Female beauty, according to George Steinman, commenced its reign in the royal courts of England and Europe. Young female beauties were the prize of every court. For a woman, attracting and cultivating beauty was the single most important tool in her arsenal to ensure marriageability and success.
For centuries, beauty has been the currency of womanhood, transcending class, culture, and time. More valuable than intelligence, athleticism, confidence or kindness; physical beauty has always been a woman’s most precious commodity.
So pervasive was the allure of female beauty, that an endless array of dangerous, violent, and harmful practices were inflicted on women’s bodies. From eyelash extensions that were sewn on to eyelids and foot binding techniques to achieve doll-like feet to eye drops of deadly nightshade or “belladonna” to dilate pupils; to vials of urine from young boys to erase freckles and pills containing tapeworm to promote weight loss.
In the Middle Ages, women would bleed themselves to achieve a pale complexion – a pale face signified wealth and nobility. In the 16th century, complexion-enhancing edible wafers made of arsenic – a known carcinogen – promised to “transform the most sallow skin into radiant health; remove pimples; clear the face of freckles and tan”.
Women’s bodies were equally under siege. Corsets, at the height of their appeal in the 19th century, prompted women to remove ribs and endure skeletal deformities and organ damage, in addition to the inconvenient and frequent fainting spells that they caused.
Yet, the standards of beauty imposed upon the modern woman are beyond anything remotely imaginable in the royal courts of Europe.
Today, cosmetic procedures and surgeries are rising at an alarming rate. In 2022, more than 14.9 million surgical and 18.8 million non-surgical procedures were performed worldwide, with cosmetic surgery increasing by 41.3% between 2018 and 2022. Women and girls between 13 and 54 dominate the market for these procedures.
There has been an exponential rise worldwide in teenagers as young as 15 years old seeking consultations for cosmetic procedures, with plastic surgery advertising targeting children as young as eight. In 2016, over 229,000 cosmetic procedures were performed on patients younger than 19 years old in the US alone.
In Australia, nearly half (45%) of young people aged 13 – 18 report debilitating dissatisfaction with the way their body looks, while over 70 per cent of Australian women over the age of 18 wish they could change the way they look.
Today, beauty is marketed as a tool of empowerment and an expression of feminine power. This is a gross distortion of reality that creates the illusion that women have moved beyond the historical confines of the beauty standard.
The beauty industry playbook is this: Teach women and girls to detest their bodies and appearance and cultivate a perpetual state of dissatisfaction. Then, sell them products to “fix” their perceived imperfections to attain that elusive beauty ideal. When women question these rigid standards, shift the narrative, and tell them that their pursuit of beauty is an act of empowerment and resistance; That by adhering to these beauty rituals, they are defying the oppressive social norms imposed upon them.
It is masterful, really. This narrative of empowerment through beauty is a sophisticated form of manipulation, cleverly masking the underlying coercion of women and transforming beauty conformity into a celebrated choice.
The illusion of choice becomes a tool of control, ensuring that women remain tethered to the consumption of beauty products and treatments, all under the guise of empowerment. This manipulation underscores a profound paradox: the pursuit of empowerment through beauty often leads back to the same constraints it seeks to escape.
Female beauty is not, and never has been, an expression of empowerment. It has been a weapon used against women for over two millennia. But now, women have been taught to hold the weapon to their own heads and smile while they do it.
Industry thrives on exploiting this engineered insecurity, making enormous profits off the cycle of “self-improvement” it perpetuates at the expense of women.
In Australia, the Beauty & Personal Care market is expected to reach US$7.42bn in 2024. More than $1 billion is spent every year on cosmetic procedures, with almost seven million Australians, or 38% of the adult population considering undergoing cosmetic surgery in the next 10 years.
Despite expanded definitions of beauty and momentous progress in women’s rights in Australia, physical beauty continues to endure and be reinforced as the dominant currency for women.
Messaging around beauty is more sophisticated and insidious than ever before, often framing physical beauty as the ultimate expression of feminine power.
Movements promoting concepts like body positivity, self-acceptance, and “expanding” the beauty ideal to incorporate more physical diversity – while well intended – still place the onus on women to improve their self-esteem instead of criticising societal beauty standards. This, according to Amanda Hess from the NY Times, is a form of beauty-standard denialism, which puts the burden on women to be physically beautiful, while also asking them to change their own self-perception.
The truth is an alarming portion of public conversation about women – “positive” or not – is still focussed on fixing women and centring their physical appearance. As Hess says, “Expectations for female appearances have never been higher. It’s just become taboo to admit that.”
Female beauty, no matter how expanded and diverse the definition, will continue to be an oppressive constraint on women unless we challenge the system that perpetuates the notion that beauty is a woman’s primary currency.
This does not mean that we ignore beauty entirely, but rather, acknowledge that there is a toxic preoccupation with female beauty that is driven by a reliance on women’s endless shame and insecurity.
Women do not need fixing—systems do. It is crucial to shift the focus from fixing women to dismantling the systems that uphold these unrealistic beauty standards.
Let’s lift and celebrate the diversity of other areas of female worth; namely, their contribution to community, sport, history, academia, science, politics, family, leadership, and business. After all, the great ruse of the beauty ideal is that it is deliberately unattainable, designed to ensure women and girls feel that they are never enough. And women are enough, just as they are.
Feature Image: Natalie Kyriacou OAM.