Opinion: Beauty Is Tyranny

A woman bound by beauty standards. Art by Basil Allen.

For decades, diet culture has been as quintessentially summertime as beach towels and watermelon. There’s always a pressure to mold one’s body into the ideal “beach bod” — thin, tanned and toned — by the time swimsuits come out. This summer, the culture surrounding so-called self-improvement has reached new heights. The obsession with eurocentric hyper-traditional aesthetics that has accompanied the rise of the alt-right in America, in combination with political instability and the lack of control many individuals have over their own lives, has led people to focus on what they can control: their own bodies. 

Discourse around Sydney Sweeney’s looks and political affiliation is sweeping the internet. People are looksmaxxing, joining skinnytok, and investing thousands in skincare, makeup and cosmetic procedures. There’s no escaping the constant conversation around beauty. This culture is turning people into mad scientists, devoting themselves to experimenting with tinctures and torture methods, in search of the combination that will perfect them. It’s an isolating pursuit, which encourages individuals to focus their energy inward. This obsession with a warped idea of beauty can impact all relationships, from romantic to platonic. 

This individualistic practice is often sheathed in the facade of community building, as these practices often originate from congregation in online spaces. These spaces are technically communal. However, presenting them as such ignores that they are predicated not on connection but on competition. 

Additionally, these spaces present a limited idea of what it means to be part of a collective, considering true acceptance only comes from homogenization. While some creators encourage natural features, there is an overwhelming push towards conformity. Conformity to a white ideal. 

While every culture has some form of beauty standard, the most prevalent standards today originated in colonialism and white supremacy. Thinness was not always prized by Europeans; bigger women were idolized for centuries. However, colonization and the expansion of the slave trade changed this because white people needed some way to assert their intellectual and biological superiority over other races. This manifested in phrenology and in the idea that Black people were more gluttonous, and thus morally weaker, than whites. Therefore, white people, specifically white women, must strive for thinness to distinguish themselves from Black people. 

This mindset has persisted and evolved over the years, becoming a central fixture of eugenicist messaging and fatphobia. Eugenicist movements have always featured beauty and physical exceptionalism as key components of their ideology, serving as visual representations of a perfected gene pool. Feminine white women are a powerful part of this propaganda, functioning as figureheads to rally behind, vessels for future generations and symbols of legitimacy for burgeoning movements. The latest symbol in this longstanding tradition is actress Sydney Sweeney. 

Sweeney recently starred in an ad for denim brand American Eagle, which features a slow pan up her body, as she monotonously drawls, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue." The simple pun “jeans” and “genes” may have been innocuous if Sweeney wasn’t a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, incredibly conventionally attractive white woman, a picture-perfect icon for a white supremacist fantasy. The heavy-handed use of the word genes in the ad is a response to the current culture, one where a racist, fascist conception of beauty has become ubiquitous. 

Also concerning is the left’s response to this alt-right wet dream. In response to the propagandistic use of conventionally attractive women by the right, many progressives have decided to push back by highlighting the sexiness of women on the left. Fight fire with fire, fight the objectification of women by objectifying more women. People hold up examples of liberal women commenting on their attractiveness or proclaiming, “This is how you age when you’re unproblematic,” while dogpiling on the botched plastic surgery or lack of femininity exhibited by some MAGA women. 

These women are abhorrent, immoral monsters. They don’t need sympathy or defense. Yet, one must consider the line between speaking truth to power and leftist men gleefully partaking in politically-sanctioned and socially-acceptable misogyny. 

There are merits to the approach of critiquing the appearance of women on the right. It highlights the hypocrisy in the standards of feminine beauty they impose, when those imposing them cannot even meet the standard. An ideologically consistent approach hasn’t proved effective for progressives thus far, so bullying feels cathartic and potentially radical. Unfortunately, while this strategy succeeds in subverting the notion that only the right’s traditionalist Aryan maiden can be beautiful, it plays into the ideology that one’s body is one’s merit. 

What if a bad person is prettier than a good person? The notion that there is some cosmic justice that makes empathetic, caring people more beautiful makes it challenging to admit when a gorgeous person is rotten to the core. It forces people to make justifications instead of confronting reality. Beauty and morality are in no way related. 

The notion that beauty is separate from morality isn’t to say the pursuit of beauty is inherently immoral. On an aesthetic level, the pursuit of grandeur is natural. A sunset or a work of art can be profoundly moving. On a socioeconomic level, there are social and financial benefits to being conventionally attractive. However, one must not confuse this individual success with empowerment or a step on the path to collective liberation. This idea tricks people into believing that by perfecting ourselves, we can improve the world around us. We become blinded to the possibility that this quest for self-improvement is merely a distraction from the world crumbling around us. We needn’t throw away our eyeliner or salicylic acid, nor task ourselves with undoing the centuries of shame and oppression wrapped up in self-beautification culture. Such historically engrained forces cannot be changed in a day, within ourselves or our communities. The best start is to remind ourselves that perfect skin is not a perfect soul is not a perfect world. Then we can look revolting. And start revolting.