“When taking care of yourself, what do you usually pay attention to first of all?” – with such a question we turned to readers on the site psychologies.ru at the end of last year.
Of course, in a beautiful, harmonious image, every feature matters. And yet, each of us has our own idea of what exactly (makeup that visually emphasizes our dignity; excellent facial skin; slim silhouette and toned figure; good health and health) makes us look especially attractive. We also asked women to indicate their age (20, 30, 40, 50 or more), assuming that preferences would be different depending on it. And here a surprise awaited us – the order of answers in all ages turned out to be generally similar: women most often put well-being in the first place; then (much less often) – the condition of the skin of the face; slim silhouette; and in the last place in terms of frequency of answers was makeup. What does this choice say about us? Does this mean that today we all have become much more attentive to ourselves and our well-being? Or can we conclude that over time, our desires change much less than is commonly believed? We asked culturologist Olga Weinstein to share her opinion.
PSYCHOLOGIES Poll How does your beauty begin?
45,3% of women, taking care of themselves, first of all care about well-being and health.
Moreover, the youngest are only slightly less concerned about this issue than older women: 43,6% – under 30; 56,4% – from 30 to 40 years; 47% are over 40 years old. 23,9% pay more attention to a slender silhouette and a toned figure.
More often than others (29,4%), women over the age of 40 answered this way. 20,9% admit that the most important thing for them is the excellent condition of their facial skin. Most of all (21,6%) this issue is of interest to the youngest.
Only 9,8% of respondents consider well-executed makeup that visually emphasizes their advantages as a key criterion. Least of all (5,9%) women over the age of 40 take care of this.
* The survey was conducted on our website psychologies.ru in December 2011 and January 2012; 1067 women took part in it.
Psychologies: Women of all ages today admit that, above all, they value the opportunity to feel good. What does it say?
Olga Weinstein: Such responses indicate that in the last decade, attitudes towards a healthy lifestyle have become increasingly popular in our society. In the English-speaking culture, this complex of ideas is called Healthism and combines many currents – this is preventive medicine, and various forms of fitness, and nutrition systems, and meditation. But at the heart of everything is the desire for physical and psychological well-being (English well-being). This attitude is gradually gaining more and more supporters in our country. And even becomes fashionable and prestigious. We are aware that well-being is the basis, and beauty is a consequence, an element of the “cultural superstructure”. This arrangement of accents is one of the manifestations of globalization, Russia’s participation in world trends. In our culture, the uniqueness of the moment is also in the fact that the interests of both the older and younger generations are now converging in the passion for a healthy lifestyle. For the younger, such a turn is a tribute to the new fashion, and the older generation of women, according to Russian tradition, often after 50 years of age switches from caring for external beauty to a health preservation program. And in this sense, they also unwittingly “fall into the trend.”
Read more:
- “Our idea of beauty is changing”
- The structure of harmony
- Makeup that helps you be yourself
- Menopause: to be continued
It turns out that our value system has changed today?
O.V.: I think that now the ideal of purely external beauty has already significantly depreciated. After all, everyone understands that, firstly, this is a matter of money (due to plastic surgery or professional makeup, any woman can look “excellent”). And, secondly, in today’s media culture, it’s easy to create the perfect virtual image thanks to Photoshop. Therefore, personal parameters come to the fore – for example, originality, success, intelligence, charisma. The former conditional standards of beauty are “problematized”, that is, real women with their own peculiarities in appearance are replacing the ideal ones. In today’s fashion, new corporal canons are being formed. All over the world, this is associated with the ideology of tolerance and diversity, openness and pluralism in regard to the most diverse parameters of identity: social status; racial, national, religious affiliation; floor; age; and, finally, – which just has to do with beauty – bodily standards. Gradually, ideas about beauty are changing: before our eyes, the former glamorous bodily canon is disintegrating and new “abnormal” bodies, for example, overweight, elderly, and disabled, are invading the fashionable space.
How is the beauty industry responding to these changes?
O.V.: Cosmetics makers are becoming more wary because they know they could be “grabbed” if they go too far in promoting an unrealistic glam ideal and using too much Photoshop. British MP Jo Swinson, for example, co-founded the Body Confidence Campaign to crack down on retouched ads that confuse many women with their computer-generated images. But it is also not profitable for cosmetics manufacturers to cut off entire categories of potential consumers – therefore, today they are developing new product lines and are increasingly trying to create images that will not inspire complexes in us. An example is the advertising Campaign for True Beauty by the Dove brand: in 2006, posters with portraits of women appeared on our streets – elderly, overweight, freckled, and one of the heroines was 57-year-old Russian woman Larisa Sysoeva. The posters showed real women, whose appearance was clearly different from stereotypical ideals, with the captions: “Is a woman really only beautiful at 20?”, “Is a beautiful figure really only 90–60–90?” or “Is it possible that only women with perfect skin can be beautiful?” These questions, apparently, give food for thought to this day.
How can today’s beauty standards be formulated?
O.V.: Naturalness returns: for example, lush eyebrows, neutral-imperceptible makeup. Typical models with slight imperfections in the face – say, a long nose, wide-set eyes. In general, there is a formation of new, more flexible and diverse canons of corporality.
“TODAY BEFORE OUR EYES THE FORMER GLAMOR CANON IS ALREADY BREAKING UP” Olga Vainshtein, culturologist
Do we all have the same attitude towards them and what does this attitude depend on?
O.V.: In general, it depends on the degree of tolerance in our society. Russia, although it has a traditionally conservative attitude towards beauty, has become more open lately, there are fewer prejudices in society. But we have not passed the essential stages of social and female self-consciousness – and these are whole stages with their own milestones. For example, in 1991, Susan Faludi’s program book “Blow Back”* was published in the West, which went through 15 reprints in America, but has not yet been translated into Russian.
If we try to formulate our attitude to our own appearance today in one phrase – how would it sound?
O.V.: I will quote the English proverb “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” – “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. Or you can recall the lines of Nikolai Zabolotsky: “And if this is so, then what is beauty And why do people deify it? Is she a vessel, in which there is emptiness, Or fire, flickering in a vessel? I think that beauty is still fire. And the name of this fire can be “happiness”, and “soul”, and “belief in oneself”, and “internal well-being”. And these states, in turn, are determined by the initial axioms that our culture and civilization lays in us.
How do you think our attitude to beauty will change in the future?
O.V.: I am glad that the rigid standard of glamorous beauty is already noticeably shaken and real women with their own character and destiny come to replace it. It is very pleasant, for example, that Aimee Mullins, a woman whom I deeply respect for her courage and her philosophy of life, has become one of the “beauty messengers” of L’Oreal Paris. She made a brilliant career as an athlete, model and actress, and meanwhile, she had both legs amputated since childhood. In one of the promotional photos, she was shot on her running prostheses. I think in the future our attitude to our own appearance will become easier, less strained. Beauty should not be the cause of complexes and suffering, let it be rather an opportunity for personal self-expression.
* S. Faludi «Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women» (Crown Publishers, 1991).
“New bodies” of our time
Olga Weinstein emphasizes that they differ noticeably from the previous standard in terms of figure, age, and even physical limitations: “Probably, this is the most significant trend of recent years – disabled models are becoming more and more active in fashion. Fashion has flirted with this idea before – but until now, healthy female models have only portrayed disabled people according to the photographer’s intention. Such is Helmut Newton’s 1995 High and Mighty Vogue series starring Nadja Auermann. However, further on the catwalks and covers, real people with disabilities have already begun to appear. In 2008, the BBC 3 English radio channel launched the reality show Britain’s Missing Top Model: the script included a competition of eight girls, and the winner received a shooting contract with the famous photographer Rankin for Marie Claire magazine. The next step was an advertisement for the British department store Debenhams in 2010: the paralyzed Shannon Murray, moving in a wheelchair, was chosen as the face of the autumn-winter collection. The model herself regarded these pictures as “another step towards inclusiveness and representation”, but discussions ensued in the blogosphere. Some said: “They have been ripening for a long time!” – while others doubted: “Is this really progress or just a publicity stunt?” One blogger poignantly summed it up: “It’s good for Shannon, but I don’t like it when companies trumpet it, portraying themselves as strongholds of tolerance. Maybe I’m a cynic, but it seems to me that our world will become truly tolerant only when such things are not discussed as something unusual.