Pinch, shape, burn

Last Saturday we drove down to the White River Valley Museum in Auburn to drop off some artwork I was entering into their juried small works show. It felt strange just to drop off the art and run, so we decided to pay the $2 (love it) admission and explore the tiny museum. For a small community museum, I thought that the WRVM was pretty well done. Lots of great local history (loved the display on hop growers), some sweet dioramas, and a real train caboose you could climb into.

Most intriguing, though, was a temporary exhibit titled "Suffer for Beauty." It featured a small but fascinating array of women's clothing, shoes, lingerie, and hair styling tools throughout the ages. Images of corsets and hobble-skirts (bound near the ankles so women were forced to take teeny, hobbling steps instead of natural strides) were curious, and a little painful to view. At one point, I uttered, "God, we've got it so good." But then I really got to thinking about it, and our current societal obsessions with beautification really aren't that far off.

If you've ever walked into a Sephora or Ulta store, you'll know that there's no shortage of eyelash curlers (those things still make me cringe) and flat-irons to singe your hair straight, hundreds of brushes for every application, walls of perfume, eye-watering chemicals to color the hair, and products galore promising to lift, plump, lengthen, and smooth. Victoria's Secret offers a dizzying array of bras and barely existent underthings (Honestly, I see no point in the thong. Might as well just go commando.), pseudo corsets, and those odd looking bits with elastic and clips to hold up your stockings. All this seems a bit more comfortable and less bone-crunching than a traditional corset from the 1890s, but still awkward-looking items offered up in the pursuit of femininity.

Worse yet, there is plastic surgery. Loads of it. So while I cringe to think of wedging my torso into a whale-bone corset, I cringe further to think of sucking my waist tiny with lipo, pulling my eyes back taut with thread, and sloughing off the surface of my face with chemical peels and lasers. Asian girls might have their feet bound, but many undergo "simple" surgical procedures to alter their eyelids for a more wide-eyed, western look. Breasts can go from B to D in a matter of hours. Roman noses are shaved down. Gaps in teeth are closed. Freckles are faded. And what remains is a new, improved shadow of the self. Beautiful. Sexy. Feminine.

I guess not much has changed. Or maybe, it has changed more than we ever imagined.
Image from the Library of Congress digital images collection