It’s a nice thought. But Jessica M Goldstein, a journalist who has covered Hollywood aesthetics and culture, is not as hopeful. “Beauty standards under capitalism require there to always be something new to purchase,” she said. “There might be a superficial change – humanmade things become a badge of prestige or class, like how brands will talk about something being made in America. But that doesn’t mean that people are going to stop paying to have work done. It just means the nature of the work will change.”
Capitalism is the reason for plastic surgery. Not competitiveness within the sexes at all. Ho no, not humans, but the economic system!
Depends on who, of course.
Actresses will do it to prolong their shelf-life. The fact that they end up looking like The Joker with a bad hangover is a side issue.
Steve Sailers rule of female journalism: ” All female journalism is a demand that, come the revolution, the writer will be considered hotter.”
One of the constants in history, archeology, and even anthropology is the effort women make to comply with any local/current Beauty Ideal since….. as far as we can find stuff from WayBack™.
Even the “untouched” tribes in Amazonia and elsewhere who are effectively still in the bone/stone age clearly show this behaviour.
The one thing you tend to find with female graves, in any time period where grave-gifts were a Thing, are a form of Cosmetics. And the more high-status the grave is…. guess..
( Blokes aren’t immune, on the contrary, but their cosmetics tend to emphasise virility and warriorhood…. )
So… from the range of Tribalism, through various flavours of Autocracy, throughout all the newfangled and traditional X-cracies and -Isms …..
Must be… Capitalism!!!
One of the constants in history, archeology, and even anthropology is the effort women make to comply with any local/current Beauty Ideal…
Quite so. But then feminists deny evolutionary explanations (unless in their favour!) and blame patriarchal social conditioning and/or capitalism instead.
I don’t believe that there’s any evidence of changes in beauty ideals. People can point to the nudes in Renaissance art, but that’s more about nudity as innocence, not sexual.
The women in Victorian erotic postcards are a lot like WW2 pinups and Linda Lusardi and the top birds on OnlyFans. Men like fertile women. No tits? Might not be. Saggy tits? Might not have much left. Big belly? Might be pregnant or getting old. Grey hair? Old, infertile.
No-one ever said to me at age 10/11 that finding Wilma Deering, Wonder Woman or Romana I attractive was normal. My brain just did (Lalla Ward might be a better actress, but Mary Tamm was a goddess). And we’ve just evolved this way. There are blokes that want to bang grey haired women, but they’re going to be a dead end in the gene pool.
Wilma Deering. Wow. Don’t forget Leela from Doctor Who. Or Agent 99.
I don’t think Get Smart ever came to the UK, did it?
The 60s TV series (with the phone in the shoe) certainly did. A parody of The Man from UNCLE, which was itself a bit of a parody of 007.
C4 used to show it in the 1980s. She’s still with us, about 90 now.
The point is quite valid. To this day I worship Lynda Carter and Erin Gray as goddesses. There is an unattainability about them ( see also Cardinale or Deneuve ). I once sat through 2 1/2 hours of the execrable WW 1984 just to see Carter at the end.
It is different with British actresses like the two Romanas or Jacqueline Pierce or even Diana Rigg. One is more likely to run into them on the Tube or see them on stage ( saw Rigg ( twice in the 90s, seen Gemma Arterton twice in plays too ).
ps Choosing between Romanas is like choosing between the 1960s Catwomen. Don’t do it.
Lynda Carter. Oh my days,
Lee Meriwether
(runs)
Oh, I was the other way round; Romana I for the acting, II for the sex appeal.
But I suppose people having different tastes (within the ‘being fertile’ range) is another evolutionary benefit.
Male adornment is often tattoos or scarification, which is a form of virility demonstration, as both are painful.
The solution is obvious, women shouldn’t have the means and time to waste money making themselves look beautiful, they should be working away on the shop floor in pursuit of the regime’s socialist ideals like they did in the GDR.
The truth is, movie actresses are mostly getting work in movies aimed at a young audience, often a male one, and often their roles are about being hot and young.
And that’s not a patriarchy. It’s that the sort of stuff that women like works just fine on the small screen. Films like Brooklyn, Lady Bird, Carol don’t have epic action scenes. So people don’t pay money to see them. They pay for Fast Five, Dune II, Wicked or Mission Impossible which benefit from the theatrical experience. Which are heavily skewed towards male protagonists, and the films with female ones are mostly for young women.
Women watch a film with Lesley Manville on the small screen. They get a small release at the cinema, make a little money but the movie is aimed at TV. So they don’t have a lot of publicity or talk. And Lesley Manville looks pretty good for 70. But she isn’t hiding her age much. And the audience for that don’t want her to. That’s not the product she produces. But men watching movies like some fit birds.
“Beauty standards under capitalism require there to always be something new to purchase,”
Yes but it isn’t compulsory, you don’t have to buy their stuff if you don’t want to. You can complain that you are being exploited if you like but really there is no one to blame but yourself.
Yep. Men – the patriarchy – don’t set beauty standards. We just know what we like.
Capitalism does not require this. Capitalism just provides an option – *people* choose.
You can always choose not to be a brand-whore or buy ‘the new thing’ just to flaunt it to your neighbors for a few weeks.
Gamecock finds Botox™ lips clownish. OBVIOUSLY fake. Fake lips don’t make you look younger. They kill the willing suspension of disbelief. Change the channel.
Indeed. Tits are lovely but fake tits can be obvious.
muffling necessary discussions on ageing in the industry.
The thing is, there isn’t “the industry”. This doesn’t exist. There are no men in large rooms deciding what will be made. There are people who make movies. Everything from $10K budget films like El Mariachi up to Avengers Endgame.
All sorts of odd stuff gets made because someone makes it add up. There isn’t a big audience for the weird fucked up films of Gaspar Noe, but he doesn’t spend a lot. Lots more people want to watch Iron Man than two women on an island doing a portrait and that’s fine, because one of those only cost a couple of million.
Women who complain about “the industry” can put up or shut up. Raise the money. Take a cut of the box office. If you’re so convinced there’s a market for your ugly woman movie, back it. Work on it. Hitchcock made more money from Psycho than any other movie because he financed it. He spent less than a million dollars making it and it made $50m at the box office worldwide. He personally made $15m from it.