virus: beauty meme

Sodom (sodom@ma.ultranet.com)
Tue, 28 Apr 1998 17:48:17 -0400

OK, so I was sitting on the throne in my own home when I decided to leaf
through one of my wife's magazines. The magazine I picked up is called
"Self" and seems to me to be about beauty stuff, fitness stuff, light
psychological issues etc.. for women. I had always vaguely assumed that
many women (some men too I am sure) consider external appearance to be
oine of the most, if not the most, important factor in self respect.
Suffice it to say that I found the magazine to be so incredibly
insulting to the intellect that after laughing and almost crying at the
articles, I decided to start asking qusestions of my wife and other
women I know about it. My wife was steadfast in the idea that external
appearance, ie beauty, was indeed vitally important to her sense of self
worth, and it always has been. Sure enough, all the other women more or
less agreed, except 2, both of which are lesbians and in positions of
power where I work.
I decided that this was most certainly a virulent meme that
deserves more attention if I am to keep my daughters (if I have them)
from associating outward appearance with self respect. (I hold the
opinion that the better sense of self-respect comes from within, from
knowing oneself) So, to this end, i wanted to find out how my wife was
infected, and how many other people are infected with this meme. These
are my primary thoughts:

1> Part of the mate finding ritual that exists at the DNA level. This
is demonstratable from things like lipstick intended to imitate the
vagina, or bras to make the chest look more like an ass. There was
recently a show on PBS discussing how the female body evolved to stand
upright and attract mates. Basically, the other apes use nice round pick
asses to attract males, since when walking on all fours, the ass is at
eye level for the males. As human females are the only apes with breasts
that are always large relative to other female apes, the idea was that
breast cleavage and butt cleavage look identicle when the other parts of
the body are covered - hense breasts have taken their course to help
attract males. CONCLUSION I drew: It is the ability to attract a mate
that is responsible for the sense of self-worth, and since many people
use beauty as the primary focus in mate hunting, beauty is simply
another word for "mate attracting capability"

2> Brainwashed by our masognistic society. Mothers telling their
daughters that they are pretty and parents wanting their daughters to be
pretty before intelligent. Since up until recently, this was definately
a man's world, and still mostly is, reversing this course will be
difficult. CONCLUSION I drew: It is still too often that women are
subserviant to men, and that cannot be good for the ego. From day one a
female needs to be reassured that her value is associated with her ego -
or mind (as opposed to brain).

3> Profit motivation of the textile industry and makeup industry.
This seems somewhat obvious. Just as OPEC does not want to see cars that
run on solar or electric power, the textile industry does not want to
see women stop competing for the favor of the opposite sex, and spend
less money on clothes, and shoes and makeup etc... they have a vested
interest in keeping women in the position they are in.

Anyway, I could use help with three things:

1> defining the meme
2> Identifying the sources and outlets for the meme
3> Innoculating against the mem (assuming I start from birth)

Any thoughts?

Sodom
Bill Roh