We came of age at a time when society seemed to be redefining, not only the roles of women, but of itself. We were young when, for the first time in living memory, it was youth who toppled a president and ended a war. When the modern women’s liberation movement began. When Roe v Wade opened the doors for legalized abortion. When both Title IX and the Pill leveled the two major playing fields of life.
Heady times. And, ultimately, confusing and frustrating. Women in the late 1960s may have been marching and tossing their bras into trash cans, but the Miss American Pageant was still going strong, and the modern child beauty pageant began at exactly the same time. Blinded by the dazzle of what was possible for us, we didn’t realize that while society allowed us new freedoms, it didn’t take away all the requirements of the old order.
Clearly, we were not our mother’s generation. But we had not yet achieved a total break from the mentality of the past. We may have gone to college, but most of us married as soon as we graduated. And the overwhelming percentage of us who did graduate, went into teaching, nursing, or social work. We may have been professionals, but we were professionals in the age-old arena that women had always had access to: We were nurturers, but now nurturers with advanced degrees.
The more powerful we became, the more important, it seemed, to be childlike. Twiggy, the first supermodel sensation, hit the pages of fashion magazines in 1966. In her own words, “I never planned to be a model. I thought I was much too thin.” She was 5’7” tall and weighed 91 lbs. And she was catapulted to idol status by women all over Europe and the US. In that moment, our notion of beauty had taken another turn. It was no longer beautiful to be shapely. We had to be waif like. Skirt hems rose and dieting became a popular obsession. The average fashion model weighed eight percent less than the average woman.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, women, for the first time, began to make inroads into male-dominated professions like medicine and the law. In 1975, Helen Reddy’s song “I Am Woman” rose to the top of the charts. The most famous line in the song, “I am woman, hear me roar” became the anthem for many women. Unfortunately, for many others of us, it was our stomachs roaring with hunger. The average fashion model now weighed 23 percent less than the average woman.
As the standard of beauty kept shrinking, the possibilities for cosmetic surgery increased. Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, more and more space in fashion and lifestyle magazines like Vogue and Ladies Home Journal was being taken up by articles on plastic surgery. Breast augmentation was the #1 cosmetic surgery procedure. The result was that yet another version of beauty emerged, one that would have been virtually impossible in nature: the waif with large breasts.
Throughout the 1980s, the relentless march of cosmetic surgery possibilities increased and became accessible to more and more people. Liposuction was added to the mix. We could have large breasts and have fat suctioned off our bodies. We could have wrinkles removed and sags lifted. The appearance of youth became a national obsession.
Many of us were too busy raising children and/or working on our careers to notice that, increasingly, it wasn’t enough to be thin. It was becoming even more important to be young. As we passed out of youth into an age that, historically, would have meant kudos for a life well lived and wisdom gained, we were to be hit with a double whammy that our mothers and grandmothers could never have understood. As women, we were required to be attractive. As older women, we are required to be attractive and still look young.
If the current notion of beauty no longer works for us, it’s up to us to make it change so that it does. We get to do this for ourselves, for our daughters and for our granddaughters.
Next up: Redefining Beauty and Aging
Use my what? where? and the reason is because I "should" have a man. Pray tell at what point does that become pointless? I suggest it is shortly after age 58 when invisibility begins to set in. So I could learn to use my what? when? and for
Hello!
I read each one of the responses before writing and in each one you counter the writer with why you are staying in this situation. When you left, did you think about what kind of life you were going to build for yourself? Because after the ini
Was Twiggy really that skinny? How sad for all of us.
She was that skinny, and I think she might have been, unfortunately, the first (or one of the first)woman to make skinny beautiful.
And from that place comes the angst that I feel as a somewhat pudgy older woman. Eeeee gads! Your post made me chuckle. How many times have I answered my husbands question “do you think those are real” with “no honey not when a girl is that thin. Natural breasts are fatty tissue”. I know that sometimes he’s been disappointed. Ah well.
How do we change the beauty ideal and expectation? Any ideas?
My third post in this series (“Redefining Beauty and Aging) answers that question. Yes, there are definitely things we can all do. Stay tuned.
I’m not sure we do. I just think we see it for the load of crap that it is. We reject such unrealistic (not to mention superficial) expectations for ourselves, and try to teach our daughters and friends and granddaughters that we are more than breasts and pretty, symmetrical features, and whatever hair color is “in” this year.
Then you go on and live your life, and become the person that makes you feel good about yourself as “the total package”. Now, honestly, we know carrying a lot of extra poundage around is not good for us – and we as a nation are truly expanding! So maybe most of us ought to get off our duffs and do something about that, not to be waif-like, but to be healthier. That would also mean we’d spend less time watching t.v. and looking at the internet, and magazines, and all those other sources nonsense of making us feel we must be thin and young and cosmetically perfect. What we could be is healthy and living more fully up to our potential. Some of us (and I am one of them) were never blessed with real external beauty. But I have made the most of what I had - physically, mentally, spiritually. At 52, I am in full stride, and wouldn’t go back to my younger, prettier, firmer past for anything.
I feel sorry for people who need to get “work” done to feel better about themselves. When I needed to feel better about myself, I spent a year cleaning up my diet, and being more active, and lost 50 pounds. Beats liposuction in about 500 different ways. Was it easy? Of course not! If it were, then everyone would do it! But I was worth every bit of that effort. And if anyone who reads this is unhappy about their life, then they need to decide they are worth the effort it takes to change, and then go and do it. I have a body I love a lot better, and I think I will get to enjoy it and use it a lot longer, taking better care of it. Cosmetic surgery does not give you that, nor does it help you to make peace with the body you have. I really like mine, now, for the first time in my life.
Fabulous comments, RR. A lot of what you talk about I discuss in the third post in the series. I’m so gad you mentioned our daughters and granddaughters, since it is imperative that we set oiurselves up as positive examples for them.