Glamour
Glamour — as the beauty myth is euphemistically called — is once again respectable. Painted lips, ankle-twisting high heels, breasts encased in wire, bum-freezing miniskirts and even the self-mutilation known as cosmetic surgery are back with a vengeance.
In this "post-feminist" era, when women no longer need to aggressively proclaim their intelligence, independence and right to equality (these are now assumed), how women view and treat their bodies is at last a matter of personal "choice".
Whether or not to achieve that air-brushed perfection of skin and colour by spending your hard-earned wages at the cosmetics counter is now a matter of individual choice: if strong, successful women like Cheryl Kernot and Natasha Stott Despoja can happily doll themselves up for Women's Weekly and Cleo, it must be.
Whether or not to bind yourself in (or push yourself out) with bras is now a matter of individual choice: if the "alternative" culture of lesbianism (as reflected in most lesbian magazines) embraces the practice, it must be.
Whether or not to have that nip, tuck or implant is now a matter of individual choice: if US feminist author Angela Neustatter can have her eyelids "lifted" and feminist studies lecturer Jan Breslauer can proclaim that her breast implants were all about having control over her life and her "right to do what I want with my body" (Sydney Morning Herald, August 18), it must be.
Or is it?
An article in the May issue of the journal Psychological Science leads to a different answer. The article presents psychiatrists Alan Feingold and Ronald Mazzella's analysis of 222 studies, conducted over 50 years to 1996, of how men and women view their bodies. They found a large increase in the number of women with a poor body image. (The studies indicate that men's general satisfaction with their appearance remained relatively stable.)
Women's persistent dissatisfaction with the way they look is not some psychological peculiarity that accompanies XX chromosomes. It is a result of the social relations that flow directly from an economic structure which renders them economically dependent on men — their fathers, husbands, employers.
They must strive, if they are to be desired, loved and looked after by men, to be as physically appealing as possible. What they look like — as daughters, sexual partners or employees — is more important, and usually better rewarded, than what they think.
The claim that, "post-feminism", the compulsion on all women to do all they can to conform to the (unnatural and unattainable) physical ideal for women is no longer strong, and that individual women are now freer to choose their own look, is blown apart by research by Griffith University's Jim Mienczakowski, reported in the July 9 Sydney Morning Herald.
Mienczakowski surveyed Australian women who had recently had cosmetic surgery. Most had had facelifts (in which the skin is peeled off the face, then stitched back on after being stretched and trimmed) or laser "resurfacing" (in which old facial skin is burned away). More than half of the women said they had endured the pain and expense because it would keep them employed for longer.
These women, most of whom worked in face-to-face services or in places where they were older than their workmates, did not choose surgery freely. Choices involve alternatives; unemployment because your naturally ageing body no longer meets the (apparently universal) corporate requirement that female employees be forever youthfully attractive, is no alternative.
Facelifts are bad enough, but they involve few risks compared to other forms of plastic surgery that millions of women undergo. Last week, silicone implant manufacturer Dow Corning agreed to pay damages of $5.16 billion to settle a long-running court battle with women whose breast implants resulted in constant pain, chronic health problems and the need for remedial surgery.
Despite the serious health risks associated with breast implants that the case exposed, annual sales are now back to $3 million and expected to rise further, according to Peter Lazarus, managing director of Mentor Medical Systems, one of the two main suppliers of breast implants in Australia. He told the Sydney Morning Herald's Pilita Clarke late last year that annual sales of implants dropped to $900,000 at the height of the controversy in 1991-92.
American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery figures show that between 1992 and 1997 (while the case against Dow Corning was in progress), the number of US women who had breast enlargement operations increased from 32,607 to 122,285.
Despite feminism's efforts, the economic, social and psychological pressures on women to conform to the beauty myth have not been eradicated. If anything, as the "beauty" industry expands its product range in search of ever greater markets and profits, and as competition between individual women to survive sharpens, these pressures are increasing.
By Lisa Macdonald