Opinions

The beauty ticket

What is a beauty ticket? It's a golden pass given to those who buy into the beauty myths society perpetuates-what it means to be attractive and what it takes to achieve it -- that gives holders access to otherwise inaccessible positions in society. Take, for example, a beauty queen with a low-level college degree and no political experience who becomes a Republican vice-presidential candidate. The problem with the beauty ticket is that it turns humans like Sarah Palin into social products.

In Palin, we see the cumulative effects of the vanity society encourages in women through pernicious beauty myths. Her attractiveness is a hot topic, and she always appears painstakingly put together. Even wearing the proletariat Carhartt jacket is no longer a casual move when added to slim-cut, bootleg jeans, paired with delicate jewelry, makeup, and a 'do of sporty perfection. That damn(ing) cultivated beauty is what got her noticed and got her into increasingly higher positions of power, which, consequently, required increasingly more of her than just her looks, more than she was prepared or able to give.

Certainly, Palin did manage to accomplish something by graduating from college and getting into office. Yet, she has faltered in her "achievements" because she has spent more time cultivating herself physically than professionally. Beauty is exhausting! It pervades every aspect of life and consumes mental power and intellectual energy ("Am I showing too much leg in this skirt?"; "How many calories are in this dinner roll?'; 'Will my heels get caught in the platform grating?"; "Do I look fat holding this fish?'). After all, it's hard to plan political strategies thinking, "Damn, my feet are killing me," or "I can't wait to take off these panty hose,' or 'How's my hair?"

Since Palin has been distracted from learning the skills political office requires -- as a governor or vice-presidential candidate -- she can only resort to the entitlement that built up over years of having things handed over to her (as, one might say, an emcee hands a bouquet of roses to a pageant winner). Being well-schooled by a society that encourages people to attain and maintain beauty by rewarding them for it with attention and various forms of success, she traded vanity for substance her whole life and had every right to feel entitled. If she has her looks, then why should she need political skills?

Sure, plenty of successful women are accomplished and attractive. But how much more could those women contribute if they added the time they spend on "beauty" to their daily achievement energies? People still consider some successful women who have made significant contributions to society "unattractive." In actuality, those women just don't meet the "standards," which truly represent statistically insignificant numbers of people who exhibit whatever physical attribute our culture decides to worship. We should all be thankful for these "unattractive" women reluctant to run on the beauty ticket because they have had better things on their mind than worrying about how they look.

Of course, Palin's narcissism, to which other commentators have referred, does seem to come with the territory of holding office, which requires a certain ego development and dauntless confidence. And there have been several attractive male politicians in the last 50-odd years to run on the beauty ticket (Dan Quayle, John F. Kennedy, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan). While some attribute their popularity to the "television effect" and might simply add Palin to the list, the blame extends beyond a simple TV broadcasting to a more crippling sexist ideology. There is a difference between Palin and her male counterpart egoists and hotties. What people have long accepted as male attractiveness occurs on a much more basic level that doesn't require the same amount of effort or focus. The men didn't (and don't) have to spend nearly as much time in the spa/beauty shop/gym or reading style magazines (one of the "all of 'em" I assume Palin reads, as quoted from her Couric meltdown) on top of their already major duties to stay informed and develop intelligent, logical (sometimes) responses and reactions to social ills and issues.

To clarify, I do not think men are immune to beauty myths. In fact, men are subject to a new beauty myth that is just as unfortunate in terms of intellectual, spiritual, and social waste: The metro-sexual, which represents a kind of reverse backlash. Instead of women rejecting repressive standards of beauty, developing a feminist consciousness, and finding new ways to express and develop themselves, men just ended up being sucked into the beauty fray. Now, men can enjoy the same repression and look "better" doing it.

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However, beauty myths have acted against women longer. So, while many people know how ridiculous Palin is as a real political option, and while people may rejoice in or be disgusted by all of the crazy media circus about her, they really should keep in mind that she is the natural product of our own social devices. Palin was born into and nurtured by our media, our beauty and fashion worlds, our fitness and diet industry, and even our medical realm, which would have us all believe that the pursuit of and expectations for beauty are natural for women. As natural, say, as the nurturing disposition that makes women ill-suited to competitive environments, the emotional and irrational temperament that keeps them from being successful in logical and intellectual positions, or the lack of drive and aggression that precludes them from being successful in positions of power.

My concern is for all women and men, who are oppressed by the same sexist ideology that created Palin the person before it created Palin the political debacle. When we talk about Palin, we aren't just talking about her; we are talking about how sexual repression through something as deceptively harmless as vanity still exists in the 21st century. The beauty ticket she keeps running on curtails women's rise toward social and political equity by distracting women's focus and dominating the way society perceives them.

Thus, we see respected news services quoting people's concerns about Palin's weight and hair to describe her state of mind. Whether or not The New York Times quote was true isn't the issue; it's that the information was reported in the first place. Making her physical state newsworthy assumes a readership that actually cares about Palin's looks more than her acts. It also assumes the public can't seem to comprehend Palin's level of failure until it manifests in her appearance. Apparently, her failed interviews, confusing aphorisms, and the general flubs peppering her political decisions reported by professional journalists haven't been clear enough. We had to hear it from her hairdresser.

Allison Palumbo is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kentucky, where she studies 20th century literature, social theory, and gender issues. Before moving to Lexington, where she lives with her partner in crime and their hefty cat, Yin-Yang, she lived in Utah, France, Florida, and Alaska.

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