The Power of Beauty: Our Looks, Our Lives

by Nancy Friday

  “underground comic universe…”: Roberta Smith, “A Parallel Art World, Vast and Unruly,” New York Times, November 20, 1994, sec. 1, pp. 1, 42–43.

  “Traditionally, women who make people laugh…”: Susie Linfield, “Women Comics Stand and Deliver,” New York Times, July 12, 1992, p. 11.

  When male comics finish their acts…: Wisecracks, 1992. 93 minutes. A Zinger Films production in co-production with Studio D of the National Film Board of Canada.

  “With Kotex towels…”: Ibid.

  “There is a male comedian working today…”: Ibid.

  “The great annual festival of Aphrodite…”: Walker, The Women’s Encyclopedia, pp. 1091–1092.

  as Lily Tomlin put it…: Maureen Dowd, “Fashion Week Fabrics,” New York Times, April 7, 1995, p. A34.

  “But the fashion industry trammeled…”: Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (New York: Morrow, 1991), p. 45.

  “Nail polish or false eyelashes isn’t politics…”: Trucia Kushner, “Finding a Personal Style,” Ms., February 1974, p. 83n.

  “I would grind my teeth…”: Virginia Kelley and James Morgan, Leading with My Heart (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995 [1994]), p. 212.

  “In the modern workplace, men are drones…”: Camille Paglia, Vamps and Tramps (New York: Vintage, 1994), p. 52.

  “Lying, of course, is a way of gaining power…”: “Sissela Bok,” Bill Moyers’ World of Ideas, WNET and WTTW, October 3, 1988.

  “Whether by virtue of full breasts…”: Letty Cottin Pogrebin, “Competing With Women,” Ms., July 1972, pp. 78, 132.

  being good-looking was a plus for men… timidity, etc.: Madeline E. Heilman and Lois R. Saruwatari, “When Beauty Is Beastly: The Effects of Appearance and Sex on Evaluations of Job Applicants for Managerial and Nonmanagerial Jobs,” Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 23 (1979): 360–372.

  each additional attractiveness point…: Irene Hanson Frieze et al., “Attractiveness and Business Success: Is It More Important for Women or Men?” (paper prepared for the 1989 Academy of Management Meetings, Washington, D.C., August 1989); Irene Hanson Frieze et al., “Perceived and Actual Discrimination in the Salaries of Male and Female Managers” (paper presented at the 1986 Academy of Management Meetings, Chicago).

  By 1993, people perceived as good-looking…”: Daniel S. Hamermesh and Jeff E. Biddle, “Beauty and the Labor Market,” National Bureau of Economic Research, November 1993.

  “most people judge you…”: McCall’s/Yankelovich Confidence Study: Health and Appearance, 1993.

  “We American women…”: Holly Brubach, “Landscapes with Figures,” The New Yorker, April 30, 1990, p. 106.

  “letting us know… seductress underneath”: Anne Taylor Fleming, “Peekaboo Power Suits,” New York Times, January 28, 1993, p. 21.

  “No. Women dress for other women…”: “A Doctor Is No Better Than His Patient: An Interview with Norman Mailer,” Cosmopolitan, May 1990, p. 404.

  “Rather than finding a source in competition…”: Steinem, Revolution, p. 189.

  “superior performance…”: Ibid., p. 189.

  “progress becomes… connectedness”: Ibid., p. 189.

  “How does a daughter deal…”: P. J. Caplan, Between Women: Lowering the Barriers (Toronto: Personal Library, 1981), p. 120. Quoted in Robert W. Firestone et al., “The Mother-Daughter Bond,” The Glendon Association.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Men seek attractive women as mates…”: David M. Buss, The Evolution of Desire (New York: Basic, 1994), p. 59.

  “people suspect that a homely man…”: Ibid.

  “When a man looks into a mirror…”: Stephen Brewer, “Put Your Face Here,” Esquire, August 1990, p. 34.

  “Their beauty, for Brontë…”: Millett, Sexual Politics, p. 140.

  1994 University of Chicago Study…: Robert T. Michael et al., Sex in America: A Definitive Survey (New York: Little, Brown, 1994), pp. 146–147.

  Forty-six percent of the entire mass market…: Dana Wechsler Linden and Matt Rees, “I’m Hungry. But Not for Food,” Forbes, July 6, 1992, p. 70.

  “We may have some sexual tastes…”: Helen Fisher, Anatomy of Love (New York: Norton, 1992), p. 205.

  “To the late nineteenth-century male…”: Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 87.

  “Out of the upper-right corner…”: Ibid., p. 81.

  “fashion tends to show us…”: De Witt, “So, What Is That Leather Bustier Saying?” p. 2.

  “The gaze is probably…”: Fisher, Anatomy of Love, pp. 21–23.

  “Look at her. All over…”: Susie Bright, “How to Make Love to a Woman: Hands-on Advice from a Woman Who Does,” Esquire, February 1994, p. 108.

  the women whom Lawrence treats…: Brenda Maddox, D. H. Lawrence: The Story of a Marriage (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), described in Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, “D. H. Lawrence Seen in One Intense Lens,” New York Times, November 14, 1994, p. C18.

  “He was dizzy with the spectacle…”: Carol De Chellis Hill, Henry James’ Midnight Song (New York: Poseidon, 1993), pp. 206–207.

  in North Carolina and Mississippi…: Robert Wayne Pelton, Loony Sex Laws That You Never Knew You Were Breaking (New York: Walker, 1992), pp. 6, 157.

  “What if you want to get out of the box…”: Quoted in Christina Hoff Sommers, “A Holiday Based on Ms. Information,” Wall Street Journal, April 10, 1995, p. A20.

  “There is often ambivalence…”: Susan Edmiston, “Reconcilable Differences,” Mirabella, March 1990, p. 112.

  “True, there are still far fewer women…”: Laura A. Ingraham, “Enter, Women,” New York Times, April 19, 1995, p. A23.

  “In the latter part of the twentieth century…”: Andrew G. Kadar, “The Sex-Bias Myth in Medicine,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1994, p. 70.

  “If women ever take over everything…”: Norman Mailer, “Norman Mailer on Madonna: Like a Lady,” Esquire, August 1994, p. 50.

  “With women as half…”: Gloria Steinem, “What It Would Be Like to Win,” Time, August 31, 1970, p. 22.

  “Women with normal work identities…”: Ibid., p. 22.

  “When you control the resources…”: Jerry Adler et al., “You’re So Vain,” Newsweek, April 14, 1986, p. 55.

  Atlanta… “‘best foot forward’”: Ibid., p. 51.

  “The Right Suit… the real me”: Ibid., p. 52.

  “The erotic clothing men wore…”: Lois W. Banner, In Full Flower: Aging Women, Power, and Sexuality (New York: Vintage, 1993 [1992]), p. 212.

  Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “enforcer”…: Jill Abramson and Ellen Joan Pollock, “‘Hillary’s Enforcer’: How Susan Thomases, Top Clinton Adviser, Fell Hard from Grace,” Wall Street Journal, April 8, 1996, p. A1.

  “Men never admit…”: Skip Hollandsworth, “Why I Hate Hunks,” Mademoiselle, October 1990, p. 86.

  “Women’s Liberation has to be terribly conscious…”: “Who’s Come a Long Way, Baby?” p. 20.

  in modern myths…: Warner, Six Myths of Our Time, p. 36.

  “Men are expensive…”: June Stephenson, Men Are Not Cost Effective: Male Crime in America (New York: HarperPerennial, 1995), pp. 450–452.

  “I don’t see how society…”: Donna Minkowitz, “In the Name of the Father,” Ms., November/December 1995, pp. 71, 64.

  “If you take the breeding power…”: Camille Paglia, “When Camille Met Tim,” Esquire, February 1995, p. 70.

  “The birth of a child…”: Ibid., p. 71.

  “Evidence from dozens of studies…”: Buss, The Evolution of Desire, pp. 23–24.

  “women across all continents…”: Ibid., p. 25.

  educated women “express an even stronger…”: Ibid., p. 46.

  “Intimate Terrorism”: Michael Vincent Miller, Intimate Terrorism: The Deterioration of Erotic Life (New York: Norton, 1995).

  “New marriages where the wife is ambitious…”: Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz, American Couples (New York: Morrow, 1983), p. 3
12.

  “Clothes of such brilliant luxury…”: Julie Baumgold, “Dancing on the Lip of the Volcano: Christian Lacroix’s Crash Chic,” New York, November 30, 1987, p. 36.

  “the man who makes clothes…”: Ibid., p. 38.

  “Nationally, the procedures most often performed on men…”: Jacqueline Stenson, “With Cosmetic Surgery, Men Can Change Everything from Pecs to Private Parts,” The Washingtonian, May 1993, p. 92.

  “First, beauty is power…”: Judith Thurman, “What If He’s Cuter Than You?” Mademoiselle, April 1985, p. 120.

  “Women tend to like what they’ve got…”: Jill Neimark, “How Men Measure Up,” Psychology Today, November/December 1994, pp. 35, 38.

  “I’m seeing more and more males…”: Ibid., p. 70.

  Since 1987, the number of men exercising…: American Sports Data, a research firm, reports that the number of men exercising 100 or more times per year has grown from 17.2 million in 1987 to 22.6 million in 1994. In a 1994 survey, 6,000 men…: GQ, “Men in the Nineties: The Quiet Revolution,” 1994, pp. 20, 21, 27.

  55 percent of women…: Families and Work Institute, “Women: The New Providers,” May 1995, p. 33.

  Women still average… 114 percent: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, reported in Donna D. H. Walters, “Working Women Play Key Role at Home, Study Finds,” Los Angeles Times, May 11, 1995, p. A22.

  48 percent of the women… Families and Work Institute, “Women the New Providers,” p. 29.

  When French seamstresses…: Anne Hollander, Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress (New York: Knopf, 1994), pp. 65, 72.

  …the Neo-classic movement…: Ibid., pp. 83–97.

  “The modern business suit [as we know it]…”: Martin and Koda, Jocks & Verds, p. 151.

  With the invention… indistinguishable from the next: Ink Mendelsohn, “We Were What We Wore,” American Heritage, December 1988, pp. 42–43.

  “…the fastest and sexiest advances…”: Hollander, Sex and Suits, p. 182.

  “…women finally took over the total male scheme of dress…”: Ibid., p. 182.

  “Just as women are expected…”: Amy M. Spindler, “How Much Glamour Can a Man Take?” New York Times, June 30, 1994, p. C11.

  “Both sexes play changing games…”: Hollander, Sex and Suits, p. 181.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Violence is the male…”: Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (New York: Perigee, 1981 [1979]), p. 55.

  “The penis is conceived as a weapon…”: Greer, The Female Eunuch, p. 317. “JOHNNY: Open your robe…”: Terrence McNally, “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” Three Plays by Terrence McNally (New York: Plume, 1990 [1986]), p. 105.

  “Impotence is a big problem…”: Beverly Beyette, “Kinsey Institute’s Reinisch Wants to Renew, Expand Sexual Studies; American Sex Habits Changed Since 1948–But Not That Much,” Los Angeles Times, May 18, 1986, p. 1.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald tells Hemingway…: Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (New York: Collier, 1987 [1964]), p. 190.

  “My father would take…”: “When Camille Met Tim,” p. 72.

  “between 1990… competitive about that”: Kevin Cook, “Is Bigger Better?” Vogue, April 1995, p. 266.

  “Women who rated themselves as more attractive…”: Neimark, “How Men Measure Up,” p. 72.

  would rather be (A) 5 feet 2 inches tall…: “Have You Ever Measured Your Penis?” Glamour, January 1995, p. 136.

  “[The models] were mounted in…”: Chip Brown, “Heel, Boy!” Esquire, November 1995, p. 107.

  “A tiny receptacle…”: Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment, pp. 265.

  “Since for over two thousand years…”: Ibid., p. 269.

  “Of all fetish objects…”: Brown, “Heel, Boy!” p. 103.

  “The emphasis on parts of the body…”: Banner, In Full Flower, p. 203.

  “European folk belief…”: Ibid., p. 207.

  a man offers a seventeen-year-old…: Susan Forrest, “DA Booted,” Newsday, November 5, 1993.

  “88 percent of those women…”: Carol Frey et al., “American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society Women’s Shoe Survey,” Foot and Ankle, 1993, p. 79.

  six million women…: John Pierson, “Man Walked on the Moon, Why Can’t Man Make a Woman’s Dress Shoe That Doesn’t Hurt?” Wall Street Journal, January 10, 1996, p. B1.

  women account for 90 percent…: American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society, “Position Statement on Women’s Shoewear and Foot Problems,” 1991.

  “In the dress code of sadomasochism…”: Sherry Magnus, “Feet, Sex and Power… The Last Erogenous Zone,” Vogue, April 1982, p. 384.

  “Freud argued that… is deeply felt”: Valerie Steele, Fashion and Eroticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 32–33.

  “The feet are symbols…”: Magnus, “Feet, Sex and Power,” p. 384.

  “Of all forms of erotic symbolism…”: Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. 2 (New York: Random House, 1937), p. 15.

  “When a Celestial…”: Ibid., p. 22, quoting Dr. J. Matignon, “A propos d’un Pied de Chinoise,” Archives d’ Anthropologie Criminelle, 1898.

  “some degree of foot-fetichism…”: Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, p. 21.

  “when the longing for the fetish…”: Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on Sexuality, vol. 7 of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1986 [1953]), p. 154.

  “The popularly accepted idea of cultural quasi-fetishism…”: Steele, Fashion and Eroticism, p. 30.

  “I gazed at her…”: Ivan Turgenev, First Love (New York: Penguin, 1978 [1950]), p. 33.

  “…to the more obvious sexual organ”: Banner, In Full Flower, p. 207.

  “did not conceal the body, but clung…”: Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of Love (New York: Vintage, 1995 [1994]), pp. 74–75n. “perfectly fitted tights…”: Hollander, Sex and Suits, pp. 43–44.

  “Yet one recent scholar… large false penises”: Banner, In Full Flower, pp. 205, 207.

  “One might glance…”: Ackerman, A Natural History of Love, p. 248.

  “Wearing only a pair…”: Daniel Harris, “The Current Crisis in Men’s Lingerie: Notes on the Belated Commercialization of a Noncommercial Product,” Salmagundi, Fall 1993, pp. 130, 131.

  “sculpt,” “mold,” “contour”…: Ibid, p. 132.

  “Often needlessly complicated…”: Ibid., p. 136.

  CHAPTER 9

  when women work outside the home…: Susan Cheever, A Woman’s Life: The Story of an Ordinary American and Her Extraordinary Generation (New York: Morrow, 1994), p. 120.

  “With words, with nonverbal acuity…”: Fisher, Anatomy of Love, pp. 308–309.

  “A woman must continually watch herself…”: Berger, Ways of Seeing, p. 46.

  “The sisterhood we had in mind…”: Sue Halpern, “Soul Sisters,” Harper’s Bazaar, July 1994, p. 48.

  “not only are Americans living longer…”: Gina Kolata, “News of Robust Elderly Belies Fears of Scientists,” New York Times, February 27, 1996, p. C3.

  “What could I do? …symbols of constraint.”: John De St. Jorre, “The Unmasking of O,” New Yorker, August 1, 1994, pp. 43, 45.

  “The passionate, idealistic…”: Germaine Greer, The Change (New York: Knopf, 1992), pp. 53–55.

  “Whether based on sexism…”: Aimee Lee Ball, “Ballbusters: Success Secrets of 6 Pushy Women,” Marie Claire, September/October 1994, p. 58.

  In 1995, Americans over fifty…: U.S. Census Bureau, “Projection of the Population, by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin.”

  “Women have been burnt…”: de Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 191.

  “The overwhelming evidence…”: Betty Friedan, The Fountain of Age (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), pp. 483, 568, 597.

  “is not only a means of preserving…”: Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment, p. 69.

  The Art of C
ourtly Love: Banner, In Full Flower, p. 172.

  “He that wooeth a widow…”: Ibid.

  “Even the presumed ugliness of aging…”: Ibid., p. 174.

  “Most men and more women…”: Doris Lessing, Love, Again (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), p. 133.

  “The story Ms. Lessing has chosen…”: Michiko Kakutani, “Who Exactly Is This Sexagenarian Sex Kitten?” New York Times, March 15, 1996, p. C30.

  “in earlier Lessing novels…”: Ibid.

  “Aging in women is a process…”: Susan Sontag, “The Double Standard of Aging,” Saturday Review, September 23, 1972, p. 37.

  “all witchcraft comes from carnal lust…”: Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger, The Malleus Maleficarum, trans. Montague Summers (New York: Dover, 1971), p. 47, quoted in Banner, In Full Flower, p. 191.

  “As sexualized beings…”: Banner, In Full Flower, p. 193.

  “The witch—more than the other creations…”: Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment, p. 94.

  “One becomes a complete human being…”: Ibid., p. 279.

  “These stories, while they take…”: Ibid., p. 278.

  “Fairy tales suggest… permits this to happen.”: Ibid., p. 279.

  “What we had experienced as dangerous…”: Ibid., p. 278.

  “As the story characters discover…”: Ibid., p. 298.

  “The Enchanted Pig… suffered many things”: Ibid., p. 296.

  “that girls’ sexual anxieties…”: Ibid., p. 297.

  “Sex and sensuality—going to bed for two entire days…”: Gail Sheehy, The Silent Passage (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 89.

  “When she had become a spokeswoman…”: Carolyn Heilbrun, Gloria Steinem: The Education of a Woman (New York: Dial, 1995), p. 122.

  People magazine’s annual issue…: “The 50 Most Beautiful People in the World,” People, May 8, 1995, p. 91.

  More than 43 million women…: Gail Sheehy, The Silent Passage, p. 7.

  “From their mid-forties to their sixties…”: Ibid., p. 147.

  “Sexuality, before and after menopause…”: Bernadine Healy, A New Prescription for Women’s Health: Getting the Best Medical Care in a Man’s World (New York: Viking, 1995), p. 183.