From: levine@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Lenore Levine)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Subverting the Beauty Myth
Date: 5 Jan 1993 00:09:02 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

[Moderator's note: excessive included text trimmed.]

rsrodger@wam.umd.EDU (Yamanari) writes:

>In article <1i5eukINNgmh@agate.berkeley.edu> seid@popov.EE.CORNELL.EDU (Steve Seidman) writes:
>>I hope people will start posting stories about films (and books)
>>that are subversive to the so-called beauty myth.

>>It was a John Waters film called "Hairspray"
>>Besides being a good film in the ordinary sense, it
>>featured a really fat girl as the main star.
>>She was presented as beautiful and glamorous and fat,

>	Umm, I would disagree.  She was *not* presented
>	as glamorous when compared to the attention that
>	the other girl (name escapes me--debbie harry's movie-daughter)
>	recieved on looks.

>	Instead, Waters had her win big for a good personality.
>	I find this touching, but not entirely realistic.

>>Rather, she was shown, through the story and the dancing
>>and her poise that she was the beauty queen in no uncertain
>>terms.  I found this really unprecedented, and therefore
>>really subversive to the idea that we will always tend to
>>identify best with the conventionally thin and beautiful starlets.

>	This was at the expense of the good-looking girl,
>	who was portrayed as a shrill, offensive bitch.  Is
>	this even remotely evenhanded?

You are right to notice that the characteristics of fictional
characters, such as age, size, coloring, etc., are not chosen
at random. They are determined by the artistic purposes of the creator.
A successful work of fiction, such as Hairspray, will be sensitive to
the connotations of such characteristics, as symbols, in the culture in
which the work is created. 

Hairspray is a variation on the Cinderella story. In the original Cinderella
story, the heroine was a young woman with beauty, intelligence and
kindness; as a matter of fact, she had everything going for her but her
birth. But in the culture in which this story originated, such 
circumstances of birth were enough to consign a woman to life as
a drudge; that is, to make her "bottom of the barrel," to use a more
current phrase. Thus, in that culture, the notion that such a woman
could marry a prince was both radical and emotionally compelling. And
the strength of this notion gave the Cinderella story a sincerity that
made it stay appealing, when the culture changed.

Now, fast forward to the twentieth century; to a society in which
the class one is born in is not as important, as the 
class one can assume the appearance of. In our society, a woman
who looks like the original Cinderella, and is as intelligent
and resourceful, can change social class with relative ease. However, a
large woman, no matter how beautiful (and I find it hard to understand
how anyone could not see Ricki Lake as beautiful!); no matter how
intelligent, kind and personable otherwise, operates at a social 
disadvantage. Thus, when John Waters has this lady become the 
belle of the ball, and capture the heart of a (campus) prince, he 
creates a powerful and compelling movie; quite possibly a better movie, 
as a matter of fact, than if he tried to remake the original Cinderella 
story exactly!

Lenore Levine 

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