Reflection on “Devastating Beauty”
What can a woman do to be called “beautiful”?! This rhetorical question came to my mind after reading Teal Pfeiffer’s essay. The term he uses to describe the beauty perfectly fits to his position. Modern canons of beauty are rather devastating and ruining women’s life and health than building it up. It is true that the notion of modern beauty is dictated by plenty popular glamour and glossy magazines, TV programs, billboards, etc. Even an unaccustomed reader can get the hidden message that in order to be called beautiful, girls and women are expected to fit into these standards with their strict limitations. Pfeiffer rightfully argues that the pictures in these magazines violate women’s right to be as they are and speaks against a tendency of being defined by one’s body size. The main argument of the author is that according to many surveys practically every woman has a desire to look like one of the models posing in magazines and feels low self-estimation for the reason she cannot reach this ideal look. Small girls also get influenced by these magazines and get frustrated with their bodies too.
Pfeiffer notes that the size tends to get smaller and smaller. For instance, within fifty years an ideal woman is expected to weight thirty pounds less than before. Pfeiffer investigates the effect of this media phenomenon and states that “beauty is equated with a specific size”. For him it is a completely wrong assumption that can lead to dangerous consequences.
Also Pfeiffer declares that women simply feel bad when they read magazines of this type and easily get depression for not being able to become as thin as the models on the pictures. The size is dictated from the everyday readings. The author concludes that these images are harmful for women and thinks of the way how to prevent this phenomenon. Therefore the author suggests a very radical idea - to ban these magazines by not buying them. He claims that if ladies stop purchasing these papers, it will alert the publishers that they should change the picture-content and switch to normal size models. The idea is very practical and quite persuasive. Organizing a boycott seems the only solution for him. To prove it Pfeiffer gives another example of fighting with social discriminations. The presents the bus ride boycott organized by Rose Parks, a famous equal rights movement leader and a strike of grape pickers led by Cesar Chavez.
The argument made in Pfeiffer’s essay is quite strong but it is a bit one-sided. Silent boycotting of reading the magazines is a slow way to show the confrontation. In my opinion, it has to be strengthened by other more visible and loud means as a demonstration or a mass protest. The author does not think over the communication between those women who decide to boycott the “destructive magazines”. Also, in my opinion, there should be a program aimed to explain women why this “beauty” they struggle to is not worth it.
