Taylor Swift is hot. At least she’s supposed to be. The current qualifications for that distinction are tall and blonde. Ample breasts are desired but not required. When I ask students what is beauty they tend to fall upon the sword of literature, taking up fanciful and often philosophical verse in order to exclaim how much someone who just makes them laugh is what they want. The guys are especially false, claiming how much they care about personality. It is all script, written long ago by people who didn’t even possess formal language. These customs and rituals are ancient. We laud a physical ideal amongst our own gender but in mixed company strive to maintain a sense of being above all that.
I’m not really above all that. I think Taylor Swift is a unappealing beanpole who had a good album once upon a time before L’oreal got a hold of her. American beauty at least is a product arms race. You are beautiful so long as you wear the right clothes, makeup, and shoes. So long as you get the proper haircut and do all of the rituals you must to your teeth and skin, anyone can have beauty. Natural beauty has been reduced to actually owning the breasts you were born with.
I applaud Dove (once again) for trying to swim against the tide. I frown at Wendy’s (once again) for diving headlong into the water and hiding a woman who is actually pretty (though for all I know that could also be product inspired pretty) only to replace her with a skinnier more ‘universally appealing’ version of herself.
Outer beauty is an important thing in the world. I’d just like to know what it actually is for people before the media tells them what it is.