Cary Tennis, Salon.com’s insightful advice columnist, tackled a question today from a woman whose hard-earned transformation from dowdy to stunning provoked in her a host of psychological conflicts regarding how beauty operates as social currency.
Tennis gives a great answer, citing the hypocrisy of a social economy* that both rewards and denigrates female (and to a growing extent, male) beauty, but he misses a key point about developing one’s own sense of internal value and the balance between nurturing this inner self and caring for one’s external appearance. It’s a shame that the concept of “inner beauty” has become such a cliché—it is real, and powerful, and not only does it not fade with time, it actually preserves the inner light that radiates from someone who has lived a long, meaningful, and compassionate life. It may not stop traffic, but if you are lucky enough to find yourself in the presence of someone who possesses this kind of beauty, you can feel your own sense of internal worth getting stronger as your perspective on beauty widens to include change and discovery and acceptance as well as youth and “hotness.” Youth and sexiness are not bad things—they are wonderful things, and they are indeed influential, and they are subject to change. In economic terms, it is wise to diversify one’s portfolio—physical beauty is one investment, but it is best to invest in a number of long-term prospects such as education, love, family, and work that nourishes the soul.
I’m reminded of Roald Dahl‘s children’s book The Twits, in which a cruel, small-minded couple get their wonderfully absurdist comeuppance at the hands of some monkeys and a cadre of birds. The opening descriptions of Mr. and Mrs. Twit remains one of the most economical and elegant portrayals of the effects of inner beauty and ugliness I’ve ever read:
“But the funny thing is that Mrs. Twit wasn’t born ugly. She’d had quite a nice face when she was young. The ugliness had grown upon her year by year as she got older.
Why would that happen? I’ll tell you why.
If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when a person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it.
A person who has good thoughts can never be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”
And Quentin Blake’s drawings are priceless:
Not only can a sense of inner self-worth and empathy toward others affect outer beauty, but the respect for one’s outer appearance can have positive psychological effects, as anyone who has swiped on some red lipstick or gone on a run when they’re feeling blue can attest. Looking at this symbiotic relationship from a slightly different angle suggests that the quality of care one takes with one’s outer appearance is, to a large degree, a reflection of one’s inner esteem. It’s not about drastically changing to adhere to social standards; it’s about presenting oneself to the world in a way that signals how one feels internally. Society functions through a complex system of signaling; it is the basis of language, sexuality, education, politics, art, and consciousness, and understanding how this works is crucial to one’s personal success and enjoyment of life.
External beauty is a combination of nature and nurture. Care for your body as you would a child or a pet or a plant or a car: it is your responsibility, and while it can do lots of neat things on its own, it needs love and attention to reach its full expression.
*One of the article’s commenters mentions Catherine Hakin’s book Erotic Capital: The Power of Attraction in the Boardroom and the Bedroom, which discusses how one’s physical appearance can be and is used both at work and in mate selection.
Here’s a review of Hakim’s Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital.
R&Beauty
B&Beauty