anything but your fortune. Look! Look at yourself for what you are!'
Almost as if she were mesmerised into doing what her mother commanded, Virginia stared into the mirror. She saw her mother, thin almost to the point of boniness, with a small, elegant waist [...] a handsome woman [...] Then she looked at herself: small - hardly up to her mother's shoulder - and bulging with fat until she appeared utterly grotesque. Her eyes were lost in rolls of pink fat which puffed out her cheeks and gave her a number of double chins which almost hid her neck. Her balloon-like arms showed through the thin net of her sleeves; her hands, which went almost instinctively towards her face, were red and podgy.
She barely had a waist and in circumference she was three times the size of her mother. (12)
Soon after this, all the food Virginia had been forced to consume has "converted what was naturally a strong young body into a monstrous mountain of unhealthy flesh. Not only could your heart not stand the strain, but the poisons rose into your brain" (29) and gave her a "brain-fever" (29). When Virginia finally awakens from a coma which lasts "one year and two months" (35) she has been transformed into "a girl with very large eyes in a thin, pointed face. The cheek-bones were accentuated, the jaw-line sharp against the long neck" (32). Quite how, in a novel set around 1902, Virginia could have been kept alive while in a coma for this length of time is never fully explained, and again this creates the impression that Cartland's description owes less to reality than to attitudes towards fat and beauty. The near-death experience is presented as a positive one because it is only with a thin body that Virginia gains the love of the hero, and he comments on it admiringly: "'You are as light as the proverbial feather [...] It is not fashionable to be so thin, but you make every other woman seem fat and clumsy" (108). One can only hope that Cartland's exaltation of thinness didn't contribute to making any readers feeling "fat and clumsy" but it certainly reinforces the prevailing cultural attitudes about fat and women's bodies.

A real-life example of a woman who experienced her near-death experience as at least partly positive because it made her thinner and thus more beautiful is provided by Jennifer Crusie who has described how
In 1983, as a single parent with an eight-year-old daughter, I was diagnosed with late stage colon cancer and given roughly six months to live. Through the surgeries and stress, I dropped down to pre-college levels, ten pounds below my recommended weight, and I was thrilled. I was dying, I was leaving a child behind, I was terrified and angry and exhausted and in pain, but by God I was THIN. I wore a bikini in September. Just my luck that my last six months were going to be fabulously thin and they were all in WINTER. [...] My world was being ripped out from underneath me, but I was dying svelte.(emphasis added)
The transformation of the heroine in Pade's Hometown Cinderella is nowhere near as dramatic as that in Cartland's novel, but Hometown Cinderella also seems to suggest to the reader that a woman must either be, or become, beautiful if she is to catch a man. Although I'm singling this novel out for detailed analysis as a recent romance which perpetuates the beauty myth, it should not be seen as an isolated example.1 I have chosen it primarily because I read it recently and because its message about beauty jarred in a way that RfP has described:
Very stylized and didactic novels can jar me with how far they are from how I see the world. It's one thing to read about a fictional character's world and values, but something else to absorb the message that every woman should want to be her, be attracted to the same type of man, or want the same type of relationship. Some of that response originates with the reader, but surely some is about tone and specific messages.
There is something rather didactic about the way in which Pade describes Eden Perry's appearance, and the tone is one which takes for granted the reader's acceptance of particular beauty ideals. The benefits of being beautiful are made clear: everyone that Eden meets when she returns to her hometown seems to have an opinion to offer about the way she looks and "certainly it was a boost to her self-esteem to have everyone exclaiming over the improvements in her appearance" (113).

At high school Eden was considered ugly, the "geeky, braces-on-her-teeth, glasses-wearing, frizzy-haired, flat-chested brainiac in a grade she might have belonged in academically, but certainly hadn't belonged in socially" (11) or, as Cam Pratt, the hero recalls, as a teenager she'd had
hair that had been such a bright orange and so stick-out everywhere curly that it had looked as if it belonged on a clown wig, glasses as thick as the bottoms of mayonnaise jars, braces imprisoning crooked teeth, bad skin and a body that had been as flat as a pancake with only knobby knees and pointy elbows to give her any shape at all. (26)
Now that she's an adult:
lo and behold, the geek was gone.
No more braces - her teeth were completely straight now.
No more glasses - contacts had replaced them a decade ago and eye surgery had removed even the need for those more recently, so her ice-blue eyes were only adorned with mascara.
Her skin had cleared; in fact, there wasn't a single blemish or red mark marring it. Instead it was smooth and creamy and even-toned with just a little blush to brighten it. [...]
Her bustline had developed - there was no question that she was female now, she could fill out a bra with the best of them. Well, with the best of the B-cups, anyway.
Her hair had darkened to a burnt-sienna red - no one had called her pumpkinhead in fourteen years. And the relaxer she used eased the kinky curls into mere waves that she could keep manageable at shoulder length.
So, all in all, no, she wasn't odd-looking anymore. There was no reason she would be called names or taunted or teased or tormented. (13-14)
What really jarred me was the extent to which female beauty was depicted as being quite literally a construction. It's possible that Eden's eye surgery and tooth straightening were necessary for reasons beyond the merely aesthetic, but the fact that the alterations are judged to have improved her appearance sets a very clear standard for beauty and seems to legitimise the altering of the body should it not conform to that standard. To be beautiful, it seems, we need to have "completely straight" teeth, eyes which are not obscured by glasses, and a prominent bust which will permit us to "fill out a bra with the best of them." It's worth noting here that after they first meet as adults, even as Cam notes that her "body was better than it had been," he observes that it wasn't "centerfold better, but definitely better enough" (28).

Altering the body to make it "better," particularly through surgery of the kind which would be required by a woman whose small breasts didn't allow her to "fill out a bra with the best of them" or by a woman who wants to look "centerfold better," can be risky. For those who want to lose rather than gain flesh, and who can't stay in a medically implausible coma like Virginia's, cosmetic surgery offers the option of liposuction, of which the FDA notes that
In order to understand the size of the risk, one paper compares the deaths from liposuction to that for deaths from car accidents (16 per 100,000). It is important to remember that liposuction is a surgical procedure and that there may be serious complications, including death.2
Cosmetics aren't without their risks either:
the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics—a coalition of environmental, health, and women’s advocacy groups—had 33 name-brand lipsticks tested at an independent laboratory. The results were unsettling enough to wipe the glossy grin off anyone’s face: Fully one-third contained lead at levels exceeding the FDA’s 0.1 ppm (parts per million) limit for candy. [...]

The European Union has banned 1,132 known or suspected carcinogens, mutagens, and reproductive toxins from use in cosmetics, but only 10 such chemicals are banned in the United States, leaving us with mercury in mascara, petrochemicals in perfumes, and parabens in antiperspirants. And just as none of the offending lipsticks’ labels indicated the presence of lead, the FDA allows potentially hazardous chemicals like phthalates—industrial solvents linked to birth defects in boys’ reproductive systems and premature puberty in girls—to slip into ingredient lists under the umbrella term “fragrance.” 
(Houton)
In Hometown Cinderella, however, non-use of cosmetics is linked to patriarchal oppression since Eden's grandfather, a dour retired minister of the church who believes that "men are the rulers of the earth, women should know their place" (86) imposed a "no-makeup restriction" (82) on his wife.

The reader is given lots of detail about Eden's use of cosmetics. For example, late at night, before asking Cam for
help with her electrical outage, Eden decided that if she was going to have to be seen, she had to make sure she wasn't too unsightly [...] If she'd been about to meet up with anyone other than Cam Pratt she probably would have gone as she was - face scrubbed clean, hair stuck in an untidy ponytail. Only she wasn't meeting up with anyone else and she just couldn't go without reapplying blush and mascara. (38)
When attending a wedding she "added a taupe-colored eye shadow to her blush and mascara regimen [...] she'd been pleased with how she'd looked and had left home feeling comfortable and confident" (60). When Cam, who has spent all day with her, pops out to buy a pizza, Eden seizes the opportunity to "head for the bathroom to take her hair down [...] so she could run a brush through it. She also refreshed her blush and added lip gloss" (80-81). On another occasion she yet again makes "a speedy bathroom stop to fluff her hair and apply a little lip gloss" (114) and when she makes a decision to seduce Cam she applies "a hint of eyeliner, mascara, blush and her best lip gloss" (234).

However, even if a woman temporarily achieves the pinnacle of seductive beauty, she knows that she will age. Eden is perhaps more aware of this than most women because of her job: she's a forensic artist who's been "hired to do an age-progression" (8) of the face of a woman wanted for questioning by the police in relation to a very old case. Since the woman in question is Eden's grandmother, Celeste, when Eden discovers that Celeste has put on
"At least fifty - and maybe seventy-five - more pounds? Celeste really did gain," Eden marveled. "That takes her out of the fluffy-grandma-body and puts her into a whole other weight category."
"It would make her pretty big," Cam agreed.
"And because we share the same genes, I guess I won't have another cookie," Eden said [...].
Cam laughed [...] "I don't think you have anything to worry about," he said with enough appreciation to please her.
But still the thought of a grandmother who could be very large made her decide against any more cookies and instead she stood, brought a dish of sugar-free mints from the kitchen and popped one of those instead. (150)
And is there a racial aspect to the beauty myth? Is it just a coincidence that Eden's eyes are "ice-blue," her skin is "smooth and creamy" and her hair is now free of "kinky curls"? If "kinky curls" make a woman look "odd" and if "stick-out-everywhere curly" hair is associated with "clown wig[s]" the conclusion one might reach is that many black women naturally have "odd" hair, which looks like a clown wig.3 As The Angry Black Woman observes, there are many issues other than aesthetics hiding beneath the beauty myth:
If you don’t think that black people’s hair isn’t a battleground for issues of race and culture and assimilation and bigotry, you haven’t been paying attention to the news. When a U.S. Congresswoman can be called names because of her hairstyle (or lack thereof) and people can be denied/fired from jobs for not wearing a hairstyle that makes white people feel comfortable, there is a serious, serious problem.
More subtle, though, is a pervasive feeling of never being good enough. As Latoya Peterson writes:
In discussions of beauty - particularly those on women centered blogs - white women can understand being held up to an unrealistic standard of beauty. To be impossibly thin, impossibly blonde, impossibly clear skinned, with a body that defies the law of physics is presented as something that is attainable if you try hard enough and buy the right products, though many women find these efforts to be futile. What most of these conversations do not understand is that when black women pick up these kinds of magazines, or watch advertisements on TV, or popular television shows with popular white actresses, we do not get the message “try harder.”

The message we receive is never.

You will never look like this. Not if you straighten your hair, or lose weight, or work out every single day, or have the perfect body and the perfect wardrobe to match. Even if you fit all those requirements, you’re still “pretty for a black girl.”
The financial incentive to perpetuate the beauty myth and keep women of all races unhappy about their appearance is obvious when one considers the interests of the cosmetics, dieting, fashion and plastic surgery industries. The result, according to a YWCA report, is that
Every woman in the United States participates in a daily beauty pageant, whether she likes it or not. Engulfed by a popular culture saturated with images of idealized, air-brushed and unattainable female physical beauty, women and girls cannot escape feeling judged on the basis of their appearance. As a result, many women feel chronically insecure, overweight and inadequate [...]. Moreover, the diet, cosmetic and fashion industries are often too willing to exploit these narrow beauty standards so women and girls will become cradle-to-grave consumers of beauty products, cosmetic surgery and diet programs.4
Ironically Dove's recent "real beauty" campaign, which partially challenges the beauty myth, nonetheless illustrates this point:
Unlike most mass media images of beauty that we see, the Dove campaign includes women of colour, women over 40 and women who weigh more than 100 pounds. The campaign has won accolades for its social conscience, including in the feminist pop culture magazine Bitch.

However, there is a contradiction in this “Campaign for Real Beauty”. While the website and the ads are of “real women” who are proud of their “real curves,” the actual goal of the campaign is to convince women to buy “Dove Firming”: a product designed to reduce the appearance of cellulite in two weeks. [...]

Although the campaign presents more realistic role models for women than is the norm, the central message remains the same. Beauty is not something that comes naturally to women: it requires endless effort, as well as the purchase of various products designed to change or hide women’s problem areas. (Esmonde)
The financial aspect of the beauty industry helps to explain why it has been expanding to target men, too. Wolf's book was first published in 1990 and in it she warned that "Advertisers have recently figured out that undermining sexual self-confidence works whatever the targeted gender [...] advertising has begun to portray the male body in a beauty myth of its own" (288-89).

Hometown Cinderella perpetuates a muscular beauty standard for men. This may, to a certain extent, eradicate the inequality between the sexes with regards to the relentless pressure to become and remain beautiful, but it does so by putting more pressure on men. In addition, male beauty remains firmly associated with muscular power, whereas feminine beauty is associated with a slim, youthful appearance. Jane at Dear Author recently observed that
Romance alpha males are physically overpowering. In one Brenda Joyce book, the hero is described as having a “huge club-like manhood,” and a “slab” of pecs. In the last JR Ward book I read, John is described as needing “a fleece the size of a sleeping bag, an XXXL T-shirt, and a pair of size-fourteen Nike Air Shox.” In the recent Diedre Knight book, Red Fire, the hero was an ordinary 5′ 7″ until his immortal transmogrification when he became “between six-foot-four and six-foot-five. Depend[ing] on the day . . . A variety of factors.”
The disparity between heroic heights and that of the average size for men in various countries was noted by RfP. Cameron Pratt isn't a vampire or other paranormal creature, but the connection between size, muscle power and super-heroic power is mentioned explicitly in Hometown Cinderella. Eden fears that because he has "powerful pectorals [...] bulging biceps [...and] jaw-droppingly impressive shoulders" he may be "A magnificently muscled man of steel who might not technically think of himself as a super man" (93) but who nonetheless considers himself to be nearly "invincible. Indestructible" (93). Luckily Cam is aware that despite the physique that so impresses Eden, he's not endowed with paranormal or super-human abilities.

Cam's size and physical power are emphasised throughout the novel. Even as a teenager he'd had a "body that had been buff" (93) and he was considered "hot stuff [...] The guy every senior girl - except Eden - had wanted to end up with" (10) but he "had somehow matured into a more colossally handsome specimen than he'd been the last time she'd seen him" (15, emphasis added). Later, looking out of her window and into his gym, she catches
a glimpse of him from behind, reaching long, well-muscled arms upward and grasping the bar [...] in his huge hands. [...] he was in very, very good shape [...] Her eyes lingered on that back. On those biceps flexing, bulging within glistening skin that seemed barely able to contain them [...] The man had stamina [...] and strength and a fabulous physique that she had some kind of irrational urge to get closer to. To touch. To test for herself if those muscles were as solid and unyielding as they looked.(32-33)
This isn't a one-off description. When Cam "rolled his massive shoulders," for example, it makes Eden's "eyes nearly pop out of their sockets to see it" (86), and she follows him from the room with "her gaze glued to the rear view of shoulders that were a mile wide and looked as if they had the power to easily carry sacks of cement" (87). When his "bulky arms and thick thighs had been all pumped up [...] he'd looked so sexy she'd hardly been able to breathe" (134). In fact, his body with its "supreme derriere" (167), "rock-solid chest" (193), "iron-hard rod" (197), "Glorious, glistening broad shoulders; pectorals taut and cut; narrow waist and tight abs" (198), "big hands" (216) and "massive thighs" (240) is a frequent focus of Eden's attention. There's no question that Cam's muscled body is one that Eden finds almost irresistibly attractive.

Men are catching up with women in their levels of dissatisfaction with their bodies:
One of Britain's leading eating disorder experts says as many as one in five young men are deeply unhappy with their body image.

Dr John Morgan said that for every man with an eating disorder there were 10 more who desperately wanted to change the way they looked. [...] Dr John Morgan said he believes images of male beauty in the media are part of the problem, and that there's now just as much pressure on young men to look slim as there is on women.

"The ideal male body image has changed into quite an unhealthy shape," he admitted.

In the past blokes have been comfortable with beer bellies. Now, men and boys are under huge pressures to look good."

He explains that while the slim but muscular look, a six-pack, big arms, and a slim waist, has become the cultural 'norm', it's not a naturally obtainable figure.

Dr Morgan added: "It's completely unhealthy, and to achieve that sort of shape you've got to be either working out for hours in a gym, making yourself sick, or taking certain kinds of illegal drugs." (BBC)
It seems a good time to stop and think about how some aspects of the romance genre perpetuate virtually unattainable beauty ideals for both men and women, why they do this, what the effects of the beauty myth are, and who really benefits.

1 For example, Tumperkin wrote a review of Julia James's The Italian's Rags-to-Riches Wife in which she observed sarcastically that despite the heroine being transformed into a beauty
there's a Big Mis that sends Laura hurtling back to England to defiantly regrow her eyebrows. Alessandro is presented with an horrific tableau when he rings her doorbell:

...She'd reverted. It was the only word for it. Her hair was hanging in lank soggy rags around her face, she wore no make up, her eyebrows were overgrown, her skin blotchy...

But no-one can accuse Alessandro of being shallow. Although he's disgusted when he sees her again, he's able to overcome his nausea. So long as he keeps his eyes shut
2 Serious complications and even death can also occur as a result of other forms of plastic surgery:
Surgery can never be easy or risk free - even when the patient can afford the very best care. [...] Kanye West lost his mother, Donda, who apparently developed complications following a tummy tuck and breast reduction. Donda was 58, a former professor of English who had given up a 31-year tenured post to manage her son's business affairs. Stella Obasanjo, the first lady of Nigeria, died in 2005, aged 59, after a tummy tuck in a Spanish clinic. James Brown's third wife, Adrienne, died in 1996, aged 47, following an undisclosed cosmetic procedure. In 2004, Olivia Goldsmith, author of the First Wives Club, suffered a fatal heart attack at 54 as she was being prepared for a chin tuck. (Kleeman)
Women also seem to be seeking surgical alteration to an increasing number of body parts and undergoing operations on which little research has been conducted:
A leading urogynaecologist has spoken out against the growing popularity of cosmetic vaginal surgery.

Professor Linda Cardozo, of King's College Hospital, London, says little evidence exists to advise women on the safety or effectiveness of procedures.

These include operations to make the external appearance more "attractive" and reshaping the vagina to counter laxity after childbirth, for example. (BBC)
3 Some of the clown wigs available for sale here and here are explicitly described as Afros.

4
Betty Friedan once asked concerning the feminine ideal of the fifties and early sixties
Why is it never said that the really crucial function, the really important role that women serve as housewives is to buy more things for the house? In all the talk of femininity and woman’s role, one forgets that the real business of America is business. But the perpetuation of housewifery, the growth of the feminine mystique, makes sense (and dollars) when one realizes that women are the chief customers of American business. (181)
As Wolf observes
Feminists, inspired by Friedan, broke the stranglehold on the women's popular press of advertisers for household products, who were promoting the feminine mystique; at once, the diet and skin care industries became the new cultural censors of women's intellectual space, and because of their pressure, the gaunt, youthful model supplanted the happy housewife as the arbiter of successful womanhood. (11)

I found the photo of the Madonna in Fouquet's Melun Diptych at Wikipedia. I feel compelled to add one final comment on Hometown Cinderella, which is that the sex scenes include some interesting phrases. One of Eden's breasts is described as a "smallish globe of yearning" (162) which Cam then starts "working [...] like a fragile mound of clay, kneading, lifting, pressing into it. Then he located that tightly knotted crest with his fingertips, tugging, tweaking, pinching, rolling it" (162). I suppose it's not completely unrelated to the topic of the post, since the globe is "smallish" and the metaphor of it as a "mound of clay" might, at a stretch, be taken to indicate the malleability of the female body.

30 comments:

  1. "The near-death experience is presented as a positive one"

    It sounds like the Cartland novel risks trivializing the character's serious illness. In contrast, I have the impression Crusie views her own attitude as another form of illness, less urgent than the cancer but distinctly unhealthful. Cartland's heroine wakes up to thinness; Crusie finds it a wake-up call.

    "Cam 'rolled his massive shoulders'", &c, and Eden "'added a taupe-colored eye shadow to her blush and mascara regimen'", &c.

    Goodness! That's a lot of "body" and a lot of makeup. It's very "Harlequin", though. The emphasis on makeup has always fascinated me. In real life, what man wants to hear about all the artifice that goes into a woman's appearance? But then, what woman wants to hear it either? It's the most boringly self-centered subject on earth, and in your examples Hqn doesn't appear to be trying to give beauty tips or model good conversation (though Tumperkin's example might be instructing us to groom our eyebrows). Regardless, only the woman wearing the makeup would ever obsess over it that way. Could such excessive detail be a style with which Hqn/M&B hopes to *encourage* the reader to insert herself into the story as the heroine? The anxious, obsessed heroine whose off-kilter "self talk" is the primary viewpoint?

    "The financial incentive to perpetuate the beauty myth"

    There's also a financial incentive to knuckle under to the beauty myth. I just saw an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald on Layne Beachley (seven-time world surfing champion) and other women athletes. Beachley apparently felt both aesthetic and financial pressure to have cosmetic surgery, because opportunities and endorsements go to the sexiest, not the fittest or most talented.

    The Betty Friedan quote connects to the "house-proud" idea, doesn't it. Like the "ideal male body image" trend, I think it continues to be more true of women but quite a few men feel it too. I know people who spend all their time perfecting their homes. I imagine they're doing a combination of nesting, expressing their own style, being house-proud, treating themselves to the latest gadgets... and, yes, being engines of the consumer-goods economy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It sounds like the Cartland novel risks trivializing the character's serious illness. In contrast, I have the impression Crusie views her own attitude as another form of illness, less urgent than the cancer but distinctly unhealthful.

    Oh yes, definitely. What Crusie wrote was part of a longer post about Valerie Frankel's Thin Is the New Happy, and it was an introduction to a post by Frankel herself in which she discussed her body image issues, and her relationship with her mother. I found both posts, and the comments from readers of Crusie's blog, really interesting and moving.

    You're absolutely right that Cartland trivialises the issue of the heroine's illness. What came across to me even more strongly, though, was how much emphasis Cartland seemed to place on hyper-slimness being a part of beauty. I don't think it's just coincidence that most of her heroines are so very thin, or that in this book the fat heroine is contrasted with a thin mother (which again sets up echoes with the Frankel/Crusie posts, because they discuss the way that mothers can affect their daughters' body images). I can't be sure what Cartland thought about beauty or weight, of course, but her treatment of the issue seems fairly consistent in all of her novels that I've read (which, admittedly, is only a tiny proportion of her massive output).

    That's a lot of "body" and a lot of makeup. It's very "Harlequin", though. The emphasis on makeup has always fascinated me.

    It's not something that's stood out for me in my reading of Harlequin Mills & Boons. Maybe I was missing something, or maybe I was reading different lines? I've read a lot of HM&B historicals, for example, and I don't think they have much about makeup. I've certainly noticed that body issues and assessments of the heroine's beauty are present in HM&Bs, but I've not come across many that were quite as focussed on them as Pade's novel.

    Are single-titles significantly different? And how does chick lit compare on this issue?

    In real life, what man wants to hear about all the artifice that goes into a woman's appearance? But then, what woman wants to hear it either?

    I don't know, but I have to assume that some readers are interested, or at very least that the author thought they would be and that it would add something to the characterisation, or enhance reader identification, or have some other positive effect on readers. Why would she have written the descriptions if she didn't think they were useful or interesting?

    Could such excessive detail be a style with which Hqn/M&B hopes to *encourage* the reader to insert herself into the story as the heroine?

    I think that could perhaps be the author's intention. I don't think HM&B would be behind this sort of thing because I've not heard any of their authors mention that editors insist on this kind of detail, and I think if there was a consistent policy about it at HM&B it would be present much more consistently in all the novels they publish, across all the lines.

    in your examples Hqn doesn't appear to be trying to give beauty tips

    Well, in a way I think the author is doing that, at least with some aspects of the description of the heroine, though perhaps not in the detailed descriptions of the cosmetics. I certainly got the clear impression that women with very curly hair would be considered more beautiful if they used hair straightener, for example, and that glasses are not really compatible with beauty either.

    There's also a financial incentive to knuckle under to the beauty myth.

    That's probably also true for a lot of women who aren't nearly as famous as Beachley. For example, here's some careers advice published in The Times:

    It is a fact that women who wear make-up in business generally get better jobs, get promoted more quickly and get paid more. Whether we like it or not, we live in a very visual world and we get judged on appearances.

    In fact, in a survey, 64 per cent of directors said that women who wore make-up look more professional and 18 per cent of directors said that women who do not wear make-up “look like they can’t be bothered to make an effort”.


    Wolf discusses this sort of thing at length in her book. She points out that women also face difficulties if we try to make ourselves look "beautiful":

    In 1986, Mechelle Vinson filed a sex discrimination case in the District of Columbia against her employer, the Meritor Savings Bank, on the grounds that her boss had sexually harassed her, subjecting her to fondling, exposure, and rape. Vinson was young and 'beautiful' and carefully dressed. The district court ruled that her appearance counted against her. (38)

    There was an appeal:

    The appeals court [...] held that the district court should not have relied on testimony about Vinson's dress or personal fantasies in deciding the relationship was voluntary, and that an employer is responsible for the behavior of its supervisory personnel whether it knows about it or not.

    The Supreme Court agreed with the district court that Vinson's participation in the sexual relationship was voluntary, and held that testimony about her "speech or dress" was admissible in making that determination.
    (Ranney)

    The focus here is on clothing rather than makeup, but Wolf's point is that there are also potential negative consequences in the workplace for women who try to look beautiful. She suggests that women often find themselves in a rather no-win situation.

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  3. Plastic surgery was something Olivia Goldsmith was almost obsessed by. In FLAVOR OF THE MONTH, a talented but unattractive actress has a total makeover by a plastic surgeon and becomes a TV star. In SWITCHEROO, the heroine discovers her husband is having an affair with a woman who is a dead ringer for her 20 years ago. She persuades the mistress to change places with her--she has plastic surgery, the mistress gains weight and cuts back on the beauty maintenance--and the husband never even notices! There's a very funny scene where the mistress, who can't cook at all, is trying to prepare a family Thanksgiving dinner in the manner of the wife's famous gourmet cooking skills.

    A lot more about Goldsmith and her death here:

    http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/n_9852/

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  4. "in a way I think the author is doing that, at least with some aspects of the description of the heroine, though perhaps not in the detailed descriptions of the cosmetics."

    You're right: fiction can be didactic without precise detail. I was off on a tangent, wondering whether a woman talking about her cosmetics routine would be more interesting if she were actively giving beauty tips. Back on your point, it sounds as though this Ugly Duckling's appearance is described in absolutes: as if glasses and kinky curls were unattractive in themselves, rather than simply not suiting her. If her glasses dwarfed her face, were so thick that her eyes were invisible, and steamed up constantly, yes, that's probably not attractive. If her kinky curls didn't flatter her face, that's different from all kinky curls being ugly.

    "[Emphasis on makeup is] not something that's stood out for me in my reading of Harlequin Mills & Boons."

    From my reading, it's not a constant, but it's often present to a lesser degree and it's highly recognizable because I never see it presented quite the same way in other genres. That tight focus, taking the heroine's inner monologue and setting it on the page in all its minutiae--clothing, makeup, and reassuring self-talk--sounds very category romance to me. (E.g. "'added a taupe-colored eye shadow to her blush and mascara regimen [...] she'd been pleased with how she'd looked and had left home feeling comfortable and confident".)

    Now you've got me trying to define what's so distinctive about those passages. One point is, the subject matter and style remind me of "women's magazines": Finding love, Be better at sex, What's he thinking?, Is your diet holding you back?, Inner happiness, and Makeup tips to send you out the door feeling great! Remember Jennifer Crusie's theory that Hqn Presents titles are intended to convey tabloid drama? I thought that fit based on the titles and the impulse-shopper types of sales that magazines and category romance attract. Perhaps there's an even closer relationship between novel and magazine in these larger-than-life/celebrity/superhero descriptions:
    "'bulky arms and thick thighs had been all pumped up [...] he'd looked so sexy she'd hardly been able to breathe' (134). In fact, his body with its 'supreme derriere' (167), 'rock-solid chest' (193), 'iron-hard rod' (197), 'Glorious, glistening broad shoulders...'"
    That's not a human being; it's Mr Incredible (who is himself a parody of Superman). At the very least, it's Arnold Schwarzenegger.

    "I don't think HM&B would be behind this sort of thing because I've not heard any of their authors mention that editors insist on this kind of detail"

    You're probably right. I phrased it that way because I'm often amazed at the level of planning that goes into crafting the different Harlequin lines. From reading the I Heart Presents blog, it's clear they do put that level of care into eliciting a specific type of reader response--though perhaps not in this area. I don't want to become a Hqn/M&B conspiracy theorist :)

    On another note, it's also Global Hand Washing Day.

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  5. rfp, maybe there's some influence there from the "sex-and-shopping" novels that are popular beach reads.

    Remember the fuss when Fay Weldon wrote a novel with product placement, sponsored by Bulgari?

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  6. Thanks for the link about Goldsmith, Tal. It sounds as though she, like Crusie, tackled these issues in her writing and was aware of how problematic the focus on female "beauty" is, but yet she was still deeply affected by those attitudes. I suspect that could be because of what Wolf describes as ""beauty" liv[ing] so deep in the psyche." Even if a person can understand the many problems with the beauty myth on an intellectual level, it can still affect them emotionally.

    Back on your point, it sounds as though this Ugly Duckling's appearance is described in absolutes: as if glasses and kinky curls were unattractive in themselves, rather than simply not suiting her.

    Yes, that's how I felt about the description. My impression was that the assessment of red, kinky hair looking like a clown's, for example, wasn't challenged. The hair was described in absolute terms as something lacking in beauty and the problem was solved by a change in hair colour and the use of hair straightener.

    That said, even when people say that something "doesn't suit" someone else, there may perhaps be some ideal that they're being compared to, or to which it's thought they could better approximate were they to do things which would "suit" them.

    That tight focus, taking the heroine's inner monologue and setting it on the page in all its minutiae--clothing, makeup, and reassuring self-talk--sounds very category romance to me.

    I've been re-reading Rachel Anderson's book about romantic fiction (so taking in books which wouldn't be considered "romance" according to the RWA definition), and it seems as though what you're describing has been a feature of the romance genre (and related genres) for a long time:

    In some romantic fiction of the 1950s and 1960s the account of the heroine’s outward appearance is developed to such an extent that one is given a peepshow of her entire toilette, rather in the nature of a Louis XIV levée, including a description of her bath, the putting on of her underclothes as well as her outer ones, the application of her make-up, and the combing out of her hair. But some indication, however slight, of the heroine’s physical attributes has always been an important part of the romantic novel (85)

    I agree that the Presents/Modern line is intended to include glamorous settings and rich people, so I suppose it's almost inevitable that some of the novels will include the sort of lifestyles, and the attention to fashion and beauty, that are to be found in the magazines which describe real-life celebrities. In other words, I wonder if attention to the heroine's looks and beauty routine might be included not because of a deliberate policy to do so, but because cosmetics and beauty tips etc are such an important element of the magazines' content and also because the beauty myth is such a pervasive aspect of our culture.

    Pade's novel isn't in the Modern/Presents line though. It was published in the Mills & Boon Special Edition line in the UK and in Silhouette Special Edition in the US. The hero and heroine aren't celebrities, so here the level of detail given about the heroine's appearance seems to say something about the extent to which the beauty myth affects (almost) all women in our society, not just celebrities.

    As for hand-washing, it's certainly important for health reasons, but I'd rather not think about it too much because, as with the beauty myth, one can get a bit too obsessive about it. If I thought about all the bacteria which lurk on everything I might touch when I leave the house, it would be very distracting and unpleasant. :-(

    ---

    Anderson, Rachel. The Purple Heart Throbs: The Sub-literature of Love. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1974.

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  7. Does anyone else just go "ew" -- or, even better, "ouch" -- at the thought of having the heroine's breasts kneaded. I've kneaded plenty of yeast doughs, and it just does not appeal at all. Who would want to make love with the male equivalent of a mammogram machine? Even manual breast exams don't put the amount of pressure on that would be required for "kneading."

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  8. Virginia, the whole description sounded painful to me. I can't remember a breast every being subjected to so many verbs in quick succession. I felt bruised by the end of the two sentences, despite the fact that the author describes the hero as being "careful":

    He closed around her straining flesh, working it like a fragile mound of clay, kneading, lifting, pressing into it. Then he located that tightly knotted crest with his fingertips, tugging, tweaking, pinching, rolling it with careful tenderness and heightening her pleasure with each touch, each tease, each delicious torment (162-63).

    Having a knotted nipple sounds excruciatingly painful. Later on they're described as the "diamond-hard crests of her breasts" (195) and then they get knotted again: "tightening those ruddy buds to almost painful knots" (196).

    I think the author must have been thinking of the word "knot" as

    3 a protuberance in a stem, branch, or root. 4 a hard mass in wood at the intersection of a trunk with a branch. 5 a hard lump of bodily tissue. (Oxford Dictionary)

    Unfortunately, I imagined it as

    1 a fastening made by looping a piece of string, rope, etc. on itself and tightening it. 2 a tangled mass in hair, wool, etc.

    And there was more:

    His hands were on her breasts, their grip one of leashed power that pulled and pushed and worked her flesh even as his fingers gently twisted her nipples into coins of pleasure. (198)

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  9. "rfp, maybe there's some influence there from the "sex-and-shopping" novels that are popular beach reads."

    I bet there is.
    BTW, the latest PD James starts out like a warped version of Goldsmith's story: an investigative journalist goes for cosmetic surgery and is murdered.

    "'ouch' -- at the thought of having the heroine's breasts kneaded"

    It does sound like having them palpated rather than caressed.

    "even when people say that something "doesn't suit" someone else, there may perhaps be some ideal that they're being compared to"

    Yes, and whether that ideal is addressed can make a substantial difference in how I read an Ugly Duckling story. Does the duckling feel better because she looks better? (I don't discount the power of that) or because she's grown more comfortable in her own skin? or because she turns out to be someone else, be a fish out of water, so she should be judged by a different ideal? (E.g. the CL Wilson series.) Or does she have some special talent that "makes up for" her unattractiveness? There are an awful lot of ways a Duckling story can give not-entirely-positive messages.

    "Pade's novel isn't in the Modern/Presents line though. ... The hero and heroine aren't celebrities, so here the level of detail given about the heroine's appearance seems to say something about the extent to which the beauty myth affects (almost) all women in our society, not just celebrities."

    It certainly says that. At the same time, I don't think celebrity is required to evoke that women's magazineish sense of being larger than life yet still accessible or emulatable. (Like the cover stories about not-so-ordinary non-celebs: "She lost 118 pounds! Find out how.") Anyway, I won't belabor the point. I think you said it well here:

    "I wonder if attention to the heroine's looks and beauty routine might be included... because cosmetics and beauty tips etc are such an important element of the magazines' content and also because the beauty myth is such a pervasive aspect of our culture."

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  10. You know, the funniest part about men who take steroids-or are described like they have the physique of a huge bodybuilder-in actuality they have very small penis'. So, there you go. :-)

    My family has been in the sports suppliment business for years and regularly go to bodybuilding shows like the Arnold. The bigger the man, the smaller the package. It also takes three to four months of an exremely strict diet and six day a week weight training to drop down to skin over muscle. You -anyone-could not possibly live like that on a daily basis. It's completely unrealistic. You'd have an easier time walking around with scuba gear and flippers on the streets of NY. And when they do get that big-they lose flexiblity-which is why you see them do splits and stuff. (ballet muscles are long and sinuous as oppsed to weight lifing muscles)

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  11. That description really doesn't sound pleasurable at all.

    As someone who has struggled with weight all her life, I quickly loose tolerance for novels that emphasize too much on body image. I struggle enough with that on my own, I want to escape from it when I'm reading.

    Ironically enough, however, I love when heroines are described as voluptuous or burlesque - at least for me I get a sense of a woman whose beauty is in curves and not thin-ness. I don't want the women struggling over their weight per se, but if they are described as being less-than-thin, and if the hero sees the beauty in that, it can be a quality of writing that I appreciate.

    I can't think of any examples of books like that off the top of my head, but I'll have to go look and come back.

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  12. There are an awful lot of ways a Duckling story can give not-entirely-positive messages.

    Yes, I tend to have reservations about the Ugly Duckling motif too. It can work, but sometimes the novels that contain it end up sending the message that any woman with access to a skilled makeover team (which generally costs time and money) can look attractive. I'm thinking of the heroine who buys/ has bought for her a whole new wardrobe full of clothes, is given tips on how to style her hair etc. And suddenly she's beautiful.

    Actually, thinking about what you said about magazines, it strikes me that this is something you can see there too, with the "before and after" makeover features. On the one hand it's presented as positive because it says "everyone can be beautiful" but on the other there's the unspoken addition of "but only if she spends lots of money and time trying." In addition, if one believes that everyone can look beautiful in the approved style, then the implication is that women who don't look beautiful in the approved style are lazy/letting themselves go/not trying hard enough.

    You know, the funniest part about men who take steroids-or are described like they have the physique of a huge bodybuilder-in actuality they have very small penis'. So, there you go. :-)

    Is that small relative to their vast body-size, or small compared to those of other men? If it's the latter, I wonder if informing men about that might be one way of discouraging them from aspiring to this kind of body-shape? I know that one of the new anti-smoking photos in the UK will be featuring that kind of message: it highlights the fact that smoking can cause impotence. [Details here and photos (including some rather gruesome ones) here. The impotence one is number 6.]

    It also takes three to four months of an exremely strict diet and six day a week weight training to drop down to skin over muscle. You -anyone-could not possibly live like that on a daily basis.

    Thanks, that fleshes out (sorry, couldn't resist the pun) what Dr Morgan was saying about "it's not a naturally obtainable figure."

    Ironically enough, however, I love when heroines are described as voluptuous or burlesque - at least for me I get a sense of a woman whose beauty is in curves and not thin-ness.

    I think that's understandable. I mean, if you're used to a constant bombardment of images and descriptions which present an unattainable ideal, it makes a nice change to be told that your body shape is, in fact, already beautiful. Obviously if all novels started implying that only curvy women were beautiful that just be applying a different, but equally oppressive, beauty standard. In the current context, though, these depictions are a challenge to the norm and help to present a more diverse picture of what constitutes beauty.

    I can't think of any examples of books like that off the top of my head, but I'll have to go look and come back.

    I'm planning to post some excerpts next week from romances which I feel challenge the beauty myth in interesting ways, so if you find some examples you particularly like, I hope you'll come back and add them to that thread.

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  13. The detailed descriptions of dressing up remind me of a really lovely example--the dance number in SILK STOCKINGS where Ninotchka (Cyd Charisse) sheds her Soviet uniform for silk stockings, lacy undies, and a glamorous evening gown.

    Also the "I Enjoy Being a Girl" number from FLOWER DRUM SONG.

    To me the point of the Ugly Duckling story is that the cygnet found her true place with those like her, rather than trying to meet the standards of the wrong group. It's like someone who was always an outsider in high school because of having intellectual or sophisticated interests going off to college and finding like-minded friends. The hero of Dick Francis's NERVE comes from a family of musical geniuses. He can't even carry a tune--but he becomes a very successful jump jockey. One of JAK's heroines (I think it's in SILVER LININGS) comes from a family of artistic geniuses but has no artistic talent--but she runs a very successful art gallery which, much to her relatives' dismay, sells not their kind of "high art" but more popular representational stuff by talented realist painters.

    I remember one perfectly ghastly Regency in which the whole focus of the story seemed to be on the heroine's breasts: they were too large to be fashionable and she was deeply ashamed of them. Needless to say, the hero didn't mind a bit!

    The overbuilt heroes like the one described in the blog do indeed sound off-putting to me. I like the heroes of JAK and Nora Roberts, who tend to be lean and lanky but very fit and well coordinated.

    There's also the fact that steroid use tends not just to reduce genital size but also to induce "'roid rage," which makes the user a danger to anyone close to him because he has a hair-trigger temper and is very violent.

    In most of the books I read (chiefly romantic suspense) the heroines are neither ugly ducklings nor glamor goddesses; they tend to be subtly attractive in a way that is only noticeable at second or third glance, so that the hero who sees that beauty is demonstrating more perception than the average man. Remember how in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE Darcy at first thinks Elizabeth has nothing going for her but "a pair of fine eyes," but later in the book says something to the effect that it has been quite a while since he's seen her as anything but the loveliest woman of his acquaintance.

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  14. I admit I am a terrible human being because when people tell me that men now suffer from bad body image and low self-esteem since they have failed to achieve the male standard of beauty, I laugh with malicious glee. I find it refreshing, quite frankly, because in my experience there is a large portion of the male population who is under the mis-guided notion that they are entitled to date/have sex with/marry beautiful women regardless of whether or not they themselves possess any particular qualities that any woman would find attractive.

    Not only are woman pushed to achieve an ideal standard of beauty that is beyond reach (like some sort of Sisyphian punishment)but they are simultaneously encouraged to settle for men they are not sexually attracted merely because that man happens to fancy them. "Oh but he really likes you and he's nice. You should give him a chance." Have any of us not heard that at least once? Implied in that is you should just settle for what you can get because clearly you are not getting any younger or thinner and oh, yeah, he's nice, the most nebulous of attributes.

    For me one of the most infuriating bits of the beauty myth is that not only are women are held to ridiculous ideals or that beauty is purported to be only way to get romantic love, but that where women feel desire, where women feel attraction is less important than her ability to cause those same feelings in men. It's like a reverse Pygmalion project in which a woman is only an object of art upon which a man can project his fantasies on rather than a fantasy that becomes human.

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  15. To me the point of the Ugly Duckling story is that the cygnet found her true place with those like her, rather than trying to meet the standards of the wrong group.

    I wonder if this interpretation of the story is hampered by many people's fixation on the fact that the duckling is the "Ugly" duckling, and they don't get beyond that. Another problem might be that this interpretation could promote dislike of the group of people who are identified with the ducks. In the examples you give, the ducks have musical talent and artistic talent. I wonder if some readers might decide that those people/ducks are elitist? Obviously if the story was about

    someone who was always an outsider in high school because of having intellectual or sophisticated interests going off to college and finding like-minded friends

    then it would go in the opposite direction, defending the group with intellectual/sophisticated interests.

    Since you mentioned Krentz, that reminded me that she's written some novels in which there are some rather effete academics who dress in white and like obscure poetry whose meaning they meditate on at length. I can't remember the titles or which name she wrote those books under. The point seemed to be that the heroines didn't really fit in with them, so at least one of them had to find "primitive" man whose psychic powers were more to do with hunting than restrained intellectualism. I suppose it could be thought of as an Ugly Duckling theme as you describe it, but it didn't seem particularly flattering to intellectuals. The same dynamic's at work in Sweet Starfire, in which the heroine is descended from intellectual parents. In her world the intellectuals are so emotionally affected by the sight of violence that it can kill them. The heroine, however, is not an intellectual and pacifist, and therefore leaves their enclosed city.

    I know Krentz has got an academic who's a hero in Absolutely Positively, but he's a bit of a duckling himself, since he's a mixture and again has the hyper-fast reflexes of a hunter.

    Remember how in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE Darcy at first thinks Elizabeth has nothing going for her but "a pair of fine eyes,"

    Yes, I was thinking of looking at that in a bit more detail in my next post, because I think the way opinions about the heroine's beauty fit into the development of the central relationship is interesting.

    I admit I am a terrible human being because when people tell me that men now suffer from bad body image and low self-esteem since they have failed to achieve the male standard of beauty, I laugh with malicious glee.

    The Wikipedia entry on schadenfreude says that

    A New York Times article in 2002 cited a number of scientific studies of schadenfreude, which it defined as "delighting in others' misfortune." Many such studies are based on social comparison theory, the idea that when people around us have bad luck, we look better to ourselves. Other researchers have found that people with low self-esteem are more likely to feel schadenfreude than are people who have high self-esteem.

    It seems to me that women as a group have been made to feel low self-esteem about our looks, or at least to feel constant anxiety about it, and men are set up as the target and judges of female beauty. When the tables are turned, it would make sense according to these scientific findings, that some women would feel glee/schadenfreude.

    they are simultaneously encouraged to settle for men they are not sexually attracted merely because that man happens to fancy them. "Oh but he really likes you and he's nice. You should give him a chance." Have any of us not heard that at least once?

    I haven't, perhaps because there were almost no men wanting a chance to go out with me. Also, I got married quite young, which took me out of the dating-game altogether. So perhaps my circumstances meant that I never experienced this particular pressure. And it may also explain why I've not had this experience either:

    in my experience there is a large portion of the male population who is under the mis-guided notion that they are entitled to date/have sex with/marry beautiful women regardless of whether or not they themselves possess any particular qualities that any woman would find attractive.

    I think in some ways I was lucky that so few men found me attractive. But if someone had found me attractive, and I hadn't initially found him attractive (but didn't find him repulsive or scary or boring), I'd probably have given him a chance, because my experience is that my perception of a man's attractiveness can change as I get to know him better and like him more. Conversely, someone I might initially have found attractive can seem really repulsive to me if I come to dislike their personality.

    As I mentioned, though, I wasn't in the dating-pool for long, so I'm drawing those conclusions mostly from how I've felt about actors in films. My opinion of their attractiveness depends in large part on the personality of the characters they were playing.

    where women feel desire, where women feel attraction is less important than her ability to cause those same feelings in men

    I think that might relate to the economics of sex. I'm thinking in particular of Baumeister and Vohs's paper which I discussed (quite a long way through) this post. Here's a short extract from the abstract for their article:

    A heterosexual community can be analyzed as a marketplace in which men seek to acquire sex from women by offering other resources in exchange. Societies will therefore define gender roles as if women are sellers and men buyers of sex.

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  16. Angela--Amen, Sister! One of my occasional guilty pleasures is DR. PHIL, where lardassed slobs often complain that their wives have gained 30 lbs. since their wedding day (and borne them three children, but that doesn't count) so they are entitled to call them names and cheat on them with any pole dancer who will have them.

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  17. I think in some ways I was lucky that so few men found me attractive. But if someone had found me attractive, and I hadn't initially found him attractive (but didn't find him repulsive or scary or boring), I'd probably have given him a chance, because my experience is that my perception of a man's attractiveness can change as I get to know him better and like him more. Conversely, someone I might initially have found attractive can seem really repulsive to me if I come to dislike their personality.

    I myself am not a big dater and most of my comments were based on observation of those around me rather than personal experience. Certainly, there is a portion of the male population that does not feel this way; however, I firmly believe that no matter how much low self-esteem a man may acquire due to magazines and television shows that depict idealized standards of beauty they will never experience the added problem of having their bodies considered communal property regardless of whether or not they are beautiful. I just think that it is more acute for beautiful women than for women who do not fit that mold as much. So I certainly agree with Baumeister and Voh's about the marketplace.

    they are entitled to call them names and cheat on them with any pole dancer who will have them. That's what gets me: the sense of entitlement that if not an overt aspect of male character is often a dark presence in the psyche. Even some of the best men I know are often blind to the double standards about body and beauty.

    I'm not even comfortable using the term "beautiful" because I feel it is as arbitrary and nebulous as the word "nice" but I suppose that is the point of the post. In any case, I have long held that the standard of beauty is not so much about being beautiful as say art or architecture or nature but about being as homogeneously attractive as possible. I realized this whilst watching "Beauty and the Geek" when I say the beauties first thing in the morning without their make-up. They weren't particularly beautiful without MAC.

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  18. I think if anyone is wondering about whether romance novels uphold dominant beauty norms they just have to look at the covers. And reading the books wouldn't change their minds.

    How many romances have you read about a woman who was not at least pretty? Sure, we are seeing more of those, but it's more likely the heroine feels unattractive, when the reader is cued to her attractiveness through a male character's eyes (and it's usually not that the hero alone finds her attractive: usually others have to as well, often for him to notice her in the first place).

    But even if we had lots and lots of romances featuring unattractive heroines, the problem wouldn't be solved (whatever that problem is, and there are several different ways to look at it: it's unrepresentative, it's demeaning, it's oppressive, it's boring and unimaginative, whatever).

    As Laura mentions, beauty myths are shot through with all kinds of intersecting norms. To be beautiful isn't just to be white Anglo, it's also to be young, healthy, and able bodied to name just a few.

    And I think the norms are more constraining in both life and romance novels for women. I can think of a lot of romance heroes who are disabled, perhaps with a mobility disorder or PTSD, from war, scarred from whips or beatings, and/or not conventionally attractive or handsome (his nose is too long, his jaw is too stern, etc.), and their ages range wider than heroines', but I can recall very few heroines who deviate at all from a pretty narrow definition of beauty.

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  19. As a practical matter, I'll pass along the recommendation of my grandmother (born 1871-died 1963) who said that a girl should never accept a date with a man who hadn't already seen her after she'd spent the day helping her father clean out the garage.

    Feel free to spread that wisdom among the young women of your acquaintance :)

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  20. Laura, you are right about the negatives that "Ugly Duckling" suggests about the duck community: but isn't it merited? Don't they mock the UD for being different and call it ugly? I think there's a reason Anderson made the story about ducks and swans, as to most observers swans are much more beautiful than ducks anyway. I wonder what the story would be like if the ducks had been kind and supportive to the cygnet in their midst? Maybe that's worth trying.

    As it happens, I just reread SWEET STARFIRE. The point is explicitly made that the Harmonics couldn't survive without the Wolves. The Harmonics' city even has Wolf gate guards. The hero points out that the Harmonics are a cultural luxury, and the Wolves value and support them because they represent the mostly unattainable best of human qualities. In fact, the previous inhabitants, the "Ghosts," died out because the whole society evolved into the equivalent of the Harmonics. There's a very dystopian version of the same theme in John D. MacDonald's WINE OF THE DREAMERS.

    The same thing applies to the similar group in Castle's St. Helens series. In both cases, the "swans," if we can truly call them that, are supported by the general, more Darwinian culture; in return, they provide the idealism that the human race needs, as well as discoveries and inventions that advance progress.

    I admit that my interpretation of the Ugly Duckling story is not the norm; but I think it works.

    WV: qluadouc--Inuit for "ugly duckling"

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  21. Just thought I'd mention a scene that I can't forget and which makes me cringe every time I think of it. In the TV-film version of Larry McMurtry's BUFFALO GIRLS, Calamity Jane (Anjelica Huston),who has a longstanding unrequited crush on Wild Bill Hickok, is persuaded by her friend Dora the madam to get gussied up like a real girl instead of her usual buffalo-hunter gear, so he'll look at her differently. He takes one look at her and roars with laughter.

    Later that evening they wind up in the hay, but I still don't understand why she didn't shoot him. I would have.

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  22. "[Krentz has] written some novels in which there are some rather effete academics who dress in white and like obscure poetry whose meaning they meditate on at length. ... the heroines didn't really fit in with them, so at least one of them had to find "primitive" man whose psychic powers were more to do with hunting than restrained intellectualism. ... it didn't seem particularly flattering to intellectuals."

    I've seen that theme quite a few times: the intellectual, ineffectual, weedy, or academic fiancé she abandons for her "real" love. I think it functions rather like the historical-romance convention of the impotent first husband. In both cases, one of the subtexts is sometimes "real love with a real man". The "other" man doesn't fit the male beauty standard or the manly behavior standard.

    It's not only a male beauty/behavior standard, though; I think there's an element of culture war there. I've seen "intellectuals" dissed even when they're not part of a love triangle. Gwynne Forster's After The Loving, which I read as a strongly didactic work, has a strange interlude in which the heroine caters a party for what's described several times as (don't have the book, but this is close) a fraternity for intellectuals. (But not a "Greek" university fraternity! That's carefully specified.) Drunkenness and pot smoking ensue (which is odd, as a Greek frat seems more that type than a group of middle-aged intellectuals), and both hero/ine are horrified at the behavior of these intellectuals (same description repeated). In the context of an aspirational, message-laden book, the "intellectuals" read to me like a social placeholder against which to assert the hero/ine's shared values.

    On the other hand, Kelley Armstrong's Bitten (urban fantasy romance) shows Elena choosing between Mr Weedy and Mr Wolf--but Mr Wolf is an academic. The wolf turns out to be closer to Elena's true nature, but that's not necessarily portrayed as a good thing: both Elena and her wolf-lover are troubled misfits. That combination of themes struck me as unusual.

    "isn't it merited? Don't [the duck community] mock the UD for being different and call it ugly?"

    Once in high school I had to conduct a mock trial of Hansel and Gretel as vandals, housebreakers, con artists, and ultimately murderers who pushed a helpless old woman into her own oven. Then there's Goldilocks, a chilling story of home invasion. Red Riding Hood, the original girl who cried Wolf and got a man in trouble for trying to help out. And oh, so many more.

    "As a practical matter, I'll pass along the recommendation of my grandmother (born 1871-died 1963) who said that a girl should never accept a date with a man who hadn't already seen her after she'd spent the day helping her father clean out the garage."

    Thank you, Virginia. Though it strikes me that my father will be the primary beneficiary....

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  23. And I think the norms are more constraining in both life and romance novels for women. I can think of a lot of romance heroes who are disabled, perhaps with a mobility disorder or PTSD [...] but I can recall very few heroines who deviate at all from a pretty narrow definition of beauty

    I think you're right. Women are more constrained in terms of how they can look and still be deemed attractive. Women are also more constrained in how they can act and still be considered heroine-material. Not that I'd necessarily want heroines to start acting like some of the more obnoxious romance-heroes, of course, but the inequality's there too. Appearance and life-history are often interconnected, I think, because one can "read" the hero's experience in his scars etc, for example.

    a girl should never accept a date with a man who hadn't already seen her after she'd spent the day helping her father clean out the garage.

    In my case it was having spent a few Sundays digging coastal paths, planting grass by the sea-shore to prevent erosion and picking up litter on the local beach, but I think the principle must be the same ;-)

    Laura, you are right about the negatives that "Ugly Duckling" suggests about the duck community: but isn't it merited? Don't they mock the UD for being different and call it ugly?

    You make some good points, but at the same time, two wrongs don't make a right and it would be dangerous to stoke the fires of anti-duck prejudice. As you say, "to most observers swans are much more beautiful than ducks anyway" and in the UK swans have special legal status which ducks don't, so in general ducks suffer a lot of discrimination relative to swans.

    It's not only a male beauty/behavior standard, though; I think there's an element of culture war there. I've seen "intellectuals" dissed even when they're not part of a love triangle.

    I think you may well be right, sadly.

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  24. Laura, at least people don't eat swans any more, as they did in the days of Carmina Burana:

    http://tinyurl.com/5bamqe

    I think the "intellectual fraternity" referred to must be Mensa. I once attended a Mensa meeting, as a guest, in Berkeley; I'd say the description above wasn't that far off, except that it omits the paranoia.

    JAK's TOO WILD TO WED has an academic setting; the heroine is a college librarian. It mostly takes place at a rather weird version of a Society for Creative Anachronism festival, at which a large number of the participants are academics.

    rfp, you should take a look at THE ELSINORE APPEAL, a retrial of Hamlet put on by the New York Bar Association, with judges and English professors presiding.

    And you might like to take a look at this, where Stephen King compares chick lit to "manfiction":

    http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20225323,00.html

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  25. Talpianna, the Hamlet looks like fun. The Stephen King article, however, is dumb to a degree that I at first thought had to be deliberate, except that his logic is so startlingly crummy.

    He makes one good point, and quite appropriate to this comment thread:

    "while it's true that manfiction can be guilty of objectifying women, chick lit often does the same thing to men. Reading Sandra Brown or Jodi Picoult, I'm sometimes reminded of an old Julie Brown song, 'I Like 'Em Big and Stupid.'"

    Fair enough.

    However, this? Is a false premise based on sheer dumbitude:

    "Women like stories in which a gal meets a handsome (and possibly dangerous) hunk on a tropic isle; men like to imagine going to war against an army of bad guys with a Beretta, a blowtorch, and a submachine gun (grenades hung on the belt optional)."

    Thanks, Mr King, for limiting our horizons so very tidily. I'll set down a very interesting Michael Chabon novel and get back to reading a Heather Graham--set on a "tropic isle"--that as far as I can see has no purpose for existence except as a sleep aid.

    And another false premise:

    "reports of the male reader's death have been greatly exaggerated. Women have chick lit; guys have... 'manfiction.' And publishers sell it by the ton."

    Yes, they do indeed sell your "manfiction" by the ton... not because there are unsuspected numbers of male readers, but because women read it too.

    King seems to start from the idea that male authors selling books means there are lots of male readers. However, studies have shown that not enough men read books to account for those sales figures; and furthermore that women will read almost anything. The male authors' best-sellers wouldn't be best-sellers without a female audience.

    Unfortunately, there's also evidence that men don't cross the aisle as women do. When *women* authors sell books it's primarily because of women readers.

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  26. Who expects men to READ? We just keep them around to do the heavy lifting and kill spiders in the bath.

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  27. Tal, I think you must be confused. It's ducks that can't read but can catch spiders, and elephants that love audio-books and are very useful for doing the heavy lifting.

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  28. Laura, what are you--some sort of professional Anatædean Advocate?

    Show me the home where the ducks and elephants roam, and I'll show you a messy apartment!

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  29. "Is that small relative to their vast body-size, or small compared to those of other men?"

    Small in comparison to other men, and men who bodybuild naturally. Men who build naturally will get big muscles (some moreso if they have the genetic predisposition toward it) but never THAT big. Basically it's body manipulaion just as much as plastic surgury. I'm not going to say that healthful people are doing such, but those extremes on magazine covers absolutely.

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  30. Thanks, Eva. I'll definitely bear that in mind next time I see any of those covers.

    It seems so wrong that on the one hand there are well-publicised health concerns about obesity, but on the other, the body ideals we're being presented with by the media are so often unattainable and/or harmful to health for most people. The end result seems to be to make a lot of people spend time worrying about/feeling dissatisfied with their bodies.

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