There's an interesting column on The Hairpin today on Outdated Beauty Advice entitled Hate Yourself Beautiful. Basically it outlines silly, tortuous and pretty ineffective sounding techniques for improving your physique from the first half of the 20th century.
On the one hand, we all consider ourselves a bit more enlightened than those housewives of the '50s who wore girdles, heels and pearls to vacuum the carpet. (Doing this as a prelude to sexy time does not count as stifling.) And those women were probably told how lucky they were not to have to wear the corsets and full ball gowns of women before them. And on and on through history until now, when we can pretty much be as free as we'd like in our undergarments, grooming routine, and personal maintenance.
Except.
Except, aren't a lot of women often found complaining about media and the fashion industry and THE WHOLE DARN WORLD forcing unrealistic standards of beauty on us? Was it more realistic to expect a girl to set her hair in uncomfortable curlers every night than to expect a girl with frizzy, course hair to transform it into straight, shiny silk every morning (in an effortless way, of course)? Women then were expected to control their figures with uncomfortable underpinnings. Now we feel the weight of expectations to control our figures with unpleasant diets and punishing workout routines. What of our present-day maintenance will horrify future generations? The Brazilian comes to mind.
I guess the whole point is that now we have more of a choice. We are not actually ostracized from society for not conforming to certain beauty standards, or if we are we can hopefully find a different micro-society that embraces whatever we embrace. But one does have to wonder if there's a psychological and sociological need to force strict, sometimes unattainable standards on women that will never be bred out of society.
We welcome your thoughts, below.