On Beauty, and Beauticontrol

by LEAH FRANQUI

April 2009

A woman in a swim­suit stands on a div­ing board. Sleek and mus­cled, she secures her swim­ming cap and pre­pares her­self to jump. Taut, strong, ready, she awaits an inter­nal gun­shot, some cue to start. Bang! She dives. She moves, slick, sleek, through the water, crisp, cut­ting through the waves of the pool, fly­ing, past the speed of sound. She’s mag­nif­i­cent, she’s pow­er­ful, she’s sixty if she’s a day and she’s mov­ing bet­ter than I can at 21.

“She needs Beau­ti­con­trol!” my aunt screams behind me. “Her body is okay but her face is a mess!” I stare at my aunt in dis­be­lief. This woman has the body of an 18-year-old cheer­leader. She’s fan­tas­tic, fit, active, and healthy. And all my aunt can think about is her skin care regime.

To be fair to my aunt, how­ever, that is her field of exper­tise. My aunt sells make-up and skin prod­ucts for a living—that is, in fact, what Beau­ti­con­trol is: a brand of makeup and skin prod­ucts made of nat­ural mate­ri­als and heav­ily mar­keted to Latin Amer­i­can mar­kets. She’s actu­ally really good at it, my aunt, she’s earned a huge amount of money for her fam­ily, and she’s one of the most suc­cess­ful sales­women of this prod­uct in her area. On many lev­els this has been a deeply empow­er­ing career for her. She’s gained a huge amount of con­fi­dence, she con­trols her hours and her earn­ings, she’s lost weight, and she’s hap­pier than I’ve ever seen her.

When­ever I visit her, my aunt show­ers me with body scrubs and eye­brow pen­cils, while my mother is given anti-aging creams and wrin­kle fight­ing con­ceal­ers. Well-meant as these presents are, they always strike a dis­so­nant note in me as I stare at them, sit­ting innocu­ously in my med­i­cine cab­i­net. My aunt thinks she is giv­ing me a kind and con­sid­er­ate gift, the sort any young woman would adore. She thinks she has given my mother a valu­able and joy-inducing prod­uct that will help her fight age, the com­mon enemy of women over forty. I know she means well. But I can’t help but be trou­bled by these presents and their impli­ca­tions. When my aunt looks at these things, the lip-gloss and the eye shadow and the firm­ing serum and the foot lotion, she sees all the things that will help me be my very best self. When I look at them, I won­der if she’s telling me I need the help.

One of the things that has always struck me as pos­i­tive about Yale is the lack of van­ity among its stu­dents. It’s not uncom­mon to see a class­room or lec­ture hall full of stu­dents in sweat­pants and pajama bot­toms. In fact, it would be more uncom­mon to see a room full of girls in skirts and heels. And I always thought that that was a good thing, a sign of an envi­ron­ment that val­ued intel­lect over appear­ance, that placed more impor­tance on the inte­rior then on the exte­rior. Isn’t that a part of fem­i­nism? Dis­re­gard­ing the van­i­ties asso­ci­ated with fem­i­nin­ity, dis­card­ing the friv­o­lous and menial pur­suit of some exte­rior aes­thetic being, and plac­ing them aside in favor of true intel­lec­tual explo­ration? That sounds right, doesn’t it? If the pur­suit of beauty has been one of the tra­di­tional mill­stones hang­ing around the necks of all women, then surely to pur­sue beauty in that way now, in the face of female eman­ci­pa­tion and the fem­i­nist move­ment and Hilary Clin­ton and all those Dove ads…

The beauty indus­try feeds us pages of ads and hours of com­mer­cials show­cas­ing prod­ucts that will improve our faces, high­light our eyes, plump our lips, hide our wrin­kles, destroy our pim­ples, and hav­ing done so, improve our qual­ity of life. (All that in a mas­cara? Sign me up!) But we at Yale, sur­vey­ing the land from atop our fem­i­nist high horses, should laugh at these won­der drugs and the women who pur­sue them as we trudge around the cam­pus in our aged sweat­pants and sneak­ers. That’s the fem­i­nist thing to do, right?

Well the thing is, my aunt makes more money shilling face cream than her hus­band does con­sult­ing for a bank. She put a down pay­ment on a new house with the money she made in a year of sell­ing margarita-scented glit­ter spray and brown sugar per­fume to her friends and rel­a­tives. She may yell at com­mer­cials, movies, and even women on the street and try to get them to buy her potions and gels, but she also has her own busi­ness and in a mat­ter of years has become the pri­mary earner of her fam­ily and an exam­ple of a suc­cess­ful Latina busi­ness woman in her com­mu­nity. And the other thing is, when I use her lit­tle shim­mery gifts, I don’t feel less intel­li­gent or capa­ble; I feel put-together, strong, attrac­tive and ener­getic. Her high­lighter does the work of a cap­puc­cino with­out the calo­ries. I par­tic­i­pate more in my classes, I feel bet­ter about myself, and I’m more moti­vated to do my work effi­ciently. I don’t feel anti-feminist, or like I’m play­ing into a het­ero­nor­ma­tive con­struct. I feel good.

And the other thing is that as I looked around Yale’s cam­pus I began to real­ize that while the women around me may be wear­ing sweat­pants, those sweat­pants were designer-brand, and paired with cash­mere sweaters and lip-gloss. Even when they are most casual, Yale women are as obsessed with appear­ances as those at say, Florida State. Cer­tainly very few women I meet here are com­fort­ably iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as a fem­i­nist or would cat­e­go­rize their cloth­ing and make-up choices as fem­i­nist or anti-feminist.

It is the uncon­scious­ness of this that most both­ers me. Susan Lori-Parks posits that race is always a per­for­mance. I would add that gen­der might well be a per­for­mance as well. If this is the case, then cos­met­ics are included in the cos­tume. Cos­met­ics make up part of the mask with which we play the part of “female” or “woman” or “girl”. And it’s impor­tant to be con­scious of those roles as you play them, to under­stand what image of women you are par­tic­i­pat­ing in as you get ready in the morn­ing. This to me marks the line between what we do because it makes us feel good and what we do because we feel like we ought to.

A friend of mine says that men feel more com­fort­able with women who dress accord­ing to their pre­scribed gen­der role– that is, women who wear skirts and dresses and arti­cles of cloth­ing tra­di­tion­ally asso­ci­ated with fem­i­nin­ity. How­ever, it has been my expe­ri­ence that when­ever I don an out­fit that doesn’t include an elas­ti­cized waist­band, I make most of my male peers uncom­fort­able. They twitch in their seats, they squirm, they dart their eyes from my face to my décol­letage and back again, and they have trou­ble speak­ing in com­plete sen­tences. They don’t seem to be able to deal with some­one who can look good and think at the same time. I’m not say­ing it’s for every­one, but if Beau­ti­con­trol can give my aunt a career, give me con­fi­dence, and give the arro­gant men of Yale Col­lege a chal­lenge to their con­cepts of female intel­li­gence being dis­pro­por­tion­ate to female attrac­tive­ness… well, sign me up.

But I still think the swim­mer in her six­ties doesn’t need a god­damn thing.

Leah Fran­qui is a senior in Yale College.