Kindle Notes & Highlights
other beauty preparations used by the male and female aristocracy (as well as elite colonists). To these new citizens interested in pursuing a democratic future, the vain rituals of self-presentation were a reminder of their class-based, hierarchical past.
Glamour
physiognomy, the quack scientific belief that one’s physical appearance corresponds with her character, was popular, says Peiss, “reducing moral attributes to physical ones. Hair, skin, and eye color frequently stood as signs of women’s inner virtue. The facial ideal was fair and white skin, blushing cheeks, ruby lips, expressive eyes.” Black
Physiognomy
“What changed in the late nineteenth century was the attitude toward competitiveness. It became more accepted as a dynamic that women would likely engage in. That is, competitiveness became part of the cultural definition of femininity for the white middle class.”24
Historically competition
True femininity meant being attractive, and beauty indicated true femininity.
The pressure to diet intensified in the 1920s when the hourglass silhouette for women’s dresses was replaced with the popular “flapper” look,
Fat
you were so thin I nearly died of envy. I am terribly fat.”
In the 1920s, the clothing industry offered standard, ready-to-wear
women found clothes-shopping a frustrating experience, because they were now made aware of their “figure flaws.”
(Charitable work, especially in the service of social issues such as breast cancer awareness or the prevention of teenage pregnancy, is considered respectable because it deals with private concerns and not with public ambition.)
Feminists claimed that beauty ideals enslaved women by pressuring them to compete with other women for the attention of men, and thus formed the bedrock of modern women’s oppression.
Miss America and all beautiful women came off as our enemy instead of as our sisters who suffer with us.”
they buy and wear makeup in moderation because their self-esteem remains intact, that the beauty industry has not worn them down, and that it’s perfectly acceptable to be contemptuous of other women who, perhaps lacking restraint and self-worth, yearn to achieve the American beauty ideal.
The idea that an individual has the power to remake himself or herself is part of our culture’s Enlightenment philosophy: Everyone is entitled to pursue his or her own happiness, and self-transformation is regarded as an effective way of achieving it. The power of self-transformation can obviously be liberating, but it can also unleash competitiveness. If one woman can make herself beautiful, regardless of her natural attributes, then there really is no excuse for other women to remain plain Janes. They had better transform themselves, too; otherwise, they will get left behind.
Self responsability
‘Passing’ is a means of trying to gain control. It is the means of restoring not ‘happiness’ but a sense of order in the world. We ‘pass’ in order to regain control of ourselves and to efface that which is seen (we believe) as different, which marks us as visible in the world.”
Psssing
When most women measure their looks against that of other women, they are really focused on one thing: who’s thinner.
“the big competition is over who’s skinnier. I remember one girl saying that her boss hated her. I asked why. And she said, ‘Because I’m skinny and pretty.’ And you know what? I think it was true. Her boss really did hate her because she was skinny and pretty.”
It’s really no surprise that so many girls starve themselves into the popular clique. Being overweight, especially in junior high and high school, generally makes you a target of ostracism and cruel jokes, unless you’re lucky enough to remain completely unnoticed. The single largest group of high school students considering or attempting suicide are girls who think they are overweight.
Fat
We have been socially conditioned to place one another on a thin/fat continuum and categorize one another accordingly. Thus, a thin friend is, in our imagination, pretty, successful, and disciplined while an overweight friend is plain, ploddish, and lacking in control—regardless of their actual attributes.
Fat
“Weight is like a role you play,” according to Susan Head, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and consultant at Duke University’s Rice Diet Program. “You’re the fat friend, the fat wife or girlfriend, the one who listens to problems, who’s not threatening, who doesn’t have a social life,” she told Elle magazine. “Some part of the identity of people close to you is based on your weight, so when you throw off that role, you upset the whole balance of things.”
Fat as a role
“I’m so scared of being like one of those girls I’ve always hated,” she continues, banging on the table with her finger, “who would brag and who would have lots of guys, who would make you feel bad about yourself. You know, you can be pegged a certain way. It’s insane.
Nlog
Why do women, even close friends, compete with each other over their jeans size? Another person’s genetics, metabolism, and appetite are unique to her, and therefore not an appropriate platform on which to judge oneself. Yet the narrow beauty ideal fosters the oppressive mythology that one body shape, though unnatural for most women, can fit all.
Fat as competition
Diets and eating disorders differ in degree, though not in kind: They are on a continuum.
many women are spurred to diet after learning the tricks of anorexics and bulimics through documentaries or magazine articles warning against eating disorders. An educational program at Stanford University in the 1990s, designed to prevent eating disorders by letting students hear firsthand about their hazards, backfired: The students became more likely to imitate the behaviors they were supposed to avoid. The program featured two young woman, one a recovered anorexic and the other a recovered bulimic, who made a presentation to a psychology class. There was one problem: The women were
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Eating disorders are contagious
In our culture, being overweight makes us victims of our lifestyles.
People treat you better when you lose weight and look beautiful.”
In my mother’s mind, if you ate “good food” and were thin, you were a “good person.” I always felt that any success I achieved was minimized in her eyes because of my weight.
Thin = beautiful = good
“You know, sweetie, boys prefer thin girls.”
She doesn’t think it’s very ladylike to buy fattening foods for yourself. The only thing Mom buys for herself are cottage cheese and tomatoes.”
dieting is really a sham, that dieters are quite sneaky about the food they actually intake, and that dieting is, above all else, a competition to show who can eat the least yet pretend the most that she really isn’t hungry anyway.
Early dieting, ironically, is one of the causes of early obesity—which explains why Americans are simultaneously so diet-conscious and yet so fat. The younger a daughter is when she first began dieting, the higher her current weight is now. The Glamour survey showed that when women started dieting in their teen years, their average adult weight was 146 pounds. But when they started in childhood, their average adult weight was 163 pounds.66 These women would be healthier and lighter had they never dieted at all.
Diet culture dropout
University of Illinois. However, the study’s psychologists did find evidence that one’s subjective well-being influenced how one judged her own level of attractiveness. The happier the subject, the more likely that she perceived herself as attractive.67
Only women compete with each other for a mate. An unmarried man, a bachelor, can live the good life without stigma, while an unmarried woman is berated as defective, a spinster. She is described as homely, masculine, too picky, or too desperate.
there always exists the Other Woman, who allegedly has much more to offer than you do. She is desirable, and if you’re not, are you really a woman? At the same time, she provides an instant excuse for your “failures” in love and marriage. If she didn’t exist, wouldn’t you be in a perfect relationship? Get rid of her, and couldn’t you live care-free?
Women compete with each other over men because we have been subjected to a relentless message that a woman can only be fulfilled through a romantic coupling with a man.
urban areas, men tend to feel less pressure to marry; there are fewer men than women; and there are more gay men than straight men. As a result, there is a percentage of women who do not walk down the proverbial aisle. This increases the sense of competition between women and permits the concept of the Other Woman to assume too much power. If we saw women as allies rather than rivals, would we spend more time developing platonic friendships and less pursuing romantic ones? Would romantic love continue to be the be-all and end-all of a woman’s aspirations if there were no competitive pursuit
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Only a handful of men appeared confident, and those were the ones most of the women had their eyes on.
Although many men went home alone, too, they were not, I suspect, haunted by anxieties over the Other Man. When men do not find love, they rarely blame it on other men.
an acquaintance of Cynthia’s, expressed interest in Jeff. The effect was to cement her feelings. “We stayed together another two years. Were it not for the other girl, I wonder if I would have broken up with him earlier. In retrospect they probably made a better couple than we did. It’s really too bad for Jeff. I guess I felt threatened enough that I had to stake out my little territory.”
Theres not even a real competition, but she acted for the other woman, not the man
Troubadour poets desired and elevated women they could never have, since they inevitably pined for the wife of their lord. In the literature of the Middle Ages, men did experience competition with men for the affections of unattainable beloved ladies. From 1500 to 1700, however, the status of women changed; no longer were they idealized. Catholicism gave way to Protestantism, and wedlock became glorified. In Europe, there was an increased emphasis on choosing a mate for love, friendship, compatibility, and shared interests.
History of when women behan competing for men rathen than the other way around
Marriage remained a union in which the wife was financially dependent on her husband. Women needed an economic provider while men did not, which put men at an advantage. The woman had to attract the man—not an easy accomplishment. In eighteenth-century England in particular, there was a disproportionate number of eligible women, allowing men to be very choosy when selecting a bride.6 The literature from then on (particularly when written by women) featured women competing with each other for male suitors. In eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century literature, the plot of a woman
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the Other Woman is a reflection of our own anxieties and repressions. She gets away with behavior that we cannot. She represents everything that we wish we could be, all that we wish we could attain. Perhaps we project a part of ourselves—the part that we wish to disavow—so that we can conveniently create a dichotomy between the virtuous heroine (ourself) and the villainess (the Other Woman). Instead of vilifying her, shouldn’t we try to understand her?
Nlog as a reflection of ourselves or the bad experiences we had?
the Other Woman would not exist if not for the secretiveness of men.
Take it against the man! Yes!
The sought-after man holds the cards of power by withholding information from the woman who fancies him. So isn’t the Other Woman innocent? Isn’t he at fault? And hasn’t he created the situation in which two women are rivals in the first place?
Many women understand that it’s nearly impossible to be financially independent while raising a family. Competing with other women for the attention of a man with a salary may actually be practical.
“Women friends tended to be turned into a support group for orchestrating the main activities—activities with men,”
the dream endures across class lines because it is rooted in the very real situation women face: Most simply don’t earn enough by themselves to lead the lives they want or should be able to lead.
marriage is essentially an exchange of money for beauty. Men are valued, after all, primarily for their financial worth, while women are measured primarily for their looks
Beauty inevitably fades, while a wisely invested portfolio grows in wealth. Real power is money, not looks—
Our cultural script tells us to look for a provider,
late-twenties women in this study voiced pessimism about the likelihood of finding a husband. They complained that the “men aren’t there,” that “they’re not on the same page,” or that they aren’t mature enough.
If men arent on the same page as a generalisation, then there are few men than women who want to settle down henxe the conpetition for few, limited pie
