On Self Respect & Beauty

I recently read the article On Self-Respect by Joan Didion, an author my friend calls” the national treasure of America”. Interestingly enough, this essay was originally published on Vogue, a magazine you wouldn’t immediately align the genre of which to depths or intellectual rigor. With all fashion magazines I have read, I arrive at an overaching impression that these women-empowering contents are scarcely more capable than spreading “self-love” chicken-soup or “dare you to liberate the promiscuous self” advice, which revolves around “you don’t need to be obssessed with the man you are dating, you are awesome yourself”, or “your needs come first”.

None of them ever struck me as firm on teaching any self-disciplinary virtues or encouraging independent thinking of women. They don’t really encourage any kind of order but function more like pats on the back for disarray.

The situation is worse in China. The chicken-soups or feminist dares get dumbed down to these themes : “obey your whim, spoil yourself, buy the piece and be happy, “(as if there is no tomorrow), or “At 50+ age, her body still appeals to little sweet and fresh meaty 20-year-olds, how does she do it?” (heads up to a tailing ad selling either magical skin-care solutions or fitness courses), or “She should only be in charge of being pretty while he takes care of the family”(a movement to “free” women from the increasing family-economic hybrid stress placed on the female gender, well-intentioned to begin with, but causing simplistic-minded social consequences nonetheless)

What school of philosophy underpins these ubiquitous life-coach buzzwords in the Chinese society can boil down to this: the totality of her worth is encapsulated in the freshness of her biological life and meanwhile the size of that value package is reflected in how much men or the man(husband) dotes on her. Based on that premise, a woman should devote all her energy and intelligence to keeping her appearance at the peak- supposedly adolescence, while using that youthful and tasty appearance to trade for economic status and freedom in spending. That is also why the highest praise for a women here seems to be “manage to look like a teenage girl at over 30/40/50”. Nothing else.

Well, occasionally, people also compliment a female with” with a face destined for an acting stardom, she chose to use her brains for a career”. Not relying on one’s external beauty for a living is truely commendable, almost heroic.

Nonethless such exception won’t make invalid the simpleton yet prevailing formula to sketch the confines of Chinese women’s social expectations: young and beautiful will bring about rich suitors and happy providing husbands.

On the other hand, we overhear roaring social-media discussions of certain celebrity men who either repeatedly cheated on or physically abused their romantic partners. Such “debates” or rather, “public damnation” ride on a seemingly femininist rage of “how bad these men are.” . Surely any predators who lay hands on their peer humans in anyway deserve punishment, but instead of gazing back at the abyss-those “bad bad men”, shouldn’t we explore what we truly value in ourselves and seek awareness of our responsibilities first, and second, what we deserve as rights ?

Oh how the society, the feminist society is scared of the whole concept of “responsibility”, because it could denote a super-mother charge of doing the bulk of child-care heavy lifting on top of a career, because the traditional sense of that word sends out a patriarchical menace to push women center-stage in family duties, while its modern application locks women down in income-generating. To be fair, no one should be forced to bite more work than they can chew and everyone in a family or partnership should chip in.

But it is purely astonishing to see how this helix-shaped feminism in China never even fanthomed about teaching women to consider for themselves what duties to bear up and what responsible lives to lead, apart from all the self-pampering or vanity cultivation.

Warring with this super-imposed social stress has become one of the two theatres of women with any feminism urges, while obsession with youthful looks as the currency of power makes up the second one.

If we buy into the system where we are valued at the degree of flesh preservation but not burdened with any intellectual rigor asked of us, how could we be so astounded at predators exploiting us as objects such as meat-market items? Don’t take me wrong as some kind of “victim blaming parties”. I would also hate condoning women taking advantage of men as meat, flesh or food, such as embeded in popular storylines of mature but “fabulous” women attracting young men.

Of course valuing oneself by how young you look and how much younger you can date and women overburdened or mistreated by their partners are not one and the same. But the feminine society’s response to the two phenomenons, came out of the same spot. Whether you are raging aginst these “vicious” abusers, or you are admiring those “mature but still looking like a teenager” madams, you act on the same emotion and cognitive perception: our happines and value is skin-deep and in the hands of men. We keep ourselves pretty , then we rely on the good kindness of the man who pursued us for our beauty to live a happy life. If the man turns out to be “bad”, “cheating” and “violent”, our jobs is to expose him to the public their real evil-meaning nature by not crouching down. Nothing sounds out of the norm so far, but it ends here. The world of women.

That pretty much sums up the entirety of Chinese feminism.