The Rise and Demise of Beauty

The Doll:

Desire makes the world go round. And here I am not necessarily talking about sexual desire. Giddens says that everybody is ‘caught up in the pursuit of desire’ (Giddens in Howson 2004). Desires unsurprisingly also change from person to person, and from society to society. In a stereotypical way, some women are seen as using the man’s sexual desire in order to fulfil her very desire of success and social status. For people like The Doll, the Hulk becomes a tool, in a manner of speaking.

They met in a boarding house where she lived. The Hunk enjoyed a balanced daily meal there. He was already a professional man. Being much too clever for his age, and also his own parents admiration and pride, he graduated three years before his peers (at that stage, a child was still allowed to jump three grades because of an above-average intelligence). He remained a child in a grown-up world. His family thought it best that he was not left to his own culinary devices. Throughout my childhood, I knew what the term ‘chouw-chouw’ meant: such a meal from his cooking abilities is not supposed to be wholesome and nutritionally desirable. So, he would rather eat in a reputable establishment.

The Doll’s parents also regarded this student abode in high esteem. It must have been a very prim and proper establishment. Mother and Father were embarrassingly over-protective. The Doll never learned to swim or ride a bicycle. These activities were deemed extremely dangerous. The parents wrapped her in cotton wool. She was their only daughter. Blonde, beautiful, and clever.

While society is currently obsessed on using the body as visual embodiment of the ‘pursuit of a healthy life’ (Lupton in Howson 2004), other generations have had various unrelated fixations. In The Doll’s youth (the fifties), emphasis was placed on the American dream-look: wholesomeness, and the female as an attractive homemaker, always to the man’s service in every way. The ideal woman was supposed be petite, helpless, and in want of protection.

This passion with fertility and the woman as homemaker were also partly what Bourdieu referred to when he pursued the notion that people establish their social status with their dress (1994). Thus, they use clothes as part of their cultural capital. It was a way to negotiate their standing in the community. If you combine beautiful dress with an attractive woman, you kill two birds with one stone.

Psychological studies have proven that beautiful people are also perceived as more competent in other areas of life (Webster & Driskell 1983). Beautiful women, thus, are better cooks (consider Nigella and the host of food channel fundi’s of female persuasion), better lawyers (when last did you see an ugly female lawyer in Alley McBeal, or on the prosecutor’s side in Law and Order), and better teachers as in the Doll’s world. What does the Hunk get out of this? Bingo! Social status, of course! It all rubs off, you know?

Sadly, nothing comes without a price. The Hunk waited patiently for the wedding night. To cool his amorous desires, he even embarked on a year-long trip. Far away. On a ship. Explorer-style. His profession called him, and he obliged. It suited him. While he was away, she wrote long letters relating engagements and marriages in their circle of friends. The sub-text was always the same: We should follow the example. All our friends are pursuing the admirable convention of marriage. This act, and only this one, will make us truly content: ‘and they lived happily ever after..’.

Upon the return from his major venture, he realised what he was getting into. Not only is he marrying his petite little doll, but also her mother, and father, and the whole damn Calvinist environment. He was trapped. He wanted out, but his father-to-be warned him: ‘What will the people say? Do not embarrass my only daughter! The wedding is planned, and you should stick to your word’. And so he did. For twenty painful years. It not only pained the Hulk personally, but it also hurt the two fruits of his loins. More about them tomorrow.

We will explore how sexuality and Calvinism go together like lemon juice and fresh cream. It curdles instantly. And why should a man have a future, and a woman, a past? (Oscar Wilde somewhere in the beginning of the 20th century…)