We live every day besieged by an avalanche of perfect images, brimming with youth, filters and plasticized fascination.
Its spell is a promise of beauty that pushes us towards the slippery terrain of life that we desire and dream of — without forgetting that nightmares are dreams too.
According to biology, we admire the physical ideal because we instinctively seek symmetries and healthy traits.
Yet history shows that the veil of seduction often masks the sharp edges of power and money.
At all times you want to be liked, but the attributes considered beautiful are constantly changing. Once attractive faces and bodies would now be handed over to surgeons. The beautiful seems to be linked to the exclusive and to wealth: we pay more attention to the scarce. In ancient times, satirical literature mocked thinness because it revealed a lack of means. At that time they were fat — and they were proud of being so — the rich. The poet Marcial defined the erotic canon: "I don't want a thin friend, who scrapes me with her bare rump and pricks me with her knee and a saw protrudes from her back." In Greek Anthology, Marco Argentario apologizes because his beloved is "a skinny Aphrodite." Today, in a world where cheap and caloric food abounds, being thin requires effort,budget and free time to take care of the figure. Beauty slips away, as unattainable as ever.
The historical pattern is constant: we tend to value the difficult, the minority, the expensive. Roman women, with dark Mediterranean hair, longed to show off blonde manes. That is why the artisans made wigs with the hair of Germanic prisoners, slaves shaved for the luxury of the patricians. Centuries later, Japanese women used a rust, tea, and sake ointment that stained their teeth pure black. The ivory color of the teeth was considered vulgar, while the smudged smiles - which very few could afford - were a symbol of elegance. For generations, tanned and muscular bodies - today the dark object of summer envy - were associated with the poor classes, subjected to the inclement sun and hard work in the fields.
Time and time again, beauty has been a sign of ostentation and, in addition, a prosperous and competitive business. Émile Zola, in his short story Les Repoussoirs, introduces us to the cynical Durandeau, founder of an agency where young, not particularly pretty, rich people hire disadvantaged girls of humble origins, made up like eyesore, to accompany them on their walks and thus be favored — by contrast — in the eyes of her suitors. The poor young women trade with the only thing they have: the sadness that the mirror returns to them. In our world, just like then, powerful cosmetic and surgical industries highlight our shortcomings to sell us illusions and solutions. Expensive, very expensive. Cellulite, for example, is a concept that did not exist just over a century ago.precisely until the magazines and beauty centers defined it as a scourge. By exposing a healthy trait as if it were a disease, a complex was manufactured that currently generates huge profits.
Nobody escapes the impact of this imaginary of perfection that imposes severe disciplines on our meat and wallets, but women are a priority target. In the film The Hairdresser's Husband, by Patrice Leconte, a mature man with a prominent belly fulfills his fantasy by seducing a sensual hairdresser. In this moving and unequal couple it is she who suffers most intensely the terror of being unwanted when wrinkles and physical deterioration arrive. As Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, this lucrative obsession shapes our bodies with a triad of adjectives — lean, tight, firm — that translates into reversals and deprivation. And he added: "There are many ways to be perfect, and not one is achieved through punishment." Perhaps the most human beauty is the one that is achieved not with effort and dissatisfaction,but with ease and happiness.