2023-08-18 04:00:32
Sociologist Chiara Piazzesi, professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal, author of The Beauty Paradox : Femininity in the Age of Selfies (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023, untranslated), retraces feminists’ vision of beauty and what the film embodies Barbie in these debates.
The Barbie doll has long been considered the epitome of the western female beauty canon – and as such has been the subject of much criticism. What does Greta Gerwig’s film say regarding how we think regarding women’s relationship to beauty today?
In the film, the monologue of the character of Gloria – a Mattel company employee determined to help Barbie and played by America Ferrera –, a real screenplay tipping point, fully expresses this idea that the demands and expectations women face, particularly in terms of beauty, are contradictory. and that being a woman is impossible. This discourse is far from new: it has been carried by feminist activists and intellectuals for decades and it has become widely democratized and popularized. To the point that it is no longer the prerogative of feminists: everyone is capable of stating it, the film is proof that today the most mainstream can take it up on their own. Highlighting the contradictions of femininity has become commonplace.
Is this discourse therefore part of a long tradition of feminist reflection on the injunction to femininity and beauty?
To summarize schematically, there are three main approaches to this problem of beauty in feminist theories. The first, shared by most feminist currents of the 1970s and 1980s, is a feminist critique of beauty as a form of oppression: it sees the culture of beauty as a system of objectification, inferiorization and marginalization of women. From Simone de Beauvoir to Naomi Wolf via Betty Friedan, and more recently Mona Chollet with her book Fatal Beauty [La Découverte, 2012]feminists have denounced the futility of this concern, its disproportionate place in women’s lives and pointed out the way in which the culture of beauty leads to reducing women to their appearance.
Towards the end of the 1990s, however, sociological research carried out in the field came to temper the categorical declarations of the preceding decades. Feminists have begun to highlight how beauty is also a source of pleasure, recognition and sociability for women. Going to the hair salon, spending time at the nail salon, or sharing beauty tips began to be seen as a way to socialize, maintain sisterhood, and feel pleasure and dignity.
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