the_beheld's Open Salon Blog

Signing Off From Open Salon

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 09:09:34 -0400

To all Open Salon readers--

Thank you for your readership over the past year and a half! I'm going to be closing my Open Salon account shortly. You may not realize this, but my blog, The Beheld, operates on its own URL (http://the-beheld.com) and is syndicated on The New Inquiry, a journal of cultural criticism (http://thenewinquiry.com). (This is why some editor's picks I've written have shown up under a different handle--I noticed a couple of readers piped up in comments on New Inquiry editor's picks wondering if something fishy was going on. Thank you for looking out for me!) As The Beheld has developed, I've also begun to build a community on my own platforms, and in an attempt to concentrate my efforts I'm going to streamline where my work is published--and since I have more control over the platform, design, etc., at those outlets, it makes the most sense to focus my work over there. (This isn't a complaint about Open Salon, by the way; it's just that it's not what I need at this point.)

My work may appear on Salon in the future; The New Inquiry and Salon have an arrangement that allows the latter to cull pieces from our site and republish them with credit, much like how Salon has rights to republish Open Salon work. I've had a few of my pieces republished this way and hope that happens in the future. In the meantime, if you've enjoyed reading The Beheld please pop on over to one of my other feeds for it. Being on Open Salon has been a joy, both for the people I've met (including in person!) and the discourse. I hope to see you elsewhere!

Cheers,

Autumn

http://the-beheld.com

http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/the-beheld/

Beauty Blogosphere 8.17.12

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 03:08:00 -0400

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between.

From Head...
Crop top: Miley Cyrus cut her hair; world freaks out. Luckily, we have Mary Elizabeth Williams (with whom I've previously disagreed about short hair) to lucidly articulate why a crop needn't be a "call for help": "Long hair represents femininity and vulnerability and sex. It’s princesses and mermaids and porn stars. Short hair, on the other hand, says, 'If you think I’m gorgeous, great, but this isn’t about you, pal.'"

...To Toe...
A Tale of Two Walks: I've never been amused by men doing stereotypically feminine things for laffs; it generally strikes me as condescending, not investigative. Yet I'm sort of halfway into this fund-raising/awareness walk for domestic violence called Walk a Mile in Her Shoes, where men walk, yes, a mile in women's high heels. It shifts the onus for intimate partner violence from women onto men (who make up the majority of abusers); obviously I'm all for women helping women, but until anti-violence messages are targeted toward abusers, we're not going to get anywhere, and this seems like a start. But then again, it could do the opposite—paint a traditionally feminine icon as something weak, painful, and in need of assistance. Thoughts?

...And Everything In Between:
Avon calling: Fascinating study from Baylor University that serves as an interesting complement to the Mary Kay exposé in Harper's by Virginia Sole-Smith. For black women in South Africa, direct sales (specifically, Avon) seems to actually provide some of the benefits that these companies promise—and fail to deliver—their sales representatives in the States, as shown by Sole-Smith's work. One example: In a country where only 38.4% of black women have any bank account at all, whether their own or a joint account with a family member, 92% of Avon representatives had their own bank account. It seems that vague terms of "empowerment" can take a firmer hold in places where women's power is far more tenuous than it is in cultures where most of this blog's readers hail from. Women in the study widely reported increased self-confidence, career skills for future jobs, and financial autonomy. More to the point: The mean income earned from selling Avon was about 900 ZAR (roughly $109 U.S.) a month, which would put an Avon representative in the top half of wage-earning black women in South Africa, and would bring her earnings nearly in line with that of her male counterpart.

I can see through your transparency: Johnson & Johnson is launching a site dedicated to educating consumers on ingredient safety for their products, which seems like a nice enough idea until you read between the lines here. “People already know that our products and ingredients meet or exceed government regulatory standards. They want to know more,” said a Johnson & Johnson representative. Well, yes, we want to know more, given that there are no government regulatory standards for many of the personal care products in question. This seems more along the lines of the Safe Cosmetics Alliance to me—that is, not terribly safe at all.

Something smells suspicious: Two former employees of perfumery Bond No. 9 are filing charges against their former boss, owner Laurice Rahme, for racist bias. Rahme asked employees to use the unsettling code phrase "We need the light bulbs changed" whenever a customer with dark skin—oh, excuse me, whenever a customer who looks "suspect," as claimed by Rahme—walked in. (At least one of the women bringing the suit is dark-skinned and was allegedly not allowed to help white customers.) When the employees complained about the racist practice, they were fired and accused of defrauding the company of $25,000.

Patch it up: Sri Lankan man dies after an allergic reaction to a hair dye. Patch test, people! (Actually, I've never patch tested a beauty product in my life, but after I had an unexpected allergic reaction to a medication this spring that left my body covered in a heat rash and my face and hands terribly swollen—this after a lifetime of no medicinal allergies whatsoever—I'm going to start. You really never know.)

Breaking news: Area Woman Not Harassed Today. "Perhaps more mysteriously, not one male superior she passed silently in the halls grinned at her unnervingly and told her that it 'wouldn't hurt to smile,' the 28-year-old confirmed."

Fashion etiquette: What to wear if you're a lady marrying a lady?

"An individual is not an abstraction": A hyena might look like a very nice hyena but a very ugly dog—a nice analogy from Franklin Veaux on why he's never understood the idea of having a strong preference for certain physical characteristics in partners. (I never have either, besides being a sucker for a tall dude, though I've certainly been attracted to the small-but-mighty type as well.) (via Strong, Sexy & Stylish)

Alpha: Science (you know, Science) is coming one step closer to discovering how all that alpha hydroxy shit we're supposed to put on our faces past age 30 actually works! Like I suspected, it's all about the transient receptor potential vanilloid 3.

Go for the gold: Virginia Sole-Smith on "Olympic Beauty" and body diversity: "[W]hen the Olympics dominates the media, we see a huge range of body types — and we celebrate every one of them for what they can do, and how damn good they look doing it." (Okay, sometimes "we" also razz Olympians for how they look, but let's focus on the positive here.) Body comparisons of any sort usually lead nowhere good for me, so I don't do them, and that's also why I don't share any of my "numbers" on here (weight, clothing sizes, waist measurement, etc. Though I will let you all know that my feet are a perfect size 9). That said: Looking at Olympian bodies, I get the same sensation Virginia describes here. Seeing, say, female swimmers (or female sailors, apparently, according to this "What's Your Olympic Body Type" quiz that matches my frame to a surprising number of Nordic sailing team members) with features similar to mine—broad shoulders, not-whittled waists, and strong legs (ahem, not that my legs are a fraction as strong as Olympians')—when none of those features are particularly valued in our culture...yes, it feels sort of validating.

Twenty-eight, looking great: Women feel sexiest at age 28, apparently? I looked pretty schlubby at 28 so I can't really comment on this. (Age 31, however, treated me nicely.) I can't seem to find the original study—which, mind you, was conducted by a marketing firm, so grain of salt and all that—but it goes on to say that women just might actually be happier with their bodies than we usually let on. This definitely jibes with my experience: I've found that the places where women (myself included) seem most free to praise their own bodies are spaces of presumed overcoming of body issues. And hell yeah, those issues are vast, and real, and harmful, no doubt. But our vanities must remain secret, or posited as contrary to the baseline "truth" of us all disliking our forms. Harrumph. (via Ashe)

#nodads: One of the greatest indicators of whether a girl will self-objectify? Whether her mother does the same. This makes sense, and in the best-case scenario some mothers might realize that all the positive words in the world won't matter as much as having a genuinely healthy relationship with her own body and presence when it comes to raising a daughter with a strong self-image. But I'm with About-Face: What about fathers?

Bare it: Fashion Fair, one of the first makeup lines targeting black women, unveils a mineral foundation line. That's nice and all, but I love what Clutch fingers here: The ad uses a bald model, thus neatly sidestepping the natural vs. relaxed hair debate. Clever, clever!

Who's the most bimajo of them all?: Congratulations (?) to Masako Osako, who recently won a magazine contest in Japan for being the most bimajo out of more than 2,000 applicants who proved to not be quite as bimajo as the reigning bimajo. Bimajo, in case your transliterated Japanese is rusty, translates roughly to "beautiful witch" and denotes "a woman over 35 with a radiance that gives no suggestion of her age."

Turban 101: Eleven years ago, this "turban primer" might have seemed merely interesting to people curious about headgear of different cultures. But after 9/11—and, more recently, after the tragedy in Wisconsin—publishing a guide to distinguish Sikh turbans from Indian turbans from, well, Taliban members (who, it turns out, don't have any particular turban style at all) seems disingenuous at best. At worst, as Angry Asian Man points out, it's more along the lines of WWII-style "How to Spot a Jap" pieces.

Give generously.

"Add some googly eyes, for chrissakes": Until I watched this shocking PSA, I was unaware of the "Swetsy shops" that churn out wall decals, hand-stamped bird stationery, and tam o'shanters—all using the labor of young exploited hipster women. The Manic Pixie Dream Fund: Won't you donate?

Mirror me: I never thought I'd be mentioned in a trend piece (moi?!), but it's about time someone saw a story in the fact that Kjerstin Gruys and I—and others, I've learned—each thought up the idea of "mirror fasting" independent of one another at roughly the same time. Kate Murphy at the New York Times takes a look at what appears to be a mini-trend.

What's in a name?: Beauty and personal-care product company Pinch Provisions—formerly Ms. and Mrs.—is the hook of this piece on companies renaming themselves. (via Nancy Friedman, who knows a thing or two about naming).

Pussy play: If you've been following the story of Pussy Riot, the Russian punk group whose anti-Putin sentiments may well land (have landed? the verdict is due today) three members in a Siberian labor camp, read this essay on the performative aspect of the trio's saga. Performative for the women involved, yes, and that's why I'm including it here. But Sarah Nicole Prickett's excellent essay delves into broader questions about performativity: west vs. east, here vs. "there," punk fashion vs. punk ethos.

And what do you do?: The backstory from seven people with nifty-sounding jobs in the beauty industry, including a perfume "nose" and color forecaster. (Here's a non-slideshow version; I feel ethically obligated to link to the place that generated it, but c'mon, Refinery 29! Internet, can we cut the slideshow crap? I thought nobody cared about page views anymore?)

Out of the box: How to use your blow-dryer for auto body work, and seven other non-beauty tips involving beauty products.

Globetrotter: As a total xenophile, I'm loving Venusian Glow's new series on global beauty, in which women from various regions share beauty routines, products, and attitudes. First up: Australia, where apparently having a real tan as opposed to a spray one is actually frowned upon.

Manicure message: Phoebe nails it (oi!) on the peculiar appeal of nail art: "[T]he more complicated your nails, the more of a statement you're making about your willingness to scrub the kitchen floor, or to bake bread from scratch. It's telling men ... that you take care of yourself, and aren't looking to pick up after them. Which could be why it's so appealing as an antidote to stressful domestic tasks." Strictly speaking, I don't do stressful domestic tasks (I'm willing to live with the dust bunnies, and I treat bread mold sort of like Where's Waldo), but I have noticed that the more demanding my work, the more I long for a manicure. I'm too cheap to get an actual manicure on a regular basis, but I can measure this in temptation points, right?

Child's play: If there's a kid or teen in your life who's passionate about fashion and has expressed interest in it as a career, point them toward Final Fashion for this post by Danielle Meder about ways to nurture/direct that energy.

Size 8s unite: Kjerstin Gruys takes a skeptical yet open look at the recent spate of "size 8 pride" among celebrities like Mindy Kaling and Miranda Lambert: "I think that claiming to be a 'size 8' is intended to give us the impression that the celebrity is not so skinny that we can't relate to her, but also not so fat that we cringe on her behalf, or no longer aspire to be her." (P.S.: Check out the 20/20 segment on Kjerstin's mirror-free year that aired on Wednesday. Just try to watch it and not get a little teary during her first dance at the wedding, mmmkay?)

Guest Post: The Ripple Effect

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 03:08:00 -0400

Mara Glatzel from Medicinal Marzipan has long been one of my favorite body image bloggers, in part for her worldview and in part for her graceful, inspirational prose. But what strikes me most about Medicinal Marzipan is its honesty: Glatzel shares her vulnerabilities as well as triumphs in the route to wellness (including a recent post that gave me one of my own biggest "aha!" moments in the past several years about my own eating concerns).

I was pleased to learn that Mara has developed a tool for helping others find their own place on the vulnerability-triumph spectrum, with Body Loving Homework, which she describes as "one part Ebook, one part digital anthology, and one part self-study coaching program—designed to help you find clarity around what you deserve out of your life and your daily experiences." When I sampled a few of the 100 writing prompts in the book, my responses ranged from joy (apparently my answer to "My body remembers" is a hint racy) to discovery (I think of myself as pretty calm, so imagine my surprise when several of my answers to prompts involved the word panic). I asked her to guest post here about incorporating self-acceptance into our daily lives, and the place where self-image and body image intersect.

If you’re anything like me, you know exactly what it feels like to go through the motions: saying yes, piling on the additional work, doing the emotional housekeeping, working out the logistics, and taking everyone else’s needs into account.

You’re probably really good at it too—a skill cultivated and honed over the course of your life.

I used to think that taking care of others was what I was best at, what I was put on the planet to do.

I used to think that just because I was good at it, I was relegated to going through the motions the rest of my life.

This conveniently fit in with other beliefs that I held about my life—feelings of being unworthy, unlovable, unforgivably damaged—because, through taking really good care, I was able to make myself useful in a way that didn’t require me to necessarily stick my neck out.

I was kind.

I made dinner.

I cleaned up communal physical space.

I put down whatever I was working on, attending instead to the emotional crisis at hand.

I do not intend to set up a paradox here, as in: when I hated myself, I took care of everyone else, and when I learned how to love myself for who I was, I only took care of myself.

For me, it wasn’t one or the other. It was in the appearance of a choice in the matter. It was knowing that I was worth loving not only for my caretaking abilities, but also for the rest of me as well.

When I learned how to love myself, truly love myself, and believe in the fact that I had more to offer the world than laundered socks and mended hearts—I was able to believe, also, that I was more than what I had been permitting myself.

When I was single or momentarily attached, I used to joke that I was a “starter wife”—the kind of girl who picks up broken, sad partners, and uses her love to shine them up like a little penny, gently reinforcing their strengths through the repetition and constancy of my adoration.

Until the day that they got so shiny, they wanted to hop into someone else’s pocket.

In these moments, I was left alone, heartbroken, but, when I was truly honest with myself—at least partially to blame. I had avoided infusing myself into these relationships, because I deeply feared that doing so would scare my partner away. I had internalized messages during my youth—messages of being too big, too loud, too passionate. I had been told by my experiences that people stayed around longer if you made your needs as brief and palatable as possible, and then went about your day becoming exactly who they need you to be.

I remember the exact day when I realized that I could, instead, choose to be myself.

I realized that if I was myself, and it didn’t work out, at least I knew ahead of time instead of wishing and praying that my real self wouldn’t pop up unexpectedly and drive someone away.

For me, self-acceptance has been the slow integration of who I was presenting as and who I was inside. It was the process of becoming who I already was. It was putting all of my faith in the idea that if I could permit myself to be myself that I could love that person—even when I was afraid to do so.

However, as will naturally occur when you begin to change one aspect of your life—suddenly, the impact spread, and I was astounded by how pervasive my self-hatred had become.

I found unexpressed sentiment and choked on words in every facet of my life—work, relationship, family. I found that in fact I really hated where we had chosen to put that new bookshelf or that in my heart, I wished we had painted the bathroom blue instead of red. I was surprised, as these feelings weren’t even large, big scary to divulge feelings—I was saying yes and keeping quiet in all aspects of my life.

And, at first, I thought I was doing all of this out of some sort of damaged self-esteem around my body, but, over time, I realized, it wasn’t my body—it was my most basic sense of worth and deserving. It was who I was, deep inside, that was hurting and needed to be freed.

What I thought was about the size of my hips, was actually about the cultivation and maintenance of healthy boundaries within the context of my relationships.

What I thought was about whether or not someone thought I was attractive, was actually about speaking my needs out loud, in the presence of another.

What I thought was about my body—was about how I was living my life.

The human body is a convenient scapegoat.

Contentious by nature, degraded by the media, and a highly personal battleground, our bodies carry more than their fair share of the pain, hurt, and rejection that we experience in the world. For example, it was much easier for me to hate my body than realize that I needed to dramatically upgrade my ability to create and maintain healthy boundaries.

In many ways, hating your body is easy. You’ll never be alone. You will always have others to join you in your self-hatred, commiserating over the size of their thighs or how this was the week that they are going on a diet or he didn’t reject me—he rejected my body. As in, things that you can fix or have control over.

When it is about your body, it is a problem that society tells you you can fix—head to the gym, hop on a diet, indulge in some plastic surgery. Even if you wouldn’t resort to some of those options, they are out there, filling up the social consciousness with feelings of safety and well-being. Whether or not you choose to access them—the option is there.

You can change your body. You can make yourself prettier. You can buy new, sexy clothing.

You know how to do that, and on many levels—it feels safe.

What about when it’s not about your body? What about when it is about your basic ability to connect with other human beings, relax into intimacy, or be both yourself and yourself in the context of a couple?

That feels much less safe.

This is the messy zone, the dark closet that we shove all of our odds and ends in, in order to keep the rest of our house tidy and presentable. The answers here are not cut and dry. They do not apply to everyone. You cannot read about them in the self-help section of your favorite magazine.

They come from learning to listen to the voice inside your body, the small part of yourself that lets you know what you’d most like and what your wildest dreams are.

I had been keeping myself small—occupied by the an overflowing to-do list of laundry and groceries, wrapped up in the melodrama of my own creation, and concerned with the well-being of those around me first, and my own needs—last, always.

It wasn’t that learning to love myself dramatically altered who I was. I haven’t stopped taking care, but I am confident now that I am choosing to take care and that the people who I choose to take care of are worthy of my most profound love and consideration.

Learning to love myself has permitted me the ability to realize that I was worthy of anything that I put my mind or heart to. It was the quiet process of choosing, every day, that who I am is important. That my words matter. That my actions are an extension of my heart, and that they should be respected as such.

That I am worthy of my own love and the love of those around me, and not because I’ve cooked them dinner.

_________________________________________

Mara Glatzel is a self -love coach + author of Body Loving Homework : Writing Prompts for Cultivating Self -Love. She works with women who are ready to create the lives they want — and deserve. Her blog, Medicinal Marzipan, has inspired thousands of women to heal their relationships with their bodies, and treat themselves with relentless compassion. Catch up with her on Facebook or Twitter, or join her body -loving mailing list for secret swapping and insider news.

Helen Gurley Brown, 1922-2012

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:08:19 -0400

Six years ago, I was waiting for an elevator when Helen Gurley Brown walked up next to me. This wasn’t terribly unusual; I worked for an offshoot of Cosmopolitan at the time, and our offices were housed in the same building. What was unusual was that she was alone, and that I was dressed well.

I’d only begun dressing well a few months prior to our elevator run-in; depression had kept me in baggy hoodies and ill-fitting jeans between the ages of 24 and 29. As my 30th birthday neared, I realized I was hitting the age where I just might be putting patterns into place that would stick with me forever. I broke up with my boyfriend, chopped my sloppy bob in favor of a pixie cut, lost 30 pounds—and much to my surprise, found that sometimes I enjoyed being looked at. On this particular morning, I was wearing my favorite of my array of dresses and had matched it with heels that, for me, were wildly impractical. Perhaps most importantly, I’d just had the pleasure of a certain variety of overnight guest, so my bronzer wasn’t the only thing lending me a glow.

Helen Gurley Brown looked at me and gave a dim, polite smile. Then she slowly ran her eyes from my pixie cut to my carefully pushed-up bust line, from the hips swathed just so in my new dress down to my shoes. As her eyes worked their way back up from the heels to my figure to my face, her head began to bob in what slowly turned into a nod, and by the time she looked me in the eye again, the smile had gone from polite to approving. Helen Gurley Brown had given me her approval. At that moment, one of the company higher-ups joined us at the elevator, and she turned to the newcomer, cupped her hair in one frail hand, and actually addressed her as pussycat. Our moment of approval (on her end) and awe (on mine) passed.

I’ve told this anecdote a handful of times, and the reactions come in two forms: a “how cool!” exuberance, or dismay. “Ick,” one friend said: “Why does her approval matter to you?” Beneath the latter reaction is something like this: Helen Gurley Brown made Cosmopolitan into what it is, and what it is isn’t exactly something a smart women’s-studies-set type like me should approve of, so why on earth would the approval of Helen Gurley Brown leave me beaming?

It’s not a bad question. The problems with Cosmopolitan—or rather, with the Cosmo-fication of women’s media, are manifest to the point of trite. I myself have publicly criticized women’s magazines plenty of times; for every time I’ve talked about how important they’ve been to the mainstreaming of feminism (which, in this context, I count as a good thing), I’ve cringed at a story that has passed over my desk (“How to Wash Your Face,” which was—I kid you not—soon followed by “How to Wash Your Hair,” due to its predecessor’s success among readers).

Logically, I should be fingering Helen Gurley Brown as the godmother of face-washing how-tos and insulting sex tips. I can’t do that, though, and not only because of the fondness I felt when she hand-wrote her thoughts on the premiere issue of CosmoGirl—the teen Cosmo spinoff I worked at off and on for years before it folded in 2008—and my boss giddily distributed photocopies to everyone in the office. (All I remember of her comments was that she loved Boy-o-Meter, in which readers would rate teenage boys on their looks.) Nor is it my love of the kitschy tone of Sex and the Single Girl, which I have read from cover to cover, and which always makes me feel like a vixen even if I’m just pawing through it at home in my yoga pants.

Nor—surprisingly—is my admiration of her only born from the contrarian feminist within me who wants to argue for her as a key figure in women’s history, the woman who let us all know that it was okay to like sex and that you didn’t have to be married to want it. But the issue of Helen Gurley Brown and feminism deserves solid mention here: It is easy to forget, when Cosmopolitan is now so easily mocked for its insistence upon doing the most ridiculous boudoir moves possible, that the year she took editorship of the magazine was the same year the Supreme Court struck down laws banning contraceptives for married couples. The Pill had only been available for a few years, meaning that the concept of a woman being able to have sex whenever she wished and maintain control of her reproductive system was similarly young. For Helen Gurley Brown to come out and say what plenty of young women had known for years but had been afraid to voice—that sex was fun, sex was delightful, sex was not to be feared, and sex could happen simply because you, a woman, desired it—was revolutionary. It was revolutionary at the time, and given the fetishization of “purity” and the fact that the only term we have for a man who sleeps around is “male slut,” it remains revolutionary today. Also, let it be known that Helen Gurley Brown identified as a feminist. Plenty of people within the women’s movement disagree with her self-appraisal; as for me, I am happy to count her among my tribe. (Factoid: Chapter 9 of Sex and the Office, “Lunchland III: A Very Special Report,” opens with an anecdote from a “beautiful young executive” named Letty Cottin, who would go on to be Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founding editor of Ms.)

But still, no, that isn’t what made me smile that day waiting for the elevator, nor is it what brought a heaviness to my heart upon learning that the flame-haired, miniskirted, bejeweled woman I’d admired died yesterday at age 90. In fact, it wasn’t our near-introduction at all, but rather something that sprang from the first time I laid eyes on her, at the Hearst holiday party in 1999. Through the haze brought on by the candy-cane cocktails handed out by the staff of Tavern on the Green, I spotted her: She was jockeying for the shortest skirt in the room, and had topped it off with what resembled a sequined Chanel jacket (perhaps it was a sequined Chanel jacket), that flame-colored hair teased beyond belief. She was dancing and had a small entourage around her. I flew home for Christmas and breathlessly reported to my parents that I’d seen Helen Gurley Brown, and that she was wearing a miniskirt, and wasn’t that awesome?

It was awesome, but not for the reasons I believed at the time. At the time it was more about one of my first run-ins with a celebrity, akin to the time I saw Drew Barrymore at Disneyland. And I am embarrassed to admit this, but: I shared my sighting of her with the faintest hint of ridicule. She was 77 at the time, and I was at an age at which anyone over the age of 35 was more in the realm of parent than peer. To see a 77-year-old woman partying it up in a miniskirt shorter than I’d dare to wear today—it was “cute,” and a little unseemly. I understood that she had to attend the annual company party; I understood that because she was Helen Gurley Freakin’ Brown, she could probably do the electric slide and still earn our collective respect. And I also, erroneously, understood that a woman of her age to be prancing around around in a miniskirt was—well, wasn’t that better left to people who were the age of Cosmo’s readership? Wasn’t it just the tiniest bit sad?

What I did not yet understand was that the things I condescendingly perceived as “cute” were actually evidence that I was witnessing a woman who was unafraid to work it. She knew full well the penalties heaped upon women of a certain age, and she disregarded those penalties with a shrug of her possibly-Chanel-sequined shoulder. She’d published Sex and the Single Girl when she was 40; in it she wrote “If you think only the jeunes filles, the voluptuous or sleek-cat creatures are the sexy ones, you have been living in the rumble seat of an Essex roadster the past twenty-five years.” That is, not only did she write one of the country’s most influential tomes on sexuality at an age many might have considered over the hill for a woman, but if she was speaking literally of those twenty-five years, by age 15 she’d already begun to disregard the notion that one’s sexuality died out past a divinely decreed age. I have no idea whether she decided then and there that she’d never stop being, well, Helen Gurley Freakin’ Brown (or, I suppose, Helen Freakin’ Gurley; the Brown came along in 1959 with her marriage to film producer David Brown) and would wear miniskirts as short as she damn well pleased until she tired of them, or whether it simply became her way of life over time. Really, I have no idea about her private life other than what I’ve read, which is, after all, the result of a cultivated public image.

But what I can deduce is that Helen Gurley Brown had respect for the woman who tries. That may not necessarily sound like something one should respect; when it comes to self-presentation, shouldn’t authenticity trump strain, ease trump effort? Sometimes, sure. But I’m certain I’m not the only woman who would find it less difficult to walk down the street bare-faced in sweatpants than to strut along with a bright red pucker, hair done to the hilt, cleavage pushed to the chin, and clothes that announce to the world, I want to be looked at. To Sex and the Single Girl readers who objected to wearing makeup, she challenged: “Is it possible you’re a little afraid to be on—in the limelight—every single day? If your makeup were always flawless, you’d be making an open bid for attention.” Trying is the hard sell; trying is a dare. Trying is a command to the world: Look at me, for I am worth your attention. Can trying be the opposite, a sad proclamation of one’s low self-esteem, that a woman thinks all she has to offer the world is her looks? Yes, of course. But when I think of the women I know who really work it—the 51-year-old receptionist who helms her desk with a teased updo and smoky eye at 8:30 a.m., the artist who goes shopping in ball gowns to cheer herself up, the woman of a certain age who is so impeccably styled that every time I’ve been in her company I’ve witnessed a total stranger walk up to her and profess admiration—these are not women suffering from a paucity of self-esteem. These are women who are willing to try, and who are willing to tell you what they want you to see. These are the women I was willing to try to emulate when I decided I was ready to discard clothes that hid me in favor of clothes that revealed me; from them, and from Helen Gurley Brown, I learned that overcoming the fear of trying can be tantamount to freedom.

When women try—when women strive—we put ourselves on the line, more so than men because our purpose is still presumed to be you are here to be looked at. I will support the argument that we should change the paradigm; I agree that part of the answer to the scrutiny we find ourselves under, 52 years after the Pill, is to change our culture so that being looked at is no longer seen as womankind’s greatest goal. That argument also does jack squat for women living right now, as the world exists; it casts a sidelong glance at women who seize power through being seen, or who might just sometimes enjoy being looked at, or who take the traditionally passive role of being seen and transform it into an act of agency in public life and private relationships. Helen Gurley Brown intuited this; rather, she experienced it, as a woman who experienced the manifold facets of womanhood in the early 1960s. With Sex and the Single Girl, she argued that the problem wasn’t being simply looked at; it was being looked at and having no say in how you were seen.

One can look at things like her list of what’s sexy and not—a good telephone voice and the ability to sit very still are sexy, girdles and borrowing money most definitely are not—and find a dictator of femininity, one born from that special kind of misogyny individual women occasionally serve to one another. Certainly lesser variations of her are exactly that. Yet in looking at Helen Gurley Brown’s legacy, one could find something else, something benevolent, even sisterly. For when I read her work, when I look at her life, when I recall the look of approval—no, affection—that crossed her face as she issued her silent blessing to a younger version of myself that morning at the elevator, what I find is a gift.

Beauty Blogosphere 8.10.12

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 10:08:02 -0400

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between.

From Head...

"Tricky tricky things": Stunning short fiction from Nigerian sci-fi writer Nnedi Okorafor about—see, if I say it's about a magical wig it'll sound far less nuanced and enchanting than it actually is. So instead, let's say it's about the power of looking instead of being looked at. (Thanks to Ben Laden for the heads-up!)

...To Toe...

Zootopia: Reasons not to be a giraffe, part I: You'd have to be anesthetized before your pedicure.

...And Everything In Between:

Tease and desist: Urban Decay, maker of a "Naked" palette line, sends a cease-and-desist letter to Victoria's Secret about their new cosmetics line "The Naked." Vicki's Secret responds by filing a suit in federal court asking for the right to get nekkid, and the legal world now waits with bated breath to find out who will emerge victorious in the battle of the nudes.

Decisions, decisions: Estee Lauder heir Ron Lauder, quarter-owner of ailing Israeli TV station Channel 10, faced with deciding whether to pump roughly $15 million into keeping the channel afloat or letting it die its natural death.

Goliath: Interesting Wall Street Journal piece about how mid-sized beauty brands get snatched up by beauty behemoths—think the Coty buyout of Philosophy, or Estee Lauder and Smashbox. The anti-corporate gal in me has a negative knee-jerk reaction to this, but a beauty editor revealed a different angle in our interview: "A lot of times it’s better because now you have this huge R&D machine to work with. Clorox bought Burt’s Bees, and when I went to the Burt’s Bees factory and asked about it, they were like, 'It’s the greatest thing ever—they let us continue doing what we were doing, but we have an infusion of cash so we can do more.'"

Mom & Pop: Local brands in China are giving pause to dominant forces like Proctor & Gamble. This piece is more about personal care and home products in general, but I wonder about its implications for the beauty market. Beauty brands have poured a good deal of resources into developing products to target Asian consumers—could it be for naught, if domestic brands are no longer considered second-rate by the buying public?

Good girl gone: "Family brand" Nivea drops association with Rihanna, whose "California King Bed" was the soundtrack to a recent commercial, saying that her sexy persona wasn't compatible with the company's wholesome image. You'd have thought they'd consider that before picking her song for the commercial in the first place, but what do I know about showbiz?

I go nuts for gymnast butts: What if photo editors treated male athletes the way they do female volleyball players? Class-A satire of objectification.

XX-ray spex: Blinders that blur men's eyesight so they can't see women beyond a narrow range of vision? An Orthodox organization has developed these "anti-ogle goggles," and while my instinct was to be pleased that for once the onus of "modesty" was being placed on the person doing the looking as opposed to the person being looked at, at day's end I'm with Hugo, who points out that a "covenant is a promise sustained by faith, not by a crude device that impairs the senses."

The case of Lolo Jones: The New York Times says Olympic hurdler Lolo Jones really only gets attention because she's pretty, which seems maybe like a sensible assertion to make until you read the article, which has a nasty tone and implies it's somehow Jones's fault that her more heavily-medaled teammates aren't getting the attention thrust upon her. As ever, Caitlin Constantine's take on this is razor-sharp: "It’s absolutely valid to ask why Jones, who did not medal in Beijing, is considered so much more marketable than Dawn Harper, who actually won the gold medal. ...That’s not what I’ve really seen a lot of people talk about. Instead, it seems like Jones’ greatest sin in the eyes of many is that she is a self-promoter." The way Olympic endorsements work isn't fair, that's for sure, nor is it standardized. By all rights, a medalist like Dawn Harper should be reaping endorsements and attention. But as Jezebel points out, "While Jones has certainly garnered her fair share of attention for, yes, her good looks and sexual choices, questioning her qualifications to be in the Olympics should have ended when she, y'know, qualified for the Olympics."

Rue the day: According to Research, which we know is never infallible, men tend to regret not pursuing physically attractive women, while women tend to regret not following up with wealthy men. I'm not quite sure what to make of this—I mean, sure, I theoretically regret not having milked my Greek shipping magnate-suitor for private dinners at French Laundry, but in actuality, I can't think of true romantic regrets of this variety. (Maybe I'm just easy?) Is this something people really go through? Do you regret not pursuing particular people? If so, was your reasoning about their looks, their income...?

Model citizens: Positively drooling to see this HBO documentary about aging models, with notable names such as Jerry Hall, Isabella Rossellini, and Paulina Porizkova. Only with age can someone like Porizkova reflect on her early career: "Working off your looks makes you pretty much the opposite of self-confident. Still, I don’t think any 15-year-old girl will turn down the chance to be called beautiful. You don’t realize at that point that you are also going to be called ugly.” Or, sadly, "What people called sexual harassment, we called compliments. When a 16-year-old is flattered by a man pulling out his penis in front of her, that’s noteworthy.”

To the point: "People who care a lot about their own beauty usually have strong and complicated reasons for feeling that way." I've had a couple of drive-by commenters say that they think my entire blog is a testament to how gorgeous I think I am, and each time I'm left wondering how anyone could get that from what I write. (Apparently a woman writing about looks without taking care to be self-deprecating is tantamount to extravagant pride?) From now on, I might well refer them to this mini-treatise on the fascination of our own looks. (Thanks to Tizz Wall for the link.)

The upside of ugly: Challenging piece from Jessica Valenti about the self-esteem trap we set up for girls by telling them "confidence" is all they need to make it in the world, with the hook of plastic surgery given to kids who have "facial deformities"...like ears that stick out. There's much I disagree with here (Valenti attributes her sense of humor and feminism to not having grown up a terribly pretty girl, which seems an odd construction for a feminist to make; what of all the pretty girls who found feminism because they got tired of being valued for their looks?) but the core here is intact: If we turn self-esteem into the end-all, be-all of girlhood, we set up a parallel path in which any route girls take to get there—including plastic surgery—is justified.

Source of all my sex tips.

Cosmo girls: My lifelong love-hate relationship with ladymags gets even more complex with reading this New York Times magazine article by Edith Zimmerman about international editions of Cosmopolitan (64 of 'em!).

Nailing it: Tracie Egan Morrissey looks at nail art, "the last bastion of female-centric beauty." As she points out, nails are the one beauty ritual that has naught to do with fitting some sort of beauty standard that evo-psych enthusiasts claim is about women babooning for men, thus totally legitimizing the fact that my toenails haven't gone a day unpainted since 2006.

Popularity contest: Fashionista looks at the beauty products that showed the greatest sales increase in the first two quarters of the year. Most surprising: Makeup palette sales shot up 19%. Why so popular all of a sudden? I'm guessing some combination of feeling like you're getting more for your money, and the way it sort of scratches the itch for curation, which has become quite the thing thanks to ye olde internet. It's a Twitter feed for your face!

Disability visibility: An intriguing trio of academic papers focusing on appearance and disability: prosthetics as accessories; acceptance and rejection of the beauty status quo among blind women; and garments designed to prevent inappropriate undressing among dementia patients.

Can't buy happiness: This sorta grody infographic that tried to half-assedly argue that spending money on beauty makes people unhappy made the rounds this week. The most interesting take is at Autostraddle, where Gabrielle mused about the role of the queer community and mainstream beauty culture: "The study claims that beautiful people make more money than not beautiful people, but last time I checked, dykes still make less than cis-men." The larger point here is that we're in a lose-lose proposition: People who are "naturally" beautiful enjoy greater happiness, but spending more money to appear naturally beautiful doesn't appear to have an effect on happiness.

In the rough: The world's most expensive nail polish: the $250,000 black diamond nail polish by jeweler Azature. (Looks like sandpaper to me. Am I alone?)

In the buff: Every so often there's a brand or product too great not to share: Meet MySkins, a bra/underwear line with 20 different shades of "nude." Still lacking on the darker end of the skin-tone spectrum, but it's still nice to see a start of a solution to a problem that prevents some of us from wearing white tops with pride. (Note: In comments, several readers pointed out that the size range for MySkins is woefully lacking—as evidenced by them not being able to house my utterly unremarkable 32Cs. Still a great idea, and I get that young companies can't carry a wide variety of stock, but c'mon! As Rebekka put it, "I like the idea of catering to different skin colours, but what's the use when they don't cater to most women, because they don't understand bra sizes?" Or panty sizes either, for that matter; for the style I wanted, the largest size was a 36-inch hip.)

Ladyscope: I love it when someone fesses up to doing something I do covertly, which is why I totally ate up this Kate Fridkis essay on checking out other women. So often this gets talked about strictly in terms of competition, but that's only rarely what my own secret scoping is about. (If anything, it's awe, but that doesn't fit as nicely into the ladies-love-to-catfight narrative, now, does it?)

On being Californian: "Latina women stop you in the street to ask what shampoo you use; 'Your hair is like mine,' they reach out to touch it, awed by the familiarity. They ask whether you are one of them–this time you don’t mind. They are mournful when you answer, 'No.' 'You’re pretty!' they exclaim. Please be possible, had been the unspoken hope. I can’t look white but I can look like you! I know, because I see the reflection of my desires on their faces."

Just like us: Introducing the eminently likeable celebrity as Every Girl, courtesy Courtney at Those Graces. I've read waaaay more than my share of celebrity profiles (for work, most of the time) and was snookered in by this trope at first—Wow, Jennifer Aniston sounds so normal! She's goofy and down-to-earth and wears pajama pants around the house! Jennifer Aniston—she's just like us! And then I noticed the same sentiment being applied to Courtney Cox, and Kate Hudson, and Claire Danes, and Reese Witherspoon, and so on until I had to conclude that the whole thing was a ploy. A casual observation, thoroughly not researched: Every so often celebrity profile writers will break this trope by being all, "Now THIS woman is a real STAR and she's so GLAMOROUS and UNTOUCHABLE." And off the top of my head, every time I've seen this done, it's a non-white celebrity. (Jennifer Lopez, Jennifer Hudson, and Beyoncé come to mind.) Do we want our black starlets to be unapproachable divas?