MY PERCEPTION OF BEAUTY...1

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I first came across this term in 2006 when I was studying at Le Village Francais Du Nigeria, Badagry; (I got bored in the library where I was studying so I decided to read a magazine. Please don’t ask me what mag it was because I can’t remember – I only recall the year because it was during my final exams there). Anyway, I came across the word ‘Uglytopia’ in some article I’d read inside the magazine and the word has stuck with me ever since. Quite simply it means – a land where physical looks do not matter at all, but only a person’s character traits (to the exclusion of all other factors) determines his lot in life. In this excerpt, I simply bring to your consciousness as a woman the importance of being well-rounded and how it affects your chances in life. It mostly starts from your looks.

Enjoy!!!

There are certain practical realities of existence that most of us accept. If you want to catch a monkey, you must buy a banana. If you want to have a baby, you just can’t slap your tummy with your hand and yell, “Hey child, jump in my belly already!” Yet, if you’re a woman who wants to land a man, there’s this notion that you should be able to go around looking like a recluse: If you’re “beautiful on the inside”, (most of the time referring to your personality and not your health status) that’s all that should count. Right! And I should be the Queen of Dubai and have a mansion in Bel Air with 100 servants.

Welcome to Uglytopia – the world re-imagined as a place where it’s only the content of a woman’s character and not her pushup bra that puts her on the cover of True Love or Genevieve. It just doesn’t seem fair to us that some people come into life with certain advantages – whether it’s Oluchi’s supermodel cheekbone, Genevieve’s movie-star swagger or marrying into a multi-million dollar family like the Adenuga’s. Maybe we need affirmative action or national protest for ugly people: “we’ll embark on a campaign to make Banky W date some homely woman rather than any of his gorgeous girlfriends.”

While we wish things were different, we’d best accept the ugly reality: No man will turn his head to ogle a woman because she looks like the type to cook rice & chicken for a homeless kid or give money to the blind old man who lives down the street. There is a vast body of evidence indicating that men & women are biologically & psychologically different, and that what heterosexual men & women want in partners directly corresponds to these differences. The features men evolved to go for in women – youth, clear skin, a symmetrical face & body, feminine facial features, an hourglass figure – are those indicating that a woman would be a healthy, fertile candidate to pass on a man’s genes. Just take a cursory look at all those musical videos on Sound City and tell me what you see.

These preferences spans borders, cultures & generations, meaning Yes, there are universal standards of beauty. And while western (or westernized) women do struggle to be slim, the truth is, women in all cultures eat (or don’t) to appeal to “the male gaze.” The body size that’s idealized in a particular culture appears to correspond to the influence of media hypes. In a place like Lagos for example, where you can hardly go five miles without passing an eatery or mama-put or someone hawking gala/la casera & yogurt, plump women are in.

Men’s looks do matter to heterosexual women somewhat. Most women prefer men who are taller than they are, with symmetrical features – a sign that a potential partner is healthy & parasite-free, (or as my bff likes to call it – TDH/Tall, Dark & Handsome). But, women across cultures are intent on finding male partners with high status, power, and access to resources – which means a really short guy can add maybe a foot to his height with a private jet** And, just like women who aren’t very attractive, men who make very little money or are chronically out of work tend to have a really hard time finding partners – at least stable ones. There is some male grumbling about this. Yet, while feminist writers are busy writing articles urging women to bow out of the beauty arms race and “Learn to love that woman in the mirror”, nobody gets into the ridiculous position of advising men to “love that unemployed guy sprawled on the couch watching sound-city all day long!”

Now, before you brand me a traitor to my gender, let me say that I am all for women having the vote, and I think that a woman with a mustache should make the same money as a man with a mustache. But you don’t help that woman by advising her, “No need to wax that lip fringe or work off the belly fat!” (Because the road to female empowerment is: Looking just like a hairy old man?). I mean just ask the Head of H.R at GTBank or Globacom which of these two women they’ll employ:

*Ms. Sam Okoli – 1st class Accountant from Covenant University with a hairy face, turbaned head, bland face with no make and a brown maxi dress that reaches to her ankle

OR 

*Ms. Samantha Okoli – 2.2graduate in Accounting from Unilag with a polished skin, smooth ponytail hairstyle, flawless makeup and a black satin mini-gown & matching bolero jacket with a 3in heels to match.

Take the Beauty Myth author Naomi Wolf for example: she contends that standards of beauty are a plot to keep women politically, economically and sexually subjugated to men – apparently by keeping them too busy curling their eyelashes to have time for political action and too weak from dieting to stand up for what they want in bed, (she’s apparently never met Toyosi Akerele). Wolf and her Nigerian counterparts bleat about the horrors of women being pushed to conform to “Western standards of beauty: - as if eyebrow plucking and getting hair highlights are real hardships compared to having to work as hard as any man in the workplace and still go home to cook, clean and make babies. Most importantly, these “feminist writers” paints women who look after their looks as the dim-witted gold diggers or runs-women whose sole purpose of existence is playing dress up and seeking out men to snare.

Of course looks aren’t all that matters, but looks do matter a great deal. Don’t get it twisted; the more attractive a woman is – intellectually, character-wise and physically – the wider her pool of romantic partners and range of opportunities in her work and day-to-day life.

We consider it admirable when people strive to better themselves intellectually; we don’t say, “Hey, you weren’t born a genius, so why ever bother to read a book? Why should we treat physical appearance any differently? For example, research shows that men prefer women with full lips, smaller chins, and large eyes – indicators of higher levels of estrogen. Some lucky women have big eyes; others just seem to, thanks to the clever application of eyeshadow & mascara. As the classic commercial says, “Maybe she’s born with it, maybe its Maybelline.” I mean, if it increases her options, who cares which it is?

 Unfortunately, because Nigerians are so conflicted and dishonest about the power of beauty, we approach it like novices. At one end of the spectrum are the “Love me as I am!” types, like the woman who asked me why no man ever asked her out… while dressed in a way that advertised not “I want a boyfriend” but “I’m just the girl who works at Lawma!”

At the other end of the spectrum are women who go around resembling porn-ready painted dolls. 

Seriously, a note to the menopausal painted doll: Toweled on makeup doesn't make you look younger; it makes you look like an aging drag queen. Likewise, being 50 and trying to look 25 through plastic surgery usually succeeds in making a woman look 45 and “fembotscary” – another word I randomly picked up on Reality TV, which means an object of pity instead of an object of desire. Plastic surgery that you can spot is usually a sign – either of really bad work or somebody who’s gone way over the top with it, probably because she’s trying to fill a void in her life with silicone, juverderm and implanted butt cutlets.

So, a word of advice to the Ms. Sam Okoli’s of this world: to increase your chances of landing that plum job at Standard Chattered or walking down the aisle in the arms of Mr. Capable aka Banky W, you had better pay some attention to your looks – trim those belly fats, learn to apply your makeup correctly and please do get some dress sense. And while you’re at it, do read a book, pack up the bitchy attitude and dump in Lawma’s trucks… because as far as I know, Beauty + Character + Intelligence has never failed to do the trick. 

DISCLAIMER

*** All pictures on this article were sourced online from Google Images