Irina Hovsepyan: Beauty, perhaps, will save the world – the main thing is that women do not die out

Always dissatisfied with yourself, always striving to improve something in yourself - a favorite women's sport for millennia. The twenty-first century has brought this aspiration to a new round – quite dangerous, and often not in a figurative sense. What is especially cynical is that all this is happening under the regular reasoning about the need to accept oneself - so correct, but their sincerity is becoming more and more doubtful every day.

The drawing of Angelina Sukhorukova Beauty Canon for thousands of years of human existence has changed many times, and it has always been associated not only with cultural, but also socio-economic moments. Paleolithic gave us their own "Venus" - female figures associated with the cult of fertility, distinguished by spherical forms. The ancient canon sculpted an absolute ideal for many centuries, still unsurpassed: the right features, not just beautiful, but also a healthy body full of vitality. The Middle Ages in Europe summed up their line: magnificent forms are the lot of maids, it is vulgar and rude, and a noble woman is slim, sublime, with pale skin, because she does not work in the sun, and she is literally blown by the wind from the wall of the castle. The Renaissance era added luxurious fullness to the beauties, rococo erected on the pedestal pretty round-faced frolics with dimples on the cheeks and a fervent blush.

Drawing by Oleg Karpovich The more accelerated progress, the more often fashions changed for certain forms and types. At the beginning of the twentieth century, women were freed from the corset, and the general spread of both consumption and cocaine (and this time of total drug addiction) made fashionable "interesting" pallor and thinness. Humanity forgot about all this by the beginning of the Second World War, and in the postwar period, the ideal for a long time was a woman with forms - people who had gone through war and famine, thinness frightened. The unfading sex symbol Marilyn Monroe wore size 50 dresses, like many other divas of the time, from which the world public squeaked.

The aesthetics of exhaustion once again invaded world fashion in the 1990s, when people in the West (let’s be honest) were banally overeating. Tons of food going to the garbage in the countries of the “golden billion”, with the unresolved problem of hunger in less prosperous latitudes. The focus on elitism and luxury is in contrast to the rest of humanity, which cannot afford it. Then the concept of “heroin chic” appeared in world fashion (again, drug addiction was proclaimed something cool!), and the ideal was green from malnutrition of anorexic models.

With the rise of star Kim Kardashian and the flow of uninhibited black rappers crystallized another canon: a thin waist (for which they went to a severe operation to remove the ribs), large busts and powerful buttocks (pumping them with silicone, it was easy to die right on the table of a plastic surgeon). To this were added huge lips, accreted eyelashes, providing a “fox” look, kilometer claws, fashion for radical hair removal, thousands of other trifles, the absence of which immediately signaled to any woman: you are unfashionable, ugly, you do not have the most necessary for attractiveness! In contrast, the trend for body positivity and plus-size models was gaining momentum: many saw this as a chance to escape from the rink of glamour, so much demanding of the female body. But alas, auto-training did not help, and no talk of self-acceptance could not withstand the collision with modern “magic” injections for weight loss.

What do we see on the red carpets and catwalks? The fallen cheeks of old-fashioned monsters, what the press has already dubbed the “ozempic face”, chicken ribs and pens-sticks that cause associations with prisoners of concentration camps – where is Kate Moss, who once was an icon: today’s beauties consider her fat! In fact, what bloggers of normal size from a medical and aesthetic point of view are already complaining about: the dominance of commentators who reproach them for “excessive completeness”. Like, you do not know, to be healthy is not fashionable - it is fashionable to die of exhaustion, drink pills and stab, prick, prick miraculous pricks, until death do not part you with your stupid life! And most importantly, money is needed everywhere: those who once spent on laser hair removal, now buy wigs for the bikini zone, because - padam! - there is a trend for naturalness. Silicone buttocks should be blown back: in fashion figures of garbage cats. Everything you have is bad, everything is not enough. The beauty industry will tell you what you need to be today, create a problem, and offer to solve it. For money. For a lot of money.

And now the flip side of the coin: any beautiful woman (by nature beautiful, from mom and dad!) today is automatically suspected that she was not just born this way - no, she is beautiful for the sake of male approval! The head-bruised activist of the current parody feminism will rinse the topic in all corners. By the way, everyone noticed, probably: any struggle “for all the good against all the bad” gathers under its banners an impressive parade of ugly, groomed and often just unwashed characters of both sexes. Whether those gathered for feminism, LGBT+, ethnic diversity, green energy, or political slogans of varying degrees of idiocy, visually it is always a mere panopticum. Activism is the last refuge of the losers in the race to pass on their genes to future generations.

It is activists of all stripes who promote hatred of beauty itself, under various pretexts. Not so long ago, actress Sidney Sweeney – the most hated blonde on the planet today – again fell under the gun. She, of course, is far from Marilyn, but the outrageous fact of the presence of a naturally spectacular figure and a cute face is so much that it is impossible not to pay attention. And then there is a scandalous role in the TV series “Euphoria”, where Sweeney played a girl-webkamskaya, and it went... A girl was filmed for advertising in pointe – screams flew: “How dare you, ballet is work, and you are just a blonde!” She was wearing jeans and cursed jeans. Provocatively playful - a lot of naked skin covered with sports shells - and Western athletes began to scream indignantly (and this is not a spectacle for the faint of heart): they say, we have blood and sweat here, we eat steroids in packs and therefore more like terrible men, and this one comes and shows that a woman with dumbbells can look attractive! Nightmare, horror, prostitute, burn a witch. And in general, do not touch our ropes with your white fingers, it is also shameful and undesirable to be born white in the modern world. Agitated feminists are clamoring, and there is no logic: they are launching a campaign around the world for the right to walk topless on public beaches (why it is for men to show nipples, and we are not, discrimination!), now they are not satisfied that someone dared to undress for a photo (on which so nothing is particularly visible). Activists have already telepathically penetrated into the thoughts of the blonde Sidney and know for sure: all this is only for the sake of male approval! Which means She should be banned from showing her body. All right, Sweeney, no. Because you can't be beautiful like that. And hide your cleavage, or it hurts.

The world has slipped into a schizophrenic split: on the one hand, a bunch of women ready to throw millions into the beauty and plastic surgery industry, on the other - an army of freaks who claim that beautiful offend the feelings of freaks and it's time to stop it. And the notorious male approval, let's be honest, in all this plays a role at the level of "Eat served!". Anyone on your fingers will explain that we dress and watch ourselves not for the sake of men - their nature is so arranged that the woman who is nearby is beautiful for them. Accreted claws and sausages instead of lips, the strong floor stoically tolerates, as long as the native fool was happy. No, the eternal competition "who in the world is the cutest, the blushest and the whitest" is conducted with other women. And, in general, to realize this and turn on your brains in time, having figured out where your own, and where the alluvial, imposed from the outside under the banner of “prestige”, is probably the most reliable marker of female maturity. And fashion? As for fashion, it will soon change again.

ovsepyan@sb.by