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Beauty: We Know the Truth
I was in a store a few weeks back with my mother. Whenever I go down there, I offer to help with heavy lifting, such as bringing in cases of bottled water or bags of salt for her water softener. Naturally, we go to stores where such products are purchased. In this case, it was a general merchandise store and Mom wanted to pick up some other things, including make up. There was a very large make up department, and the aisles were arranged by brand. My mother was looking for several products of different brands, so we traversed several aisles with each brand advertising its wares with pictures of what passes for beautiful models according to the fashion industry.
I should say here that I am generally a hermit. I don’t go out of my cave much. My wife does most of the shopping, and I certainly have not had any occasion to go into a make up aisle in my memory, except for when helping my mother. I also don’t watch television and use an ad blocker with my browser. I generally am not inundated by commercials or advertisements and have no idea what the latest fashion trends may happen to be. I also work from home and make money through the Internet. In other words, I am totally clueless on the fashion scene and have been blissfully so for decades.
What struck me as we walked through those make up aisles was the eyebrows. When I was growing up, women’s eyebrows were to be neat and relatively tamed. My father worked with this one guy who had veritable caterpillers of eyebrows, and unfortunately, his lovely daughter had inherited that trend. Now, I only remember meeting her once when she was twelve or thirteen, but I am certain that as she got older, she took efforts to control and tame those eyebrows. But she was the only female human I ever saw with such robust eyebrows. As I walked through the make up aisles, I saw eyebrows like hers on every model. I even stopped at one advertisement where it showed how to create these great woolly caterpillers to crawl across one’s face. It was like someone in the fashion industry suddenly decided that Frida Kahlo was their It Girl. What are these people thinking?
The fashion industry is in business to sell products. To sell more products, they vary the fashions from year to year. You certainly can’t be seen in last year’s styles, they’ll tell women and the nancy boys who pay attention to that sort of thing. The make up business is also in business to sell products. The more of their products they can get you to use, the better for them. What better way to do that than to promulgate some unnatural fashion trend that requires a lot of make up? Such as painting half one’s forehead the color of terminal hair that is only on a small patch of the face, for instance? Still, I suspect this trend will pass given a little time. Next up, we’ll have the trend of painting the whole face white with a few spots of red to look like a clown, as they did in Good Queen Bess’ time or in certain periods of Japanese history. These things come and go.
It is like the trend of skinny, narrow-hipped models in the fashion industry. I know that it has been a trend for more than fifty years now. One might speculate that it is partially fueled by fashion designers, both male and female, who like men and so want their models to look more like men. Other speculations might be even less charitable, but we needn’t go there. What is important is that this trend will not last forever. Why? Because we all know what is really beautiful.
What constitutes beauty in the long term is programmed in by our genes. What we know to be beautiful is determined by selective pressure to breed. Our genes want us to pass them on. If a guy liked women who had narrow hips and carried very little fat, in the old days his genes would probably not get passed on. Why? Because narrow hips mean a narrow birth canal and harder and fewer successful births. What about women with no fat? Well, no fat, no breast milk for the child. In many cultures through the ages, fat has been seen as a sign of prosperity. When the lean times come, and throughout human history they have come frequently, people who have easily stored fat have survived better, as have their children. More surviving children equals more of those genes passed on through the ages.
While there are some random quirks in the evolution of beauty, the reality usually comes down to signals of health and fitness to breed. The plumage of many species of male birds declares that these individuals are fit enough to invest resources in display. A healthy, wide-hipped, well-padded woman has the signs of a breeder, and nothing the fashion industry does can change that long-term. We know the truth.
Published in Group Writing
I don’t know if you need to get out more often, but this young lady needs to get out more often, to Krispy Kreme, about three times a day.
But fashion models look like that because they are literally clothes hangers of uniform size. I agree that it’s unfortunate if women see that and think that being a clothes hanger is the apex of feminine beauty, but I’m not sure it’s a solvable problem. Tall hipless women provide the most freedom for fashion designers to produce a variety of styles without being constrained by existing underlying shapes. And we know they’re in it for the clothes, not the women.
And I think that’s why this phenomenon is mostly confined to the runway. If one looks at the real superstar models who have broken out to be full fledged celebrities, they are healthy looking, in addition to being beautiful. But I find it extremely difficult to watch runway models in those occasional news clips one sees about “fashion week,” etc. without thinking that a lot of the criticism about their weight is justified.
Yep.
No, he doesn’t.
I think eyebrows is a dog whistle.
I’m sure he’d settle for introductions to some of those brawny concrete workers you work with.
They’re mostly Hispanic. I’m not sure how they’d take to him.
That’s true. Designers make what’s called a sample size for runway shows and photo shoots. It takes weeks and weeks to make one of those designer garments. They want to make just one of everything for the shows, and all the models have to fit in it. When I was working, the sample size was 6. I’ve read recently that it is now size 2, and another source said it’s size 0. In the 1950s, it was size 12.
BUT in the 1980s, the designers started changing the size numbers. The first time I noticed it was in about 1982 when I tried on a Calvin Klein size 6 and it was baggy. I said “Huh?” I went and got a size 4, not really believing it, and it fit. I knew I hadn’t changed. I realized Calvin Klein was now calling a size 6 a size 4 so that women could get a pleasant surprise in the fitting room. So from that day on, I was a size 4. Only I wasn’t really. That’s just what the tags on my clothes said. It’s stupid because size 4 always used to be a Petite. I’m 5’8″ for pete’s sake. If I’d been a size 4, I would have been hospitalized as a skeleton. That is when size 0 was born. There was never a size 0 before that, and size 2 was in the Petites for women who were barely five feet tall.
But anyway there’s a good reason they make sample sizes for tall skinny runway models. The clothes just look more striking. Too bad, but it’s true. And the dramatic runway versions of the collections, like things with giant feathers etc, are toned way down by the time they get to the stores. It’s all just for presentation.
I’d be willing to bet a lot of money that you’re right about this.
Your city already looks like has been nuked.
First prize a week in Detroit, second prize, two weeks in Detroit….
She is perfect, when you nestle against her it muffles out the music from the stereo.
I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
Yes, it truly is icky. I’m so glad my dad didn’t live to see this.
I’ve always been astonished at the trouble women will go to to make themselves unattractive.
Pleeeeeeeease show Us the pic after She pulls it off.
Everything you need to know about how fashion works in 30 seconds…
“A healthy, wide-hipped, well-padded woman has the signs of a breeder, and nothing the fashion industry does can change that long-term.” (OP)
When I was in high school, I went to the local GP doctor for a physical so I could play basketball or volleyball or something. He did the whole exam, and then pronounced, “All of you Welch girls have great bones. You’re like pure-bred heifers; you’re built to drop those calves with no complications.”
It was actually a compliment…we were dairy farmers, and he owned a Hereford ranch, where he raised bulls that sold for lots of money in Denver every year.
But, yeah…his manner was a a little weird. I got it, though. And, it proved to be true: five babies, and I did just drop them with no complications.
I will offer this much defense — by using a male model, it makes a powerful statement of “damn, this stuff works.”
Maybelline’s subtext is “if we can make a normal looking guy look this good, just think what we can do for you!”
Of course, it’s less the makeup and more the expert makeup application that does this …
From Spinal Tap:
Lyrics to: “Big Bottom”
The bigger the cushion, the sweeter the pushin’
That’s what I said
The looser the waistband, the deeper the quicksand
Or, so I have read.
“I once dated a woman who didn’t have a nose.”
“How did she smell?”
“Terrible.”
Normal?
The 90s was the era of “Drawn on with a .5mm pencil,” which just ain’t normal.
https://lovelace-media.imgix.net/getty/51614847.jpg?w=740&h=1030&fit=crop&crop=faces&auto=format&q=70
https://lovelace-media.imgix.net/getty/51991810.jpg?w=740&h=555&fit=crop&crop=faces&auto=format&q=70
https://lovelace-media.imgix.net/uploads/840/479f1080-099b-0134-24a5-0e1b1c96d76b.png?w=740&h=402&fit=crop&crop=faces&auto=format&q=70
https://lovelace-media.imgix.net/getty/51621675.jpg?w=740&h=1039&fit=crop&crop=faces&auto=format&q=70
https://lovelace-media.imgix.net/getty/51614315.jpg?w=740&h=1038&fit=crop&crop=faces&auto=format&q=70
https://lovelace-media.imgix.net/getty/51973789.jpg?w=740&h=1128&fit=crop&crop=faces&auto=format&q=70
These photos are all from the early 2000s … again, tiny, overplucked brows that look drawn on with a fine point pen:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/danielacadena/overpluck?utm_term=.dpXvvB7LKY#.ehkrrB37a5
We may be on the wrong side of the pendulum arc, but this is a pendulum that needed to swing.
That’s true. You have to have at least a .7mm pencil or the lead breaks too often.
Depends on the lead and how much you leave outside the casing … Get one on the B instead of the H side of the scale and they’ll shade nicely.
Are we talking about the same thing?
https://pencils.com/hb-graphite-grading-scale/
Those lashes are fakes, over which copious amounts of mascara have been slathered. You’ll never get that look with mascara alone.
I just buy makeup to sit in my bathroom; I rarely apply it, and when I do it’s obvious I have little clue what I’m doing. :)
Shucks. My dream of being an elder gentleman dating college girls didn’t account for changing fashions.
You aren’t even an elderly gentleman yet. I’ve met you.