"One must suffer for beauty!" My mother habitually quotes as she yanks at my tortured scalp during some routine 'maintenance.' A hairstylist for many years, her remark has always been joyfully sarcastic... and rather true. Without a doubt, women are well versed in contemporary grooming mythology and know firsthand how attaining appeal can be both easy and difficult -- joyful or painful. An ironic mixture of confident euphoria and subdued discomfiture.
Though a number of men are now striving for beauty ideals in unprecedented ways (probably due to the insatiable profit motives of commercial entities), women are all too familiar with waxing, plucking, tightening, pulling, and fussing with every apparatus that could possibly enhance attractiveness. We do it to look good. We do it to perform. We do it for fun. And we do it because we are absolutely insane.
But not really. Yet from an objective point of view, somewhere off in a place that is untainted by cultural bias, there may be an alien who cannot wrap its androgynous head around the fact that women (and men) will extract their own hair, cut their our skin, and suffocate their own bodies to attract others. What said extraterrestrial might not also understand, is how those 'others' find these quirky contrivances extremely appealing.
Like corsets: how the medieval torture devices have enhanced the lives of millions over the years! According to the mass consciousness of common knowledge, the corset has successfully accomplished two major feats. First, it has succeeded in temporarily bestowing smaller waists on women, lending an iconic, more feminine body to the wearer in the form of what is known as the 'hourglass' figure. Second, it has also managed to effectively squeeze the internal organs of virtually every person who wears one, possibly to a detrimental degree depending on relative tightness. Indeed, friends don't let friends wear dangerous clothing.
Actually, that is also not true. Friends are the ones who often lace up the suffocating corsets, or help clip them on the tightest row of clasps if one cannot reach far enough around one's back. Female friends feed the fire of corset mongers -- probably because they too like the ideal of the tiny waist.
So what's the problem? Is it okay to sport a smaller waist even if it hurts? Does beauty need to hurt? Or more importantly, is this a subtle scheme of the persistent patriarchy holding us down?
Though the corset was originally worn by women whose sole function was to sit and look pretty, passively accepting their looming destinies as baby machines and flowery arm decorations a mere few hundred years ago, is the modern corset the same creature? Were women, who had but little power in the realm of gender relations back then, disempowered by virtue of wearing the garment? And are their descendants still trapped in the same prison of aesthetics? Or more directly, do women still need to contort and alter their bodies to enhance their relative worth?
Well, a prison is only a prison if you can't get out. And now, corsets are the exception rather than the rule. So if we choose to embrace it, we delight at our own peril. Moreover, to some, the decision to wear the corset or to indulge in any other semi-uncomfortable practice may not be as painful as it seems, especially if one's vision of the pros outweigh the cons.
Nevertheless, what are the benefits of wearing corsets, waxing, or undergoing aesthetic surgeries? Looking cute? Feeling good? Is that enough of a valid *reason* for women to have permission to do something that may disagree with traditional notions of feminist political correctness?
It may appear that many of our popular indulgences including corsets, fad dieting, hair plucking, plastic and cosmetic surgery, dermabrasion, and tattooing are mind-bogglingly unnecessary. Moreover, it may be true that we do what we do because of residual lopsided power dynamics. In which case, it can be less than empowering to embrace an external hourglass rather than our own authentic forms.
Luckily for women and men, we are increasingly empowered to choose our own identities, our own appearances, and... our own prisons.
Blessedly, one does not actually need to suffer to be beautiful anymore, as evidenced by curious fashion trends that emphasize messy unkempt hair or the rounded belly appearance of the empire waist. Possibly because of globalization and maybe because humans are easily bored, we tend to expand our interests, oftentimes in the direction of what we hope is progress. Consequently, we now have so many flavors of beauty that corsets -- fun, painful, or both -- may only be involved at the discretion of the wearer.