Drawing ©2001 by DBell

A woman at work today, a woman who will be forty-one tomorrow but who looks at least five or six years younger, asked me about hair colour. She wants to dye her hair, and wanted my opinion as to whether she should abandon the dirty blonde she's been sporting for years and splash out into auburn, which is my natural colour.

This, in itself, is neither noteworthy or exciting. The fact that she approached me sheepishly, prefaced her conversation with the words "I know this is completely shallow and superfcial of me, but.." and spent at least half an hour apologizing for being so vain as to want pretty hair, is something I found extremely noteworthy.

It's okay to want to be beautiful, I said. And she looked at me like I'd grown a second head.

It's okay, I told her. You're an attractive woman, you've spent the last twelve years being a selfless mother to your son. You have a bit more time now, a bit more freedom, a bit more financial stability and a stronger desire to celebrate what you've got while you've got it. It's not vain or shallow or shameful to want to spruce up your appearance and feel beautiful.

She closed her office door behind us and stared at me. I don't think she'd ever heard such a thing before.

I didn't want to lecture her, or appear as some sort of wise mystic, but the answer to her perdicament seemed so obvious to me. Women are pretty, or at least have a great capacity to be. Some of us are beautiful. We move more fluidly and with more grace than men do, we're curvier, softer, smaller. We have softer features, prettier eyes and hair, gentler voices, more tapered fingers, softer skin, you name it. We may not all be supermodels but every one of us, practically every woman out there, has a feminine prettiness about her, in some way. It's a perfectly natural, feminine thing to want to enhance our beauty, make whatever we've got shine as brightly as it can. Not for anyone in particular, not for the men who love us anyway, but for ourselves, because we like beauty as much as men do and like possessing whatever aspect of it we have.

But as I saw her think about my words, I realized that indeed she hadn't heard this kind of thing before. I realized why when I opened up a newspaper on the way home and read a story about eating disorders and about how important it was for women to value themselves for everything but their apprearance.

We are living in a society that has all but abandoned the feminine allure. For as many bus shelter ads there are boasting a pretty girl, there are four times as many articles or ads or television shows that badger us with the idea that beauty is for bottom feeders, that intelligent, self-confident women of character wouldn't go near eyeshadow for anything in the world. For every teenage girl who was told all her life what a pretty little girl she was, there are five older women lining up to tell her not to shave her legs, not to grow her hair, not to wear figure flattering clothes, because beauty is one big joke the boys of the world have been playing on us for years and it's time "wimmmin" stopped playing along. We have become so threatened by our own desires that women who do appreciate their own beauty - usually models - are sneered at and denigrated. And women who secretly harbour a desire to like what they see in the mirror are terrified that this means they're no better than the "bimbos" it's so fashionable to hate.

My heart goes out to anyone who has suffered the ravages of an eating disorder. And I certainly can empathize with other women who have struggled to lose weight over the years. I don't think we should embrace the idea that looks are everything, but I'm not entirely convinced that thinking they're nothing is the right way to go either. This leaves women understandably confused, torn between their natural desire to be as beautiful as they can be and their desire to be respected and admired for their character.

It does women a great disservice to try to convince us that we shouldn't want to be beautiful. We do want to be beautiful. We also want to be brain surgeons. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Wouldn't it be so much easier if we didn't have to choose between making ourselves as beautiful as we can and being valued for our character? I asked my friend today. Wouldn't it be nice to just relax, to say "I'm confident that I'm a well-rounded, strong, intelligent woman who deserves love and respect. I also love the way I look in those jeans." Wouldn't it be nice if the desire to be beautiful, and pride in the beauty we have, were seen as a respected part of the feminine mystique, something that sets us apart from the men and makes us feel special, something that we don't ever have to feel ashamed of?

As I told my friend today, looking good is not everything. We should never harm ourselves or deprive ourselves in order to attain some level of beauty that just isn't within our reach. Neither should we be ashamed if we can't reach it. Beautiful is not all a woman is. It is simply one aspect of her, one part of her, another attribute to complement her intelligence and humour and talents. It is icing on her cake. But she should feel free to pursue it, without guilt or feelings of shame. No one would question her desire to be a mother, or to decorate her house, or to care for her husband. Why then is it alright to question the other feminine desire, the desire for beauty?

It's not alright. If my friend comes in with red hair tomorrow I'll know she's figured that out.