Email 
Bookmark 
Print In Search of a Beautiful Woman
by Claire Colvin
Standing about five foot six in her shoes, Danielle always felt too tall to be beautiful. Growing up in China she was told a beautiful woman is polite, delicate and unassuming. Not tall.
I'm five foot nine and grew up in England. When I heard Danielle's story I had to smile. Runway models are often six feet or taller, but here we were on opposite sides of the globe, both counting our height as a liability.
When our family moved to Nigeria, my white-blonde hair caused quite a stir. Back in England, I felt rather ordinary, but suddenly, through African eyes, I was beautiful. My mom remembers strangers coming up to us and patting my head. When she told them my name was Claire, meaning ‘light,” they would often respond, "Oh, like her hair."
Is beauty always something exotic, something we don't see in ourselves? Does beautiful necessarily mean the western ideal? Movies, television and advertising have all tried to sell us on the idea that there is only one way a woman can be beautiful - if she's young, beautiful and very, very thin. This disqualifies about 99% of the world's women.
In protest to Hollywood ideals, The Body Shop ran an ad campaign in 1997, saying: "There are three billion women in the world who don't look like supermodels and only eight who do."
We know this in our heads, but we have trouble believing it in our hearts. We are so quick to only see thighs, wrinkles or frizzy hair. We are told, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Why then do we forget this when looking in the mirror? Should we add a qualifier: Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, as long as I'm not looking at myself?
We go to great extremes to fit the beauty prescription. In many places, no expense is spared. Even in countries with prevalent poverty, women are willing to go to extreme lengths to achieve the 'right' look. In the Philippines, false teeth are quite common. One dentist remembers when braces and retainers first gained popularity in the city, he received several requests to fit retainers onto his patients' dentures.
Bizarre? Or simply the kind of things we do in pursuit of beauty and ultimately, acceptance? We pluck, we shave, we wrap ourselves in spandex, we wear impractical shoes. We know high heels cause serious damage to backs, legs and feet, but we still wear them. We have convinced ourselves that looking a little thinner, a little taller, a little leaner is worth the pain.
Here's our logic: Looking beautiful equals being valuable.
Dr Alberto Salinas, a plastic surgeon with 15 years' experience said: "Half my patients don't want to feel better, they just want to look better."
Whatever beauty looks like, surely it shouldn't be such hard work.
After years of struggling with the impossible ideals, I'm finally seeing beauty for what it is. Beautiful is what my dad sees when he looks at his wife of 32 years. It's what I see in the people I love. It's what I'm learning to see in the mirror. And yes, it's beautiful.
~ Claire Colvin is the editor of Women Today Magazine. She has a BA in English from Trinity Western University and thinks people should go barefoot more often.
Further Reading
Happy with My Body
Lies We Tell Ourselves
