By Libby Mueller, Senior Staff Writer
Here is a lesson I learned around the time I was exiting sixth grade and entering seventh: To be valued as a woman, you must be beautiful.
I do actually remember becoming conscious of that fact. Up until that point, I was blissfully unaware: unaware of magazines, TV shows, celebrities, social cues, societal commentary, cultural norms, diet books, waxing protocol and unspoken standards. I had no time for that. I was too busy crouching in the woods with a makeshift bow and arrow made of twigs and yarn, a spy-warrior-princess catching her prey for that night's dinner. Or I was out on the pavement playing street hockey and pretending to be my favorite hockey players. I occupied myself writing long stories on the adventures my stuffed animals had in the grand kingdom of my bedroom. And I loved drawing out maps of the neighborhood, building fortresses out of chairs and blankets and writing plays for my sister and her friends.
I also loved to read, but nothing I read ever indicated to me the aforementioned life truth. My heroines were characters like Hermione from "Harry Potter," Liesel from "The Book Thief," Molly from "Molly Moon" and Holly from "Artemis Fowl."
They were strong, outspoken, independent girls whose appearances the authors didn't bother to linger much on because, well, they were bad-ass.
So, it came as a shock to me when I found out that in fact, society was less concerned about my street hockey ability and more concerned with the shape of my body (also my hair, which, let me tell you, poofily and frizzily defied any and all beauty standards). And from then on, especially as a college student at a university well known for the good looks of its student body, I've observed the ways in which cultural mediums kill us softly, as author Jean Kilbourne put it.
Beauty is, no doubt, a gift. One of my pet peeves is when people (women, especially) try to put down someone else's looks in an attempt to deface the gift of beauty. If you are a woman, how many times have you heard one woman comment on another (beautiful) woman, "Yeah, but she has man-shoulders," "She's not that pretty if you actually look at her face," "Well, she's not very fit," "Her nose/mouth/jaw/eyebrows is/are kind of weird," "She's a little big-boned, don't you think?," "That's not her natural hair color," "She's got a little extra around the hips/butt/thighs," etc.
I just want to laugh. It would be so much easier to just say, "Wow, she's beautiful" and leave it at that. But here's the problem: Society has elevated beauty to be practically the one and only acceptable gift for a woman to have. It's not simply one of many gifts a woman can possess; it is the gift a woman should possess if she wants to get noticed or even validate some other gift or talent. And this is what bothers me.
Beauty is a gift. But it is not the only gift. There's also intelligence and creativity and entrepreneurship and leadership and science skills and musical talent and acting ability and teaching skills and strength and faithfulness and maternal instinct and athleticism and boldness and comedy and good judgment and compassion and technical skills and curiosity and political savvy.
If I could change one thing about the world, it would be this: All gifts would be equally valued and equally celebrated. There would be no need to perpetuate the myth that only beauty is valuable because it would be understood that many traits and abilities are valuable. There would be no need to be complicit in the formulation of beauty standards because it would be acknowledged that not everyone is going to fit those standards and time and money are better spent developing one's own gifts and talents.
I miss the days before my middle school revelation, when I could sharpen my youthful gift of imagination unimpeded by the notion that my value rested in my appearance. But I want to reclaim that mindset. I want to see every day as a new possibility, a chance to rediscover myself and celebrate everything that life has to offer uninhibited by what I'm told is demanded or expected of me.
I want freedom for me and all the young women around me.
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