by Siena Annable

Warm, yellow lights shine upon the deep-red and glittering gold costumed dancers as they tiptoe their way onto the center of the stage. A symphony orchestra begins to play Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, and fluttering ballerinas, dance gracefully across the stage. The two-act ballet is a moving production, but invisible to the audience are the broken and bleeding feet of the dedicated ballet dancers, their hip displacements and the torn tendons all endured for the sake of beauty. Today, ballet is one of the most disciplined art forms. Through literal blood and tears, magnificent dancers emerge, pushing their bodies to limits that seem almost inhumane. Russian Ballet companies for centuries now have been recognized for their brutal expectations. Their dancers are expected to practice and push their bodies to gruesome limits, training for long, excruciating hours. But it is their appearance that is particularly judged, their physique scrutinized; they are emotionally and mentally torn apart, which at times leads to mental disorders, a sacrifice for their art.

From ages as young as three and four, Russian ballet dancers decide to dedicate their lives to ballet; this means, their diet, sleep schedule, and physical education are all controlled by ballet. Dancers sacrifice their childhood in hopes that they will one day join one of the Russian Ballet companies, Maya Krylova reports in Russian Beyond, a Russian culture journal.

 

 

The abstract concept of beauty is both vague and prevalent. No one person has a definition of “beautiful” that would please every person, every country, every culture, and every time period. Throughout history, societies around the world have demanded standards of beauty from women that are expected to be achieved through suffering and risking one’s life.

 

 

Can you imagine risking your sight and health to be considered desirable, to be willing to leave behind all the colors of the universe, to put your life on the line? History tells us that as women, the cost of beauty has always been high; it was around the Early Middle Ages (500 AD – 1000 AD) that women in Europe used Belladonna, one of the most poisonous plants, to achieve the expectations of the time. This pretty little shrub came to be known as “Deadly Nightshade” after Venetian women created a tonic that would “redden the pigment of their skin for a blush-like appearance.” and dilate the pupils for a doe eyed look. This aesthetic quickly took a deadly turn, if you were lucky, you lost your eyesight, but if you weren’t, this lethal agent took your life. A few droplets could “[…] send full grown adults into paralysis, cause severe hallucinations, delirium, confusion, convulsions, and death.”,  wrote Zack Stuckenberg, author for Ambius, an online landscaping journal. Knowing the risk, women continued the practice for a few more years, and it wasn’t until the amount of bodies piling up began toppling over and disrupting everyday life that society moved on.

 

Yet the Middle Ages weren’t the last time that women died in an attempt to satisfy the deranged standards commanded by beauty. Centuries later, Chinese women, from the Song dynasty [960-1279] to the beginning of the twentieth century, bound their feet as a status symbol of power, health and beauty. Known as “Lotus Feet,” women’s toes and heels were broken, curled inwards, firmly pressed against the sole of the foot and then tightly wrapped in an attempt to mimic the lotus flower, considered to be sacred and pure in China. Women of higher social classes had their feet bound, displaying that, by comparison with poorer working class women, they had enough money and power that they didn’t have to be on their feet. Later, the practice trickled down to other classes as women tried to imitate those who were wealthy. A 2013 study from the Journal of Gender Studies, “How the methods used to eliminate foot binding in China can be employed to eradicate female genital mutilation,” mentions that it is thought that around ten percent of the Chinese female population died from deadly infections such as gangrene, as the toenails grew, and the flesh began to decompose.

 

Centuries later, women once again fell victim in the instinct to please a corrupted societal concept. There was a point where women purposely ingesting a deadly chemical. In the early 1800s, Styrian (a region that encompasses what is modern Austria and Slovenia) women ingested “arsenic” monthly, to “produce a blooming complexion, a brilliant eye, and an appearance of embonpoint [sexiness],” according to the 1857 issue of, Chambers’s Journal, a weekly culture, literature, and history based magazine published in London in the 19th century. Women would start slow, taking a small amount, about the size of a grain, and build their tolerance from then on. And what was even worse is, if the practice was given up, symptoms of “arsenic poisoning” began.Death soon followed, arsenic finally took its toll on the body, through pussing and raw skin lesions, finally finishing this gruesome trend.

 

There is a point where young girls become women, but has womanhood become the excruciating process to beauty our societies and cultures have brought upon us? Are we to accept the never ending rules and regulations for the way we are supposed to portray ourselves to the world? Are we ever going to get that right back?

 

The Victorian era (1837-1901) corsets are one of the most well known and recognized beauty contraptions that the English culture’s standards forced women in. We saw it in the 1997 Titanicmovie scene, where moments after the female protagonist, Rose, is physically and mentally abused by her enraged fiance, she asks her aid to help in strapping her into her suffocating corset. The famed movie about romance on a sinking ship is still as popular today as it was in 1997, and such a painful portrayal of the feminine physical expectations from then, still have repercussions women and girls alike are trying to recover from. Although corsets first began in the 16th century, Elizabethan era, it wasn’t until the Victorian era that “instead of shaping clothes to the body, as had been done throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the body began to conform to the fashionable shape of the clothing worn.” writes Drea Leed in Elizabethan Costume, a magazine and online website about the dress and wear during the 16th century. It was during the Victorian era where the ideal figure of “[…] rounded and ample, with an unnaturally small waist.” came into play and the the asphyxiating, whalebone lined corsets became fashionable. The Old Times, a regional antiques newsletter stated.

Again, we saw the consequences of beauty in the cinema, where at seventeen years of age, the endearing Keira Knightley plays the the character of Elizabeth Swann in the movie series Pirates of the Caribbean; Elizabeth quite literally faints and falls off a cliff and into the ocean from lack of oxygen caused by her corset being laced too tight. Almost drowning, Miss Swann is saved by a pirate and the plot continues to unfold, but the main focus of the scene is the struggle she portrays to draw a single breath. This popular movie series theatrically depicted one of the problems that women have gone through historically and continue to do so today. Women struggle in order to conform to the role of the beautiful woman that is ever changing.

 

Much like the corsets from the Victorian era, women of the twenty-first century have begun attempting to slim their midsection, this time in the form of waist trainers. These waist trainers are celebrated and advertised by some of the most influential women on social media, the Kardashian and Jenner sisters. These set of sisters are known for promoting body modification with lip fillers and plastic surgery; they sell their brand, encouraging the impossible, a perfect body. Utilizing these waist trainers result in the same type of health risks that women from the 19th century struggled with, the displaced organs, misshapen rib cages, difficulty breathing, bruising, and skin abrasions, warns USA Today,the internationally distributed, American newsletter. And yet our society puts these women who sell their bodies on a pedestal, as if they are what holds our future.

 

The phrase “beauty is pain” has become much like a disease, infecting young women’s self-esteems and mental health. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America reports that Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is the unhealthy hyper-awareness and distortion of real or perceived flaws which can lead to severe emotional distress and can negatively affect daily functioning. The disorder affects more than 200,000 people per year in the United States and can last for years or even an entire lifetime.

 

A 2011 study by the American Psychology Association, “Self-Objectification in Women: Causes, Consequences, and Counteractions” found the phenomenon that “objectifying the female body causes women to view themselves in a different and negative lens.” Self-objectification comes with damaging effects such as: body shame, appearance anxiety, depression, and disordered eating. This supports the fact that when you continually push negative impressions on someone in terms of standards of beauty, and expectations for the impossible, dangerous repercussions ensue.

 

 

Studying in Sweet Briar College, an all girls educational institution, I see girls constantly rushing to fix their hair when the wind blows, to keep appearances in a place where what’s in your head should come first, rather than what’s on it. And though women from around the world have banded together to fight the inequalities of the sexes in terms of wages, and positions in the workplace, we seem to skip over or accept the most lethal assassin in our society, beauty standards. The expectation for women to fit into some sort of pretty little box has killed off more of the population than any war. Beauty has ruled over us for centuries, skewing the way we look at ourselves and others. This problem seems to root itself in our souls, something you can’t truly see or hear, and yet we feel it all around and within us.