The Allure of Perfection
There is always a piercing cruelty which burdens the beautiful, an ever-present and unshakable shackling to the patriarchy. An actress on the big screen weaponizes beauty, especially during the ‘60s and ‘70s, a climate fraught with the pushback of feminism. Beauty became a reclaimed asset. Despite this, the media has a grating habit of solely focussing on the physical attributes a woman holds, eradicating the rest.
Despite the patriarchy perpetuating an obsession with aestheticism, simply being beautiful is not enough. The intrinsic and generational curse is relentless and multifaceted. Women are pushed to chase changing standards of beauty, constantly running to keep up. Many turn to enhancements as a means of numbing the pain, appeasing themselves and the male gaze enough to get by, the dissection of a woman’s appearance however does not end here. We are then met with the need to compare “fake” women with the natural. This stems from men’s unwillingness to allow women to unite. Division amongst women is always kept rife. Conquering the divided is much more feasible, submission and oppression are not always so overt.
The silver screen can be seen as a societal metaphor that materializes this unshakable competition women experience amongst themselves, allowing the public to watch the lives of these actresses play out. Marilyn Monroe and Brigette Bardot were cross-examined by the media and compared extensively, both blonde bombshells who were iconic symbols of the sexual revolution occurring during the 1950s and ‘60s. Monroe is a stupefyingly iconic figure of cinematic beauty. Naturally, a redhead, her transition to blonde was one of the many adjustments she made to mold her into society's decorative object, a bubbly, unthreatening bombshell. Her premature death immortalized her beauty, with her perpetuated and remembered image being one of youth.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote, ‘the death...of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world,’ pointing to the fact that the depiction of a dead woman presents an image of purity, one that is unable to shrug off the male gaze, it is completely passive; once dead, she becomes an object rather than a potentially threatening subject.” This simply reinforces the toxic rhetoric that a woman should serve and focus on the sole attribute of physical allure, service, and functionality.
Brigitte Bardot, no less of a breathtaking sex symbol, was always referred to as Marilyn without her “weight problem.” This made Bridgette be seen as more desirable by certain critics. However, her constant need to top her previous on-screen performance each time, elevating the scandal of her sensual nature and how it shocked, yet pleased audiences, also led to her some of her work being referred to as pornographic.
Can you win?
Cinema has been shown to focus on Western figures and society, perpetuating the rhetoric that these were the most renowned and iconized. This also drives forward a message of Eurocentric features and depictions of fashion and beauty being the gold standard for beauty, which is extremely damaging. Turkish actress Turkan Soray is an example of how women of color who starred in movies were just as influential on-screen and within society, influencing attitudes towards fashion and beauty then and now. Starting her career in the ‘60s, she was very much like Bridget Bardot. An example of the way in which Soray captured and brought to life fashion and beauty as an icon at the time, and how her impact is still felt, is exemplified in actress Alexa Demie using the actress in her mood boards as part of her process and construction of her character Maddie for Euphoria. Demie drew upon her raw energy, style, makeup, and hair for Euphoria, along with other influences. Her multifaceted combination of influences to create her iconic Euphoria style has gone on to influence the current generation, with TikTok providing the perfect technological platform to influence the masses.
It seems the big screen is always cyclic with its impact on trends. Demie stated herself that she “grew up just loving fashion and beauty, and would pull references [her] whole life, especially from film, and would just want to recreate them and create characters.”
Marriage has been shown to be an institution that weaponizes sex as a societally burdened act and tool of repression towards women. It is well known and has very much been publicized that Elizabeth Taylor has married everyone she has had relations with, famously remarrying her volatile spouse, Richard Burton. Her eight marriages can be seen as a comment on societal pressures women faced during the 1940s and ‘50s onwards to refrain from relations outside of marriage, the toxic rhetoric staining many to come. The societal need to mark a woman as either a “whore” or “virgin” dates back to biblical times, rather cruel when all women are groomed by society to still present themselves as sexually appealing.
Clearly whimsical movie stars of the past have heavily shaped society's perception of beauty and fashion, but more importantly, they have revealed the way in which the media feeds off of controlling the narrative as a means of controlling the masses. At the very least, it reflects the perceived “norms” of any given environment, with the goddesses of the screen representing underlying issues of their time through their own individual struggle.
As women, it is vital that we prevail and unite. Maya Angelou said it best, "I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.