Li Yinhe talks about sex

Chapter 52 Women and Beauty

Against beauty pageants?

Although it is only in the past ten years that my country has solved the problem of food and clothing, beauty and slimming has become a new fashion in modern urban life, and various beauty pageants are also very lively.The question of beauty has always been a difficult problem for feminism.In the 20s and 60s, the feminist movement in the West started as an opposition to beauty pageants.Coincidentally, in the 70s, the only statement made by the China Women's Federation was to oppose beauty pageants.

In 1968, activists of the American women's movement crowned a sheep during a parade and set up free trash cans to throw bras, belly bands, corsets, false eyelashes and the like into the trash.It is said that no one burned bras at that time, but due to the hostile media reports, "brassiere burning" not only became a news event, but also became a symbol of feminism.People think feminism is about being "unfeminine", ugly and frustrated, out of envy of real "beauty".

In the feminist movement, beauty pageants are regarded as an integral part of women's subservient status, and women's pursuit of beauty in appearance and body is regarded as the objectification of female subjects, which contains discrimination against women.The women's movement opposes beauty pageants because it demeans women and turns them into soulless sex objects.The women's movement's opposition to beauty pageants is to resist the rules and certain female body standards that women must obey.Feminism points out with disgust that women are engaged in a continuous beauty pageant in daily life: dressing themselves up for men, beautifying and slimming, fearing that their appearance and figure will not meet the aesthetic standards of men.

Everyone has a love for beauty, and no woman in the world can completely avoid the temptation of beauty.According to statistics on American women in 1979, they spent $30 billion on cosmetics, $20 billion on haircuts, $20 billion on perfume, $15 billion on skin care, and $4 million on dieting. In 1990, dieting cost $330 billion, the cosmetic industry $200 billion, and cosmetic surgery $3 million.Many women suffer from anorexia due to weight loss, go on long-term diets to keep in shape, and live with hunger.Cosmetic surgery for women also includes: liposuction, breast augmentation, facelifts, cellulite removal, rhinoplasty, and more.China's beauty industry is also in the ascendant stage.

In grooming their bodies, women are degraded and objectified.In many patriarchal cultures, women can only be loved, hired, promoted, and selected if they meet the so-called feminine standards in terms of appearance, posture, movement, voice, body, spirit, and value. Any rejection and resistance will have to pay. Expensive price.Here, women are punished and disciplined by male domination. This punishment includes: losing the opportunity to establish intimate relationships with the opposite sex, and not being able to live a decent life.

How has feminism responded to beauty pageants and cosmetic surgery?This is a very difficult question.Feminism should be particularly cautious when it comes to issues such as beauty pageants, weight loss, and beauty.Feminism is caught in a dilemma because these things are both against women's interests and because large numbers of women voluntarily engage in these activities.There are only three solutions:

The first solution is to resolutely oppose beauty pageants, as some Western feminists and the China Women's Federation have done; oppose the objectification and pathology of women's bodies; Beauty and slimming; Advocate women not to pay too much attention to external beauty and physical beauty, but to pay more attention to inner beauty and spiritual beauty.

The second solution is to oppose the unilateral selection of the "beauty" of women, but to choose the "beauty" of both men and women, that is, to replace the unilateral objectification of women's bodies with the objectification of the bodies of men and women.In fact, judging from the film and television media, male beauty has increasingly become an aesthetic object.Evidence for this argument includes: the emergence of photobooks of beautiful men, magazines that target men as aesthetic objects, and male beauty contests.

There is also a third solution, which is the individuation, pluralization and democratization of beauty, that is, everyone makes their own choice on the issue of beauty.A person can choose to be thin or fat; he can choose to be "beautiful" according to a certain social scale (such as a 34-25-34 inch figure), or he can choose to be "unbeautiful" according to this scale. "'s personal image.This is the most free and least oppressive way.If a society can allow this choice, it will be a society that makes everyone living in it feel free, easy and happy.

(End of this chapter)